El rival invisible (Spanish Edition)

Buen pitcheo, bateo oportuno, capacidad de aprovechar los parpadeos defensivos del rival. La advertencia de parpadeo le avisa cuando el sujeto cierra los ojos para que usted tome la foto de nuevo. Si observamos las estrellas, podemos notar que todas tienen un ligero parpadeo durante su viaje hasta nosotros. No surge una mueca o tal vez un parpadeo o movimiento secreto en las pupilas de sus ojos. Cada parpadeo dibuja como dibuja la mano sobre todo. Parpadeo de estrella que al llegar la aurora se esconde en el azul del cielo.

Es suficiente un leve parpadeo para confirmar que nos hemos visto. El ojo se mantiene fijo mediante un separador que evita el parpadeo involuntario. Parpadeo un par de veces y con su mano limpio la otra mejilla. Rostros enfocados El parpadeo o las muecas estropean muchas veces los retratos. Los locales aprovecharon los parpadeos de la defensa de su rival. Con un solo parpadeo el efecto desaparece. Esto es importante porque una frecuencia baja se traduce en un molesto parpadeo de la imagen. Opto por quedarme con los parpadeos de pantalla ocasionales. En los dos casos vas a evitar los parpadeos.

Advertencia de parpadeo le avisa cuando alguien ha cerrado los ojos. Y en lo que dura un parpadeo, se va la vida. Las aplicaciones de usuario permiten a los usuarios controlar el parpadeo de la pantalla. Se evita el parpadeo y movimiento del contenido. Un leve parpadeo basta para licuar el mundo. Es fundamental para evitar sobreesfuerzos que conlleven a una menor frecuencia de parpadeo.

El faro de Cabo Mayor prosigue con su parpadeo lento. It bothers her that McKinney lacks the sophisticated equipment of other public schools. When Miss Hester looks around her classroom, she sees a glimpse of her younger self. She was raised by a single mother in the Marcy projects of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a monotonous spread of 27 brick buildings with the singular distinction of being where Jay-Z grew up.

She could never quite numb herself, like other children did, to the addicts shooting up in the elevator or the dead bodies on gurneys. Her salvation came at church and school. In , Miss Hester was one of the first black students to be bused from Marcy to the predominantly white Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood, Brooklyn.

A teacher made all the difference, guiding her to college applications. She sees promise in Dasani, who landed on the honor roll last fall. But lately, she is skipping homework and arriving moody and tired, if she makes it to school at all. Since the start of the school year, Dasani has already missed a week of class and arrived late 13 times.

Miss Hester told Partnership about Dasani. They jump from crisis to crisis, like E. Prevention is a luxury reserved for schools with enough counselors. In their absence, McKinney turns to Partnership, which has weathered its own post-recession budget cuts and layoffs.

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Graduate students are filling in as interns. She has been assigned to lead one-on-one counseling sessions with Dasani. Dasani has never had a counselor. They meet once a week, passing the time playing Mancala as Roxanne tries to draw Dasani out, which proves far more difficult than any board game. Dasani knows how to deflect questions with humor, avoiding talk about her family and the shelter. She is also studying Roxanne. Nothing she wears seems to match, and yet her clothes are spotless. It is not the murders themselves that intrigue Dasani so much as the enormous, orderly closets of the crime scenes — closets big enough to live in.

Miss Hester wonders about these counseling sessions. She finds Roxanne bright and devoted, but worries that Dasani will run circles around the intern, whose overriding quality is sweetness. B ack at the shelter, Dasani spends countless hours with her siblings playing games on a Nintendo Wii.

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In the first round, she confronts the easy villains — her chores — scrambling to bathe, dress and feed her siblings. She cannot find Baby Lele, who is crying. Next, she encounters her parents battling social workers in the guise of angry pirates. Chanel tosses magical powers to the girl, who defeats the pirates, melting them to the ground. In the third round, she goes to school, finding danger and deliverance.

Her math teacher is a supervillain whose weapon is numbers. Down the hall, the girl must rescue Miss Hester from giant, rolling cans. Finally, the girl faces off against her longtime rival from the projects, a purple hulk who picks up cars and hurls them. If the girl survives, she reaches the queen — the principal, Paula Holmes — who decides her future. Winning brings the prize of a new house. It is easier for Dasani to think of Auburn as the worst possible outcome because the alternative — winding up on the street — is unfathomable.

