ESCAPE FROM THE SINKING CLASS?

WHEN I FIRST MEET HENRY GUILIANTE, I AM PLANNING to do a story on what happens to teenage mothers as they grow older. I plan to focus on Michelle Harig, Henry’s girlfriend.

Michelle had been physically and sexually abused, beginning when she was 9 years old. She had turned to alcohol, cocaine and, finally, heroin. Henry had returned embittered from a tour of duty in Vietnam. He became an alcoholic and an outlaw biker (“There’s a lot of things that I’ve done that definitely will have to stay between me and God,” he says). He was a man who turned his back on the six children he fathered with three different women. One night he put a gun to his head but couldn’t pull the trigger.

Henry and Michelle met in 1985 at an Alcoholics Anonymous dance in Anaheim. It was love at first sight. Michelle, then 15, reminded him of Madonna. Henry, 34, was her knight in shining armor. Before long, Michelle was pregnant.

I begin photographing them just over a decade later, in 1996. Michelle and Henry and their not-so-happy family live in a cockroach-infested motel--one bedroom, living room and kitchenette--close enough to Disneyland that they can watch the fireworks at night. Prostitutes and drug dealers ply their trades just outside the window. Police raids, meth labs and violence are a part of everyday life. Michelle and Henry argue often, but they’re getting by. Michelle is struggling to provide a good education for their four children--Cassie, 10, Chad, 8, Cody, 5, and Cailee, 3. She even becomes a PTA vice president. Henry works on and off as an auto mechanic, but never makes enough to support his family. They survive on government assistance until Michelle is charged with welfare fraud for failing to claim Henry’s presence in the home. She is ordered to pay $25,000 in restitution and sentenced to six months in jail.

Jail visits are torture. “Are you coming home, Mommy?” Cailee asks. Michelle answers as gently as she can: “No. No, sweetie.”

*

HENRY IS LOST. THE HOUSEWORK PILES UP. THE KIDS miss their mommy. Cassie, the oldest, refuses to help. Learning from Henry’s example, Chad and Cody want nothing to do with “women’s work.” Cailee, still wearing diapers, is first to pitch in. She climbs up on the counter, makes cereal and washes dishes.

Michelle calls from the jailhouse pay phones every chance she gets. The calls give Henry strength. “I had to hide my emotions, my feelings, my doubts, my discomfort, and be strong.” For the first time in his life, Henry must pick up the housekeeping duties and care for his young children.

In jail, Michelle gets her first job ever, working in the kitchen. She likes it. She earns an early release and comes home from jail wanting more out of life. “I felt trapped,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t want to be a mom anymore.” Five months after her release, Michelle walks out on Henry and the kids.

“I seen how it hurt them,” Henry says. “I seen the abandonment they felt. I’ve left my wives with the children, and I never got to see that part of it. I got to know my kids. I got to love my kids. It was knowing that there were four little people dependent on me.”

*

HENRY IMMEDIATELY SEEKS CUSTODY OF THE CHILDREN. Michelle gets visitation rights. Henry does his best to comfort his shattered family. The kids cry. They throw temper tantrums. They blame themselves for mommy leaving. Still, they hold out hope she will return to them. “Cody asked me to keep a light on for Michelle so she could find her way back home,” Henry says.

Life as a single dad is not easy. “I want to spend prime time with the kids. But I can’t do that cause I gotta be mom and dad. If I’m not givin’ ‘em a bath, I’m washin’ clothes. If I ain’t washin’ clothes, I’m cookin’ dinner. If I ain’t cookin’ dinner, I’m cleanin’ house. If I ain’t cleanin’ house, I’m breakin’ up fights or something like that. When you’re doing it completely on your own, it’s really, really hard. When Michelle was here, when I came home, the house was clean. I still ain’t got the hang of it yet. I got to figure out that secret there. No matter how many times I clean it, it never stays clean. But I’ll eventually figure that one out.”

Henry shaves his head. He gives Chad, Cody and Cailee each a haircut on the porch outside their room. The boys whine and cry. Cailee likes it. She insists on Henry buzzing off her long brown hair so that she can look like her daddy.

