As the pandemic takes hold, Misha Marshall shifts her caregiving into overdrive
First of two parts
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center as part of the 63106 Project, a St. Louis-based non-profit racial equity storytelling project.
On a frigid evening in January 2019, Misha Marshall set out to Missouri Baptist Hospital in west St. Louis County to work a 12-hour night shift as a registered medical assistant. On a normal day, the trip from Misha’s home in the Columbus Square neighborhood just north of downtown would take no more than 30 minutes and she usually drives.
But on this evening Misha was looking at a massive storm that would drop eight inches of snow across the region. With an abundance of caution, she tapped an app on her phone to hail an Uber. As Misha and her Uber driver neared the hospital, they encountered a stalled car blocking traffic on Ballas Road. Misha saw an older woman inside looking panicked as other motorists grew impatient and began honking their horns.
Misha mentally shifted into caregiver mode and asked her driver to stop. Braving the elements, she got out of the car, tapped on the woman’s window, and said she would try to help. Misha decided the disabled car simply needed a push to put the driver on her way. But as she worked her way to the back of the car, Misha slipped. As she remembered the moment in a recent interview, “I was like, ‘Oh my God, my leg is broken’ and I am lying in the middle of Ballas Road.”
The Uber driver managed to get Misha back in the car and complete the drive to Missouri Baptist where X-rays confirmed that Misha had suffered a break in two places in her leg, along with a dislocated ankle.
“From that one night, I was out of work for five months,” Misha recalled. “I was supposed to be living my best life. And here I am lying in the street with ice and thinking, ‘Don’t help nobody no more.’”
Of course, that’s never going to happen. As a healthcare professional, primary caretaker of her sister with cerebral palsy, and a guiding hand in the lives of her parents and her two children, Marshall has focused her life on helping others.
“Anyone that I have had a hand in caring for, I’ve done it to the best of my ability as well as with compassion and care for that person,” she said.
Fragile life in a vulnerable neighborhood
Marshall and her family live in a neighborhood just north of downtown St. Louis that has long been in need of compassion and care. The Marshalls live in zip code 63106, which has become iconic in this region and not in a good way.
Researchers at Washington and St. Louis universities in a widely cited study have identified 63106 as the region’s most vulnerable when it comes to the social determinants of health.
Lots of data go into that assessment, but here’s one way it boils down: A child born in 63106 in 2010 had a life expectancy of 67; a child born in 63105, six miles away in suburban Clayton could expect to live to age 85. An 18-year differential. And this was before the pandemic.
The Marshall family’s story is part of the 63106 Project, organized by Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson, a non-profit, racial equity storytelling collaborative that provides stories to St. Louis media about the region’s most vulnerable residents in the time of the pandemic.
Eight families in 63106 have participated in the project to date. As part of this effort, The St. Louis American will follow the Marshall family throughout the pandemic, providing new chapters as circumstances dictate through 2021.
Marshall’s parents are John and Cathy Marshal, ages 76 and 74 respectively. Cathy Marshall has heart disease, John Marshall is diabetic. Misha’s sister, Maya Marshall, has a congenital brain disorder. So they may be more vulnerable than most to coronavirus and the havoc it leaves in its wake.
Add to all this, a cousin, Ebony, 37, another resident of 63106, who underwent a heart transplant and more recently had another open-heart surgery. Misha has been taking Ebony to her doctor appointments and picking up her 4-year-old son, Clayton, at daycare.
“So my day has not been my day for at least the past month or more,” Misha said, sighing. “It’s a lot to take in.”
Vulnerable as they may be, the Marshalls remain calm.
John made his living working at a union job as a chemical operator, first at a Monsanto plant in Soulard, then in the 1990s moving over to the other side of downtown to Mallinckrodt Chemical Co.’s plant at 3600 North Second St.
That’s when John went looking for a home nearby and came across two side-by-side townhomes on Hadley Street in Columbus Square, about 2 1/2 miles from the plant. John took out a mortgage, bought the units, and later renovated and combined them into a single home that is two stories with five bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms.
The Marshalls are among the very few homeowners in 63106. Census figures from 2018 show that 16 percent of residents within the zip code owned their residence. (That compares to an average of 69 percent across the metropolitan area.)
That they could qualify for a loan to buy the home might be considered a minor miracle, given the redlining practices among lenders that have persisted for decades and reverberate in this era.
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Part Two of this story will appear in The American next week. In it, Leyla Fern King writes about how the Marshalls managed through faith and perseverance to survive and thrive in what is arguably the region’s most vulnerable neighborhood.
Leyla Fern King is one of several storytellers for Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson, a non-profit racial equity storytelling project. She is a senior at John Burroughs School, and an alumna of Cultural Leadership, a St. Louis-based program that brings together Jewish and African American students to learn about and address systems of oppression through the study of African American and Jewish history.