She knows that if she and her siblings were to lose the shelter, they might land in foster care, losing one another. So as bad as it is, the children try to make the place their own. When the lights are on, their room is flatly fluorescent, which prompts them to climb a dresser, remove the plastic lamp cover from the ceiling and color it in with crayons the shades of a rainbow.

When the lights are off, the room assumes a gray aura not unlike, Dasani imagines, the hospital ward it once was. A limp plastic curtain divides the sole shower from the rest of the bathroom, which is marked by vulgar graffiti and shared by dozens of women and girls, though men sometimes intrude. The floor is filthy. The children routinely wipe it down with bleach stolen from the janitors, as residents are forbidden to bring the cleaning solvent into Auburn.

A changing table hangs off its hinge, pointing to the floor like a slide. At night, the children hear noises. They are sure Auburn is haunted. She practices hip-hop routines across the floor. She sits alone in the toilet stall, the lid closed beneath her. Sometimes she reads, or just closes her eyes. Her mind feels crowded anywhere else.

Lately, she is worried about her mother, who has been summoned on Feb. They ride the elevator up to a conference room, where Chanel is jarred to find the director of Auburn, Derrick Aiken, waiting. He is there to issue a warning: At issue is their public assistance case, which has closed because Supreme failed to report to a job placement program, one of dozens of such lapses in the past decade.

Currently, the family receives only food stamps and survivor benefits. An open public assistance case allows the agency to be reimbursed with federal funds, while also making the family eligible for child care and job training — the kind of supports that could help in finding a home. But the problem for Chanel and Supreme comes down to basic math: Auburn offers plenty of proof. Residents like Jenedra, a home health aide, and her daughter, who works at a Pinkberry in Park Slope, Brooklyn, cannot afford city prices.

The gap between income and housing costs was widening when Mayor Bloomberg took office in The homeless population was also growing. For decades, the city had tried to stem the numbers by giving homeless families priority access to public housing, Section 8 vouchers and subsidized city apartments.

While the policy was in place, only Bloomberg, priority referrals were an incentive to enter the shelter system. In line with that agenda, the mayor ended the priority-referrals policy in November Instead, the city began offering homeless families time-limited rental assistance, including through a program called Advantage. Yet more than a quarter of them wound up back in shelters once their subsidies ran out.

Bloomberg ended Advantage after the state withdrew its funding. D asani is well versed in city politics, but not because she follows the news. She is simply forced to notice what other children miss. Bloomberg tried to ban the sale of large, sugary drinks, Dasani began calculating what two sodas would cost in place of the supersize cup that, in her family, is typically passed among eight small mouths. It is no small feat to corral Papa, Hada and Maya, who form a tempestuous gaggle of untied shoelaces, short tempers and yogurt-stained mouths.

Dasani shepherds them five long blocks to Public School , stepping around used condoms and empty beer cans. Suddenly, they dash like spirits across the six-lane street that runs under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. One can only imagine the heights Dasani might reach at a school like Packer Collegiate Institute, just 12 blocks west of the shelter. She is not the kind of child to land a coveted scholarship to private school, which would require a parent with the wherewithal to seek out such opportunities and see them through.

In fact, the reverse is happening: This kind of co-location arrangement has played out in schools across the city, stoking deep resentments in poor communities. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, serve fewer students with special needs, and are sometimes perceived as exclusive. A web posting for Success Academy Fort Greene does little to counter that notion. Do you understand me? For Dasani, school and life are indistinguishable. When school goes well, she is whole.

The new honor roll is called out. It must be a mistake, she tells herself. But when she hears all the other names, the truth sinks in. Dasani is hardly conversant in the subject of libations, but this much she knows: Without further ado, Chanel heads into the wine shop on Myrtle Avenue, trailed by four of her eight children.

