Interlude One: The Essay
J. Taylor Hanson
Dr. Mills
PSY101-01
05/02/02
One Story, One Leap
The Story of Gabrielle Carter
After three months of unwaveringly working on this psychology project in which I intended to paint a picture of poverty in America through a single case study, I’ve realized that I don’t have a painting at all. I’ve realized that one person cannot accurately represent a whole demographic. For instance, I am a member of upper-class America. If someone else in my economic class is greedy, selfish, and spoiled, it does not necessarily represent me. Gabrielle cannot represent everyone at the same economic status.
Gabrielle who? To put it bluntly, Gabrielle is my psychology project… my psychology project that turned into so much more. I wandered into a impoverished neighborhood only ten minutes away from my house. Sitting on a shabby, broken front porch in Bixby, Oklahoma was 17-year-old Gabrielle. Although it took me awhile to convince her, she finally agreed to tell me her story. I intended to use her story to write a thesis about the impact poverty has on a person. But all I have is her story… and her story does not represent everyone who’s dealt with poverty before in their lives. They haven’t experienced what she has experienced and their poverty might not have affected them in the same ways. There are too many different factors. Although all I have is Gabrielle’s story, it affected me more than any statistic, any text book, any article could. Gabrielle Carter taught me that although being poor does not make you a hero, surviving poverty does.
I met Gabrielle at the beginning of February. It was an exceptionally warm day and she was sitting outside studying for her classes. I admit part of the reason I approached her and not the balding man in nothing but jean shorts who was fixing his car a few houses down was because I’m a hormonal teenage boy and Gabrielle is gorgeous. Also, at the time, her five foot four frame and blond pony tail seemed anything but intimidating. I only meant to record her story and nothing more. Perhaps because we both needed someone to rely on, it made the friendship we began to develop come naturally. She didn’t want to rely on me at all. She resisted getting to know me, and especially letting me get to know her, as much as she could, but eventually her hard outer-shell began to crack. Gabrielle intrigued me. She was different from most girls and she was genuine. The more we spent time together recounting the memories of her childhood, the more I could feel myself falling for her. I fell hard. Within weeks of meeting Gabrielle I had completely forgotten my ex-girlfriend. In fact, I think I forgot every girl I’d ever met. She had that effect on me. She was a breath of fresh air and anything but her began to feel stale and trite. Although it was never my intentions- and I meant for this project to be more objective than it is now- I couldn’t help but fall in love with my psychology project.
We are products of our environment. Gabrielle is no exception. Everything about her is a direct result of her life growing up in poverty. Like wealth, there are different tiers in the lower class. By what I can tell, Gabrielle was part of the lowest tier. The American Heritage Dictionary defines poverty as: the state of being poor; lack of the means of providing certain material needs or comforts. But Gabrielle is from a world poorer than that. She not only lacked certain needs and comforts, she lacked every single one besides the roof over her head. Growing up, her family was hardly able to pay for anything.
Gabrielle doesn’t have a single memory of her father. He left when she was two years old and hasn’t returned since. Sometimes she imagines he’s the gas attendant who fills the car they can’t afford or the mailman who drops off the bills they can’t pay, but her mother, Amy Carter, assures her he left Oklahoma completely- determined to make it to California to start a new life. Amy worked at a men’s club in the outskirts of Tulsa when she was 18 years old. Although she only danced for the men inside of the club, sometimes she took her job home with her. After only a year of working there, she told one of her clients he was the father of her baby. A paternity test proved her story and the two moved in together to raise the baby they never wanted in the first place. Gabrielle’s father managed to buy a two-bedroom shack in Bixby with some money he had saved and when he left for California, he left it to Amy and Gabrielle. Gabrielle has never lived anywhere else. They’ve never had a reason to leave the only substantial thing they own.
