If you were to meet him today at age 14, when he stars in school plays and preaches Sunday sermons to adults, you would never know his childhood lasted just a few years. That all the adults in his family failed him. That through it all, Michael prayed to God and stood his ground.
``In the Bible, Joseph was sold by his brothers into bondage in Egypt,'' says Michael's mentor, the Rev. Allen Jenkins, formerly of Faith United Methodist Church on the edge of Passyunk. ``That's how I look at Michael's life. Everybody around him wrote him off. Everything in his life was bad. But it turned out good.''
Michael lives in Passyunk Homes, the most welfare-dependent place in Philadelphia, a village of women and children held together by the monthly benefit check. A Passyunk childhood is as hard a life as there can be in America. Perilous and short-lived, it is nurtured by a fraying network of mothers and grandmothers. When welfare reform cuts the flow of checks to those women and the women of all the Passyunks in America, no one knows what will happen to children like Michael.
Despite so many obstacles, Michael has somehow survived without becoming bitter or dangerous. Maybe he is gifted with a special kind of will. He would say it was God. One social-service agency is studying Michael to learn the source of his strength.
As remarkable as his life has been, his future is by no means preordained. Michael is now moving into middle adolescence. On the way to manhood, he stands at the crossroads. He's come so far. But he's not safe yet.
A TOO-BUSY FATHER
Michael is one of eight children his mother had by five fathers.