They are lugging two greasy boxes of pizza and a jumbo pack of diapers from Target. Chanel sticks out her tongue. She might not like the wine, but she sees no reason to spit it out. She moves on to a Tuscan sangiovese. Ignoring the spectacle, Dasani scans the room, frowning at a sign on the wall: Actually, the sommelier interjects, that is the French word for the delicate, liquid spirits derived from fruits such as pomegranates and raspberries.

On the map, its boundaries form the shape of a pitcher tilting at the northwestern edge of Brooklyn. Just north of Fort Greene Park are the projects and, among them, the homeless shelter where Dasani lives. Heading north, she passes French bulldogs on leashes and infants riding like elevated genies in Uppababy strollers with shock-absorbing wheels.

Like most children, Dasani is oblivious to the precise cost of such extravagances. She only knows that they are beyond her reach. Such perceptions are fed by the contrasts of this neighborhood, where the top 5 percent of residents earn 76 times as much as the bottom quintile. She notes that few people in the projects use the Citi Bikes stationed nearby. Dasani also knows that not everyone in the projects is poor. When he drives past Dasani and her siblings, he pretends not to know them.

Dasani charts the patterns of Fort Greene Park by skin color. The basketball courts are closest to the projects, drawing black children to that northwestern corner. On the rare occasion when Dasani ventures to the opposite quadrant, she sees white women sunbathing in bikinis or playing tennis near a water fountain outfitted for dogs.

Dasani is more likely to encounter shoppers of another stratum at the local Target, where they can save on items that for her family represent a splurge. In the last decade, the neighborhood has been remade, with the portion of white residents jumping by 80 percent as real estate prices more than doubled despite the recession. Her grandmother Joanie grew up in the Raymond V. Ingersoll Houses, next to the Walt Whitman Houses.

Both projects opened in , an era of New Deal reforms that gave rise to white flight and urban decay. Fort Greene, like other black areas, was redlined, allowing banks to disinvest and property values to plummet. By the time Dasani was born there in , a billionaire was preparing to run for mayor. A year after taking office, Michael R. Bloomberg announced an ambitious redevelopment plan for Downtown Brooklyn. Through aggressive rezoning and generous subsidies, the city drew developers who, in the span of three years, built 19 luxury buildings in the surrounding area that catered — across racial lines — to the educated elite.

Dasani and her siblings routinely pass the Toren, a glistening, story glass tower on Myrtle Avenue offering a hour concierge, gymnasium, pool and movie theater. For the arriviste investor, the projects present a rude visual interruption, an inconvenient thing to walk around, but never through. For Dasani, these faded buildings hold a legacy so intricate and rich it could fill volumes were it ever told.

The homeless shelter where she lives is the very building where Grandma Joanie had been born, back when it was Cumberland Hospital. Just across the way is the fifth-story apartment where Joanie grew up, helping her own mother raise seven other children in the clasp of poverty. Three generations later, little has changed. Fort Greene is now a marker. For one set of people, arriving signals triumph. For another, remaining means defeat. Dasani will do better, she tells herself.

Chanel promises they will move this spring, after the tax refunds arrive. She held it up to the light and showed it to her brother. Chanel visited on weekends. Joanie relied on welfare to support her habit. Sherry ran a day care center and shunned drugs. Worried that Joanie would unduly influence Chanel, Sherry sent the year-old girl to live with a relative in Pittsburgh and attend Catholic school. But Chanel longed for her birth mother and began to act out. Within a few years, she returned to New York and moved in with Joanie. They soon wound up in a shelter in Queens, where both were exposed to tuberculosis.

By then, Chanel had dropped out of high school and was addicted to crack. She had joined a sect of the violent Bloods gang, tattooing her street name, Lady Red, in curly letters across her right arm. She was a regular in the crack dens of Bedford-Stuyvesant. She sensed that Brooklyn was on the cusp of change. But she could not have imagined that just five blocks from that spot, people would one day line up to buy blood orange and hibiscus doughnuts at an artisanal shop called Dough.

In , Chanel spotted a new brand of bottled water — Dasani — on the shelves of her corner store. She was pregnant again, but unlike the miscarriages of her teens, this baby was surviving. Chanel needed a name. It grasped at something better. The doll-faced infant weighed only 5 pounds 6 ounces. Even as a baby, Dasani was awake to the world. Chanel would surface from time to time, but Dasani latched on to Joanie. A year later, Chanel had a second daughter by the same man, naming her Avianna, inspired by the more expensive brand of Evian water.

With both babies, she reported to the Department of Homeless Services intake office in the Bronx. They were sent to 30 Hamilton Place, a family shelter in Harlem. Down the hall, a single father had moved in with his own two children. He called himself Supreme. He had sad, knowing eyes that made him look older than his 26 years.

He never talked about the past. When the pantry was empty, he made sugar sandwiches. He was 9 when he came upon the lifeless body of his baby sister. She had been left near the entrance of the projects, wrapped in a blanket. Supreme stroked her head and kept saying her name, Precious. Investigators for Child Protective Services thought the 2-year-old girl had swallowed sleeping pills, though the medical examiner concluded that she had died of sudden infant death syndrome.

The father had left Precious alone when she died. For the next three years, Supreme bounced from foster care to group homes. He soon dropped out of school and left for North Carolina to join the crack trade. By 17, Supreme had a felony drug conviction and was serving time at a maximum-security prison in Walpole, Mass. The Five Percenters were shaping urban culture and music, while spreading the word that the black man is God.

That message — that God was within him — filled Supreme with a sense of power over his destiny, one that until now had been steered by outsiders. Supreme left prison in with a high school equivalency diploma. He married and moved to Washington, finding work as a barber. Six years later, his wife — pregnant with their third child — had a heart attack and fell down a flight of stairs to her death.

Dasani and Avianna were the exact same ages as his children.

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He seemed different from the other men. He was always reading, and had a way with words. Chanel embraced the Five Percent, wrapping her head in a scarf and vowing to stay off drugs. But Supreme and Chanel had a temperamental love.

Their biggest fights led to brief separations, even as three more children were born. Chanel could not stay off drugs for long. When she gave birth to Papa in , the hospital detected marijuana in his blood. Standing there, in the lobby, the memory came rushing back. Supreme was 9 again, losing his sister, then his parents, then his other siblings, all in the course of a day. They inspected the children from head to toe, searching for signs of abuse. She became expert at the complex psychic task of managing strangers — of reading facial expressions and interpreting intonations, of knowing when to say the right thing or to avoid the wrong one.

Dasani remained tethered to Grandma Joanie, who had proudly kept her job as a sanitation worker. She now lived in a cozy apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. On weekends, Joanie would fix the children B. With this child, Joanie could finally be a mother. With Joanie, Dasani could be a child. At the funeral, mourners gasped as the tiny girl flung herself on the open coffin. Dasani kicked and wailed as Chanel tore her away.

At the time, the family had been renting a small apartment in East New York through a city program offering time-limited subsidies to the homeless. Months later, the city began a new rent subsidy program called Advantage. With its help, Chanel leased a duplex on Staten Island, and in summer , boarded the Staten Island Ferry with Supreme and the children.

It was their first time on a boat. They raced to the back and leaned into the salty mist. Staten Island was quiet and green. In their new apartment on North Burgher Avenue, the children rolled around on the wall-to-wall carpet. There they lay, pressed together, that first night. It was their first real home. Supreme landed a job at Heavenly Cuts, a barbershop a few blocks away.

Chanel bought a used, cherry-red Dodge Durango and a rolling kitchen island at Home Depot. It would take years for Chanel to understand why things so quickly fell apart. It was not obvious, in that blinding moment, that money could be useful only if they knew how to spend it.

To think it would bring salvation was as quixotic as expecting a set of keys to drive a car. Money was not going to heal a father who had never been a child. What money brought was a quick escape from all that. Over the next two years, Supreme and Chanel bobbed and wove through a fog of addiction. Supreme started doing heroin. Chanel became hooked on painkillers during an extended stay at Staten Island Hospital, where she was being treated for a recurrence of the tuberculosis she contracted in a shelter. Eventually, Supreme and Chanel stopped working.

She stuffed them in her pockets. C hildren are said to be adaptable. On outward appearances, Dasani and her siblings became inured to the dehumanizing ways of Auburn — the security checks at the entrance, the grimy bathrooms, the long waits for rancid food. The entire family must make this onerous trip, even on school days. That evening, tired and hungry, they returned to their room.

Almost everything was gone: The story soon emerged: Everything else was tossed in the garbage. She waded in, the garbage reaching her waist.



The truth was setting in. Fifty-seven years after Joanie had been born, here in this very building, her remains were dumped in the garbage. Joanie had always protected the children, in life and in death. Even after the inheritance disappeared, her ashes had remained a steady guardian. But now Joanie was gone. In her absence, a devastating chain of events unfolded. Chanel paced the room that evening, desperate and broke. Supreme was gone after another fight. She expected no help from Auburn. A man approached her on Myrtle Avenue asking where he could buy drugs.

He did not look like an undercover officer, so she steered him to the projects. She was arrested and later pleaded guilty to drug possession charges, though Chanel maintains she was innocent. When Chanel did not return that night, Dasani felt something in the air. There was a knock at the door. Dasani shushed the kids. They pretended to be asleep. Then the door opened as an Auburn supervisor and Homeless Services police told the children to get dressed. After her arrest, a family judge ordered new drug tests for both parents, revealing that Supreme had also been smoking marijuana.

With that, the agency went to court to have the children removed. In a hearing on Sept. The judge struck a compromise: Both parents needed to comply with a drug treatment program. The children were to remain with Supreme, but Chanel temporarily lost custody. She had suffered all kinds of losses, but nothing compared with this. Who was she if not a mother? She had always tried to be there, rarely missing a school play or a parent-teacher conference. On Sunday afternoons she would braid hair until her fingers turned numb. Now, Chanel would be living with Sherry, only seeing the children on supervised visits.

She broke the news to the children on a park bench. Supreme ruled by fear. He had an old-fashioned approach to child rearing: Break the rules and you get the belt. Nearly a year later, on Aug. She came with a promise: They would save enough money to leave. The children stare in awe. Chanel quickly stashes it, announcing no intention of spending her long-awaited tax refund, which arrived Feb. She is walking through the projects, the money bulging from her pocket. She does not know where to put it, so she holds onto it and, more than anything, the feeling of having it. Chanel knows that unless she finds a way to save her money, and persuades Supreme not to spend his own tax refund, they will never leave Auburn.

And yet, planning has never been their way. They survive because they live rent-free and have access to three meals a day. Chanel is reminded of this when she stops to look at listings in the window of a real estate office near her methadone clinic. She sees no option but to leave New York. But becoming a real renter, he finds, is far more challenging than claiming Park Place on a cardboard square.

Auburn no longer has a housing specialist on staff — the last one died four years ago and was never replaced. Supreme has learned to navigate the web on his prepaid Android from Boost Mobile, but the phone is often disconnected. And then there is the problem of Baby Lele. Investigators have repeatedly cited Auburn for providing no on-site child care, which hinders residents from searching for jobs or housing. Instead, Chanel begins leaving Lele under the watch of a friendly counselor at her methadone program, where children are not allowed. The counselor stands outside with Lele as Chanel darts in to swallow her orange liquid dose.

When a clinic supervisor discovers the arrangement, Chanel is exposed. So Chanel stops going, and the clinic alerts the agency that she has fallen out of treatment. By now, Supreme has learned that his tax refund was seized by the government for child support owed to two other children he had before meeting Chanel. D asani has learned to let disappointments pass in silence. Objecting does nothing to change the facts. Spring has brought a new set of worries. For the wealthier children in Fort Greene, it is a season to show off new wardrobes. Appearances are more easily kept when the same coat is all that people see.

A crowd gathers as they establish the rules: No one can film it or tell a parent. They pull back their hair and Dasani punches her rival as they tumble to the ground. A man walking his dog pulls them apart. The woman can fight. No one wasted time pulling back their hair. The next day, Chanel and Dasani wander up their favorite block of Myrtle Avenue, passing the Red Lantern, a bike repair shop that sells vegan cookies. There, Chanel spots an old flame.

He wears a long leather jacket and dark shades. She wonders if he is still dealing. She nods proudly at her children. It never occurs to her that, for Chanel, the children represent her only accomplishment. The next day, Chanel escorts Dasani to school. In the hallway, she spots the girl Dasani fought in the park. Minutes later, the principal, Paula Holmes, sits Dasani down. Dasani returns to class feeling jaunty. Miss Holmes knows it is a risky move, but nothing else has worked.

The girl needs to be shocked out of her behavior. The alternative is to fail in school and beyond. They rarely figure among the panhandlers and bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. They spend their days in school, their nights in shelters. They are seen only in glimpses — pulling overstuffed suitcases in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for tourists rather than residents without a home. Children are bystanders in this discourse, no more to blame for their homelessness than for their existence.

Dasani works to keep her homelessness hidden. She has spent years of her childhood in the punishing confines of the Auburn shelter in Brooklyn, where to be homeless is to be powerless. She and her seven siblings are at the mercy of forces beyond their control: The experience has left Dasani internally adrift, for the losses of the homeless child only begin with the home itself.

She has had to part with privacy and space — the kind of quiet that nurtures the mind. She has lost the dignity that comes with living free of vermin and chronic illness. She has fallen behind in school, despite her crackling intelligence. She has lost the simplest things that for other children are givens: And from all of these losses has come the departure of faith itself. Dasani is unmoored by her recent suspension from the Susan S.

For months, this new school was her only haven. She had grown so attached to her principal, Paula Holmes, that she expected a measure of tolerance despite her outbursts, the kind of forgiveness she never gets at home. As pressure mounts from all sides, Dasani braces herself.

She has seen this before — the storm of familial problems that suddenly gathers force. O n April 3, Dasani climbs up the steps of McKinney wearing her best cardigan. She is eager to try out the script her mother has drilled into her. Instead, Dasani hangs back. In class, she is quiet and focused. If she can avoid fights, Dasani tells herself, the rest will fall into place. It is the taunts that she cannot resist. And that is precisely the behavior that Roxanne, her counselor at school, is trying to disrupt.

In those moments, Dasani must learn to breathe in for 10 seconds through her nose and then breathe out for 10 seconds through her mouth. The two blocks of sidewalk between McKinney and the shelter can be a minefield. Sunita is a foot taller than Dasani and easily twice her 70 pounds.

parpadeo | Spanish to English Translation - Oxford Dictionaries

Their rivalry dates back three years to fourth grade, when Sunita, who lives in the projects, began teasing Dasani about living at Auburn, prompting Dasani, then 9, to throw her first punch. As school lets out on April 9, Dasani steps onto the sidewalk and is surrounded by a sea of girls. The girls might as well be twins. They share the same pillow, the same dresser, the same absent, biological father. But today, Avianna rises to the occasion, mouthing off fiercely at Sunita as the crowd disperses.

Dasani is soon surrounded by all of her siblings, a familial force field. Their bond presents itself physically. When they walk, ride the bus, switch trains, climb steps, jump puddles, cross highways and file into Auburn, they move as a single being. In all things, they are one. The sheer size of the family draws the notice of strangers, who shoot looks of recrimination at the mother, Chanel.

Yet she sees fortitude in this small army of siblings, something she and her husband, Supreme, never had growing up. Dasani is haunted by the thought of losing her baby sister, Lele, who just turned 1 and sometimes calls her Mommy. The year-old girl responds with the instinct of a mother but not the training. Supreme soon left home to join the crack trade. But today, a student prompts Miss Hester to talk about her education. She packed a large orange suitcase. Her mother refused to take her to the train station. Girls married their way out of the projects. So Miss Hester left alone that day, dragging her suitcase along Park Avenue.

In college, she cleaned houses to help pay her way. Her mother did not speak to her for six months. And remain that way. Stay just as you are. It is harder for Dasani to imagine who she might become. She has been told she must reach for college if she wants a life of choices, but who will pay? Her mother is quick to ask that question whenever Grandma Sherry tries to encourage Dasani with the shining example of a niece who graduated from Bates College in Maine on scholarship.

Other children talk of becoming rap stars or athletes, escaping their world with one good break. Dasani subscribes to the logic of those fantasies. Her life is defined by extremes. In order to transcend extreme poverty, it follows that she must become extremely rich or extremely something. What exactly she cannot see. To dream is, after all, an act of faith. She believes in what she can see, and Miss Hester is real.