Amy Carter started a long cycle of mean and abusive boyfriends when Gabrielle was just a toddler. Some were worse than others. Gabrielle hesitated to give me details about all of them, but she mentioned that her mother dated this one heroine addict when Gabrielle was only four years old. He was the only one to sexual abusive her, and she said that thankfully she repressed the memories quite well. Sometimes she still has brief, haunting memories of his voice or his smile, but she says the her own mind seems to protect her from the memories. Different kinds of abuse persisted with other men though. Some of the boyfriends just pushed her around and locked her in her bedroom at the young age of six, while others left bruises that her teachers asked about. In first grade her mother was contacted by the Department of Child and Family Services about Gabrielle’s subordinate, makeshift lunches that she took to school that usually consisted of just two pieces of bread and a pickle. Gabrielle packed the lunches herself. DCF also questioned her tattered clothing and bruised arms, but her mother had managed to convince them that she could provide her daughter with a safe home. Gabrielle explained how it felt to sit behind her bedroom door as she listened to DCF interviewing her mother in the living room. Despite how hard life had been for her, she was praying that they didn’t take her away from the only consistent thing in her life- her mother. No matter how much her mother neglected her, she was a constant for Gabrielle. As she told me this story I searched for anger and resentment in her voice. I couldn’t find any. It was if she felt passive to the cards she was dealt and didn’t entirely recognize the injustice of her upbringing. I understand that some people raised in situations similar to Gabrielle’s grow up to be bitter and hateful towards the world, but she is not. Her experiences didn’t teach her that she was victim, but that she shouldn’t expect too much from life.
Gabrielle learned to take baths on her own when she was five. She didn’t even need her mother to turn on the water for her or wash her hair… she just figured it all out on her own. When she was younger her mother would bathe her once a week or so, resentfully, but as Gabrielle entered Kindergarten she felt a social need to be clean like the rest of the children. She stood out from the rest of them in her ripped jeans that she wore everyday, but she tried to fit in as much as she could. To this day she is perpetually obsessed with hygiene as if to make up for her days of soiled skin and dirty hair. She also learned to cook that year. She said she’d survived the first years of her life on the soup her mother occasionally made for her and cereal she could pour on her own. At age five she taught herself to make toast bread, microwave frozen pizza, and boil eggs. Sometimes her mother cooked dinner for her, but sometimes she just laid on the couch drowning in her depression. Her dinner depended on not only her mother’s mood, but the mood of her mother’s current boyfriend. If he was drunk and pissed off, Gabrielle knew not to expect her mother to lift a finger in the kitchen.
At one point during our conversations I said to Gabrielle, ‘So basically you were completely taking care of yourself at age five? You were essentially living on your own, yes?’ Gabrielle was quick to tell me not to embellish her story. ‘Don’t make it sound more heroic than it is. I did what I needed to do to survive. My mother wasn’t completely negligent… she’d holler at me if I was late for the school bus or take my shopping at the Salvation Army every few months. Don’t sensationalize this.’ It continued to baffle me how Gabrielle seemed almost oblivious to the utter irresponsibility by her mother. She recognized that life was hard and her mother was neglectful, but she never seemed to realize the significance of a five-year-old cooking her own meals and putting herself to bed. Taking care of herself is the only life that Gabrielle knows. Sometimes she takes it so far that it’s frustrating to everyone around her, but she does it out of habit and as a defense mechanism.
Along the trail of her mother’s callous boyfriends was one man who stood out to Gabrielle. His name was Ray and as reflected by Gabrielle, her mother didn’t deserve someone so nice. Ray lived with them for two years and for two years Gabrielle felt protected for the first time. She doesn’t remember being hungry for a single day during those two years. Ray didn’t just absorb Amy’s welfare checks like the rest of her boyfriends did, but instead he contributed to the family by filling the pantries and giving Amy a car that actually ran. Gabrielle recalled those years not to be perfect, but to be the best years of her life thus far. Her mother began to make real dinners like spaghetti and chicken. Ray contributed enough money to the house that the electricity was always paid for and the water was never turned off. Before Ray, sometimes Gabrielle would have weeks without water or heat. What she appreciated most about Ray was his concern for Gabrielle. Ray was the only man she’d ever known who comforted her when she cried or treated her to special things like Saturday morning breakfasts at IHOP. For the first time in her life, Gabrielle learned what it meant to rely on someone- to trust someone else to love and protect you. After two years, Ray packed his car with his things and told Gabrielle he had to leave. He was leaving because of Amy, not Gabrielle, he explained to her. As I listened to Gabrielle’s recount of the situation, it sounded as if she hated her mother most not for the years of neglect and passiveness regarding her abusive boyfriends, but because she had driven away the only person Gabrielle had ever cared for. Although Ray promised he’d be back one day, the last she ever saw of him was his glance in the rearview mirror as he drove away. Gabrielle built a protective wall around herself the day that he left. She’d always been self-reliant and detached, but as she lost the one person she thought she could rely on, she built a protective shell around herself that was even stronger. It was almost as if it was a post-traumatic stress response to the situation. To this day, anytime anyone tries to get close to Gabrielle, they find themselves pushed away.