She and other kids living in the motel crush beer cans to cash in at the recycling center. Every little bit of income counts. Henry works occasionally on cars in the motel parking lot to barter for toys or other things the kids need, and sometimes money. With a monthly rent of $675, the family barely scrapes by on Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps. “They give me $767. That’s cash, a check. And they give me $348 in food stamps,” Henry says. “That ain’t nothin’. It don’t last.”

Cassie, a straight-A student, often goes to the motel parking lot to do her homework on the hood of a car. It’s quieter than inside their room. Henry was held back in first grade, flunked fifth and seventh grades, and dropped out of school. He got his GED in prison. Still, Henry is always there to help his kids with their homework. “He’s smart,” Cassie laughs, “but he’s a bad speller.”

When Cassie is 12 she goes to her first dance, a ‘50s-style bash at school. A woman who lives in the motel stays up all night to sew her a poodle skirt. While Cassie waits for a ride in the motel parking lot, Henry tries to show her a few steps. Cassie doesn’t want her friends to see her dancing with her father and pulls away.

She is becoming a teenager. She bleaches her hair blond. She wears makeup. She wants to wear a clingy dress that her aunt gave her for her birthday, but Henry disapproves. Henry sees how men at the motel look at her. He is worried about his girls. “I don’t want them to end up 16, pregnant, like their mother, and relying on a man,” he says. “If they stay in school, get a good education, they’re not going to end up like that.”

*

HENRY DECIDES HIS CHILDREN SHOULD GROW UP IN a better environment. But he can’t afford a better neighborhood. Empowered by his small successes as a father, he begins a campaign to clean up the motel. He calls the police to turn in drug dealers. He complains to motel management about the rats and cockroaches, lack of heating and holes in the ceiling. He rallies other motel residents to take action and force management to make repairs. Appointed president of the rough-and-ready tenants’ association, Henry holds spirited meetings in his room. He declares that he “must stand up for the little people.” Henry calls city code enforcement to report problems. He gets an eviction notice. So do other tenants. Most of them are willing to just move on. Not Henry.

Determined to be taken seriously, he buys an $11 polyester pinstripe suit at a thrift shop. He researches tenant rights. Paints placards. Organizes a protest in front of the motel. He takes his battle to court. Speaking up on behalf of all the disgruntled tenants, he makes a claim of “retaliatory eviction.” An attorney Henry once gave a 1990 Oldsmobile takes the case for free. The motel owners tell the judge that they want long-term residents like Henry and his family to move out so they can renovate the property into a vacation hotel. The trial lasts two days. Henry and the other tenants lose.

“I was hoping somebody else would stand up and help. People have to learn to say enough is enough. Nine out of 10 would just go instead of fighting. If you stop fighting, what’s life about?”

They end up moving from motel to motel, finally settling in a studio motel room in Cypress. Cailee, now 8, has to give away her pet rat, cat and guinea pig. Their new place is no Ritz-Carlton. “We have cops going here every day,” says Cody, 10. “You don’t know if guns are going to go off.” Cassie, who was president of her sixth-grade class, is 14 now and failing most of her classes. She has just had her navel pierced.

Michelle lives with a new boyfriend in a three-bedroom house. She helps Henry pay the motel room rent and takes their three youngest kids to school and to tae kwon do lessons. Even though it has been four years since she left, Michelle says her plan hasn’t changed. She wants to get a job and hopes to someday take the children--if Henry will let her.

With the kids in school, Henry’s next priority is finding steady work through a welfare-related job program. There he learns to write a resume, to perform Internet job searches and interview techniques. Now 50, he finds his new Hotmail account baffling.

Henry has the names of the mothers of his first six children tattooed on his arms. But now those arms comfort Cailee, who is sick with a fever and a tummy ache. “It’s really nice to be able to feel your child cuddling up to you and know that they feel safe in your arms. And if my drinking and my rowdiness kept on or I would’ve blew my brains out, I never would of got to know these feelings or these emotions. I would never have got to hear a child saying, ‘I love you, Daddy.’

“God’s gave me a second chance,” he says. “He’s gave me a second chance with a family. He taught me how to love, and how to be loved. For the first time in my life, I looked at my children, and I wanted them to have more. If I don’t find a job today, I’ll find one tomorrow, but I will succeed. Because I’ve got four little ones depending on me.”