Her lecture that day leaves Dasani feeling uplifted. As she walks home with a classmate later that afternoon, they talk about a coming history project on ancient Egypt. Dasani does not see Sunita coming. Dasani pivots and starts walking against the traffic along Tillary Street. This time there are no siblings to come to her rescue.

Get back on school property, she tells herself. She crosses over toward McKinney as Sunita charges up behind her. They fall to the ground, biting and scratching. Suddenly, another big girl piles on, kicking Dasani in the face and laughing while Sunita holds her down. Somehow Dasani manages to throw Sunita off balance, scrambling on top and pummeling her face before they pull apart, bleeding and crying. Minutes later, Dasani emerges with Chanel, who heads to the projects ready to go. But as Chanel presses for details, she learns that Dasani is hardly innocent: Chanel cools down and decides to handle the matter at school.

The next morning, the two mothers and their daughters meet with Karen Best, an assistant principal who cuts to the chase. Children as young as you go to jail. Prove how smart you are. B ack at Auburn, nothing is going well. It will soon be three years since they landed at Auburn. What have you been doing to move out? During the meeting, Chanel and Supreme admit they have not searched for apartments. They say there is no point, since they cannot afford city rents without the kind of subsidy that the department once offered. They complain that their room is miserable and ask if they can be transferred to a better shelter.

He began leafing through hundreds of pages of laws, noting the violations that his living arrangement presents: Your husband, eight children, all in one room. I want to see how you all manage that for three years. You and your husband can never have a moment because your children are always in your face. I gotta monitor her every time she go to the bathroom. Those at the start of the month bring hope, while those at the end of the month are luckless.

So it goes for Avianna. She waits for a cake. Finally, the children give up and light two small candles. While her siblings inhale their food, she will linger over each French fry. A week later, she takes her last dollar bill and folds it delicately, like a Japanese fan. They pass that afternoon at the laundromat. In times like these, Chanel sees fit to steal groceries. She hides the habit from them. They hide their knowingness from her. They need new outfits, and money for class photos and parties. Chanel is accustomed to saying no when she has to, but she also recognizes the small luxuries that will separate her children from their peers.

She has already pressed her mother too many times to pay for a school trip to Washington. Dasani has never been farther than Pennsylvania. She will hold out for that and let the birthday pass quietly. The mood is light. The children skip about as Supreme stands over the stove, tending to his honey-barbecue wings. The time has come to sing. Chanel gently lifts a vanilla sheet cake out of its plastic casing as Dasani stares in wonder. The top of the cake is still blank, awaiting inscription.

Her mother covers it with candles and dims the lights. Chanel fetches a long, serrated knife. Together, they move the knife through the buttercream frosting. They barely register the hard-faced young men shuffling through the basement, exchanging elaborate handshakes, their heads hung low.

Some play video games. Others mill about with girls in their teens wearing too much makeup and too little clothing. One of these girls, a baby-faced Dominican who works at the supermarket across the street, hangs on Uncle Josh, flashing braces when she smiles. Like other things in her life, Dasani could not have predicted such luck. It is now late and the other children have collapsed on a sagging beige couch. Dasani is dancing to Alicia Keys. They are hungry and short on sleep. Chanel needs the cash. So despite the pelting rain, Chanel instructs the children to meet her at a subway station.

Only Hada is wearing a raincoat. The children cross Lincoln Avenue holding hands. Dasani is in a foul mood. There is no telling how her anger will reveal itself today. Sometimes it comes as a quiet kind of rage. She will stare at an indefinite point, her eyes blinking, her mouth set. Other times, it bursts like thunder. Nijai trails behind, her glasses fogging over. She has always been the odd orchid in this bunch of daisies, the most delicate and sensitive child, made more frail by her advancing blindness.

She can make out only vague shapes and colors. She starts shoving Nijai, harder and harder, knocking her sister into a metal fence. Then she punches her in the arm. In pairs, they sprint across a six-lane highway and enter the Grant Avenue subway station, ducking under the turnstile to meet their mother. After they board the A train, she hands them a bag of lukewarm Popeyes chicken, furnished by a stranger. By the time they get off at Jay Street, their stomachs are full and the mood is lifted. Dasani spots an umbrella on the ground.