Gabrielle was almost completely silent at school since Kindergarten. She spoke when her teachers asked her questions but she never even responded to the other kids that talked to her. They would ask her things and when she didn’t respond, they’d reach out and poke her to see if she was really alive. After Ray left, she could barely bring herself to even answer teachers. She wanted to block herself off from the rest of the world and be surrounded by the only thing she could trust- herself. I think the reason she didn’t talk was because her opinion was never valued at home. It didn’t matter if she was hungry or scared at home. Nothing she would say could change her fate, and so she just learned that words didn’t make anything better. It was safer for her to just not talk. That way, she could blend into the background without anyone hassling her like they did at home.
The boyfriend following Ray was the worst of them all, she remembered. He was even worse than the pervert who’d lived with them when she was only four years old because he was always drunk and always abusive. When I asked her to give me details, she just sat there staring for a long time before she refused. Eventually I convinced her to explain the traumatic experience to me, and it was clear from her removed, lingering voice that she’d tried her best to detach herself from the memory. The story can only be told through the following testimony that I recorded- told by Gabrielle:
“…after Ray moved out… my mom began to take pills again… not the kind a doctor would prescribe but some sort of illegal drug. I didn’t know what it was then, and I don’t know what she was taking to this day, but I eventually figured out that the man who was getting the pills was going to move in with us. It was like that with every boyfriend. He’d start spending the night… and then he’d stay for a weekend. Eventually he’d be kicking me out of my own living room like all the rest of them did. His name was Rollins which I realized one day was actually his last name.
I never did know his first name… I don’t know if my mother did either. He only lived with us for two weeks because even my mom eventually realized he was too out of control… but those two weeks were the worst weeks of my life. The first week he was relatively normal like the rest of them. He lounged around in the couch emptying the cabinets… ate so much of our food so fast that I had to begin eating only one meal a day in order to make the food last. I started stashing it under my bed but he caught me once and got… well… he got really angry about it. He said I was selfish… I think. After he’d made himself comfortable for a week, he began to become worse than the rest of them.
One evening I was in the kitchen making myself a sandwich with the few pieces of cheese we had left when he turned around and told me to give him the last of the bread. It was the bread I was using for my school lunch the next day. I was afraid of him so I just tossed him the bag of bread but he was too drunk to catch it and it fell on the floor and the slices… the slices… they hit the floor. I can remember seeing it in my mind… he just went nuts. He picked up the pieces of bread and he… he threw them at me and then… well he attacked me. He pushed me against the wall… are you sure you want to hear this? Okay… and then he… I must have blacked out. Sometimes I think I just hid inside my own mind and pretended it wasn’t happening, but I’m pretty sure I went unconscious for a moment. When I opened my eyes he was carrying me out to his car. I screamed and kicked… he just put me in the backseat and told me to… to shut the fuck up or he’d shoot my head off. I don’t even know if he owned a gun… most of them did though… but he was so drunk… it was a wonder he didn’t crash the car as we drove out into the middle of nowhere. I was so sacred but… you can’t cry when you’re around someone like that. I knew not to cry. I tried to seem brave… He stopped the car in an open field and told me to get out. I didn’t know what was going on. I remember being convinced that he was going to rape me, but he didn’t. When I got out, he just drove off and left me there. He told me… I remember he said something like… I wasn’t worth anything, or something.
I tried to think of where I should go. For the first time in my life I actually thought about going to the police and telling them what was happening to me, but I figured it wasn’t a big deal. I figured they dealt with more serious issues everyday- murders and robberies. Sometimes I think that I should have told someone… I should have told my probing teachers or… just anyone. But it might have made things worse. I walked for twelve hours I think it was. It took me forever to find my way back home. I missed a whole day of school. When I eventually found my street, I was starving and dirty. Rollins has sobered up some so he just ignored me when I walked through the door. My mother asked me where I’d been and when I explained what happened, all hell broke lose. She began screaming at Rollins in my protection, at least, and he hit her. She didn’t go unconscious like I had but I remember seeing her just… just… laying on the ground bleeding and covering her face nervously. Rollins told me he better not see me in the house again and so I took to sleeping outside in the garage. Maybe that was when I should have gone to the police, but I was too scared of what would happen if I did.
