Sanquita’s homelessness

Sanquita’s homelessness is a material vulnerability that shapes her access to safety and care and, after her death, becomes inseparable from the custody fight over her newborn. The story gives few details about how she became homeless, but it shows her relying on Joshua House and makes the consequences of that insecurity stark: her daughter is identified as homeless before she has even been named, while Brett Bohlinger must turn a promise of care into evidence a court can recognize.

Shelter and daily precarity

The narrative places Sanquita Bell at Joshua House, where Brett Bohlinger drops her off after a difficult morning and finds that neither breakfast nor baby shopping feels appropriate. Earlier, Brett checks on Sanquita in a safe place; Sanquita says she is only tired and asks for help earning her diploma so that her baby will know her mother was smart. Her words make education and motherhood present ambitions even as her housing and health remain precarious. At Thanksgiving, Brett arrives at Joshua House with a meal she has prepared and packed into baskets and boxes. Sanquita is waiting at the door and looks at the basket in surprise. The scene gives shelter a practical, immediate role: it is where support can reach her, and where Brett’s concern becomes food and company rather than an abstract pledge.

The book also places this relationship within Brett’s growing exposure to poverty and insecure housing through her homebound teaching. On South Morgan, Brett visits the home of her student Amina Adawe and encounters an abandoned-looking tenement, a cracked sidewalk, and a hallway littered with wrappers and cigarette butts. Brett contrasts those conditions with the private office and stocked refrigerator she had at Bohlinger Cosmetics, and feels anger at being placed in such circumstances. This is not identified as Sanquita’s home; rather, the episode establishes the wider landscape of deprivation in which Brett’s teaching and friendship with Sanquita unfold. Later, Brett searches for housing in Little Italy and Pilsen, finding that advertised homes can give way to boarded windows and neglected yards. Her own search does not explain Sanquita’s homelessness, but it makes unstable housing a recurring pressure in Brett’s life, not merely a problem she encounters at work.

Care, education, and connection

Brett’s relationship with Sanquita develops through homebound teaching and personal care. Sanquita’s request for help with her diploma is specific: she wants her baby to know that her mother was intelligent. Brett agrees and takes out a chemistry book. The exchange joins practical educational support to Sanquita’s hopes for her child, without reducing their relationship to Brett’s later role as a prospective caregiver.

Their connection also appears in ordinary acts of attention. Brett prepares Thanksgiving food and brings it to Joshua House, where Sanquita receives the basket. Later, when Brett is considering housing in Pilsen, she has just dropped Sanquita back at Joshua House after plans for breakfast and baby shopping fall away in the face of Sanquita’s condition. These scenes place friendship alongside the realities of shelter use, illness, and pregnancy: care is repeatedly organized around what Sanquita needs in the moment, rather than around an uncomplicated celebration of the baby’s arrival.

Homelessness and the custody dispute

After Sanquita gives birth, Brett goes to see the baby and encounters an employee who identifies the newborn as the homeless baby. The label lands before the child has a name, making Sanquita’s housing insecurity seem to pass immediately into the way others understand her daughter. Brett insists on calling her Sanquita’s baby. The contrast marks the difference between a bureaucratic or social category and a relationship grounded in knowledge of the mother.

That distinction becomes consequential in the custody proceedings. In an interview with social worker Kirsten Schertzing, Brett describes her relationship with Sanquita and Sanquita’s wish that Brett keep the baby. Schertzing’s notes record that Sanquita entered a coma after her C-section and that, according to the medical chart, Brett alone reported that Sanquita regained consciousness before dying. Schertzing also tells Brett that Tia Robinson has visited and that courts generally favor family members. Brett argues that Sanquita did not want her baby near Tia and asks whether another relative could be considered; Schertzing says Sanquita had no sisters and identifies Tia, the maternal grandmother, as the closest relative. The dispute thus turns on more than Brett’s willingness to care: her account of Sanquita’s wishes must compete with kinship preference and the limited evidence initially available.

From a private wish to legal evidence

At the hearing, Brett acknowledges under questioning that no one else was in the room when Sanquita told her to keep the baby, though she says Sanquita had earlier told Jean Anderson. Jean has warned Brett that her account alone may not persuade the court. The turning point is a notarized statement dated March fifth, several weeks before Sanquita’s death. Judge Garcia reads Sanquita’s declaration that Brett, her best friend and homebound teacher, should have sole custody of the child if the child outlived her. The statement converts Sanquita’s intention from a disputed recollection into documented evidence, and the judge grants Brett temporary custody pending completion of adoption procedures.

Homelessness therefore matters both as a condition of Sanquita’s life and as a label attached to her child at the moment of birth. The shelter offers a place where Sanquita can be safe and receive Brett’s support, but it does not itself settle who will raise the baby. That outcome depends on whether Sanquita’s own stated choice can be made legible within the court’s process. Her notarized declaration does so, giving the relationship she had formed with Brett legal force at a moment when the newborn’s vulnerability might otherwise have defined her prospects.