It still works, opening to reveal an intricate pattern of white and black flecks. She twirls it around and, when the bus pulls up, carefully closes it. Dasani and Nijai race to the back of the bus, where the motor keeps the seats warm. They sit pressed together, newly reconciled.

Dasani is soon asleep. The little ones watch, thumbs in mouth, as their mother closes her eyes. Every time the bus slows, she snaps awake. At Church Avenue, the children and their mother pile off. The street looks familiar, but Chanel is unsure. You got a solution? Dasani carries a singular burden among her siblings. Chanel has vested enormous authority in Dasani. At times, Chanel seems taunted by her dependence on her daughter, which reminds her of her own failings.

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They take a few steps before Chanel turns on her heel, remembering the way. And me, who got nothing, is trying to send you and you gonna give me attitude? Khaliq knows the difference. The cash instantly settles the family, leaving the children calm and Chanel introspective. She is thinking about Supreme, whom she could not rouse from bed this morning. I come all this way, on the bus, in the rain, to get the money so she can go on her trip.

She can only feel empty. A mob of spectators presses in, trying to see the tiny girl. The crowd chants her name. She looks up at the sky and extends her fingers, but cannot reach high enough to grasp the metal bar. A powerful man hoists her up by the waist. In an instant, she is midair, pulling and twisting acrobatically as the audience gasps at the might of this year-old girl. Dasani blinks, looking out at the smiling faces.

She cannot make sense of the serendipity that has brought her here to Harlem, on this sparkling July day, to make her debut as a member of an urban fitness group teamed up with Nike. But there is her beaming mother, Chanel; her father, Supreme; and all seven siblings. They are cheering and clapping as well. It was only two months earlier that Dasani stood at the bus stop as her mother wept in the rain. Summer was fast approaching, a season that, in this family, always brings change.

There was no telling what this summer might bring. Dasani could no sooner predict landing a spot on the Harlem team than she could foretell the abrupt changes that still lay ahead. Already, the court-mandated supervision of the family by child protection workers had run its course. As the days grew hotter, Dasani and her family remained stuck in the same miserable room at Auburn. And yet summer, no matter how stifling, also carried a certain promise, the kind that comes of chance encounters on the street. I t is a muggy night in Harlem, but the children do not care.

They savor any chance to visit. They have returned over the years, pulled by the Five Percent Nation, the movement spawned 50 years ago by a contemporary of Malcolm X who broke from the Nation of Islam. As the sun sets, Dasani and her family step out for some air. A man brushes past them, walking along West th Street. His hooded sweatshirt is pulled low over his face, which is dusted by a salt-and-pepper beard.

He moves with the purposeful air of a celebrity in hiding. Chanel ignores the comment. She is already thinking through the possibilities presented by this accidental meeting. She steers Dasani to some empty pull-up bars at a nearby playground. While Giant remains on the fringe of prime-time America, he has his share of acolytes in Harlem. Dasani springs to the bars and begins to knock out an impressive set of pull-ups, her shoulders popping with the muscles of an action figure.

Chanel senses that she may be on to something. She explains that Dasani has been doing pull-ups in Fort Greene Park for years. She can also dance, do gymnastics, run track. All she lacks is training — of any kind. The girl is uncommonly strong. She has a telegenic smile. Giant quickly explains how his team works: It has a limited partnership with Nike that will hopefully lead to bigger things. In the meantime, the team earns modest pay in exchange for holding training clinics, and performing at concerts and other events. It is the first time in her life she can see a path to something else.

What exactly, she is not sure. She has not even had her tryout. But for a girl who has spent her life tempering expectations, she cannot stop herself from dreaming just a little. M oney is especially tight. She reflects on this as her homeroom teacher, Faith Hester, delivers a lesson that week on personal responsibility. Dasani recounts how her longtime rival, Sunita, began following her after school, and slapped her.

Do you think that was the right thing to do? They are looking for an opportunity to do something crazy and ridiculous. They have nothing to live for. Dasani is still in bed the next morning when her mother rises from a fitful sleep and heads to the corner store with her sister Avianna.