For three days I slept outside in the garage that didn’t have a door. It was cold since it was November but I grew used to it. It would have been worse if I hadn’t found a tarp, but it served as a pretty good blanket. I never really believed in God, but I remember seeing it the first night shoved into the corner of the garage and thanking him. I’d go to school without my books and get yelled at by teachers, and return home to the garage. I went to school three days in the same clothes… I remember the other kids laughed. I was thirteen years old… and when you’re thirteen you just want to fit in, but I didn’t even really care. I guess I didn’t have the energy to worry about that though because I was so worried about everything else. I wasn’t… I wasn’t dumb enough to go back into that house where I could hear them fighting during those three days. He was a crazy bastard, Taylor… one of the craziest. On the second day I grew so hungry that I walked to the gas station at the end of the road and asked the man behind the counter if I could work for food. He offered me food immediately because I must have looked so desperate, but it felt wrong to just take it so I agreed to reorganize some boxes in the back of the gas station for them and I took home a box of Cheerios in exchange. They eventually offered me a part-time job to clean the store a few days a week which was the only saving grace about it all.
Looking back, it feels like I’m watching a movie… like it happened to someone else. I don’t remember my emotions or how scared I was living in that garage by myself… I don’t remember how alone I felt but I image I hated it. It just feels like it was some… movie I watched and never want to see again. After three nights I watched from my corner in the garage as Rollins got into his rusty car and sped off. We never saw him again. When I went inside my mother was sobbing and hurt, and I went to her to comfort her, but she sent me to my room. She said if I wanted her boyfriends to treat us well I’d better to learn to respect them and stop causing trouble, so I grew quiet not just at school but at home too. I think deep down I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I still began to question everything I did. Was using too much jelly for my toast causing trouble? How about watching the television too loudly? I became paranoid.”
As Gabrielle grew, she found ways to become more and more self-reliant. She began working at that gas station for awhile and used the money to pay for groceries. She looked at her mother and realized she did not want to end up like her. She never really blamed her mother. Her mother was raised just like Gabrielle was- by a mother who hardly cared in a house that was always bitter. It was cycle. When she started high school, Gabrielle committed to single-handedly changing her fate. If she wasn’t careful she knew she’d end up the same, and so she began working on her homework for hours a day in order to ensure a good future for herself. Her guidance counselor began to talk about possibilities for scholarships for college and so she made sure she was the top of her class throughout high school. She said that sometimes it was hard to come back to a house that didn’t have electricity and to do her homework with a flashlight while she could hear her mother having sex on the living room couch, but she knew it was her only way out.
Eventually, it was if Gabrielle was parenting her mother. She took the welfare checks immediately and used them to pay the bills. She often cooked dinner for her mother and her mother’s boyfriends. She not only learned to take care of herself, but she learned how to take care of other people. She is a natural care-giver.
In the time that I’ve known Gabrielle I’ve never heard her complain about not having enough money for things. In fact, she refuses money anytime you offer to give it to her. If you try and buy her a gift she will surely turn it down as nicely as she can. She doesn’t comprehend why someone would want to do nice things for her. She was raised to expect only anger and aggression from people so when she sees generosity she looks immediately for manipulative agendas. She’s so used to taking care of herself that she has a hard time letting other people take care of her. It’s like she won’t give anyone the opportunity to protect and support her because when she relied on Ray he left. She goes through life without trusting anyone.
She trusted me. She eventually trusted me, and I eventually shattered her trust in one fatal mistake. I spent two months getting to know Gabrielle and watching her learn how to trust and love. And then in one mistake she completely regressed back to how she was before I even met her. I did what Ray did to her and I will never forgive myself.
I am in love with Gabrielle Carter because of her poverty, essentially. It sounds strange, but it’s her history that gives her the chrematistics that I love about her- the characteristics that make her different from other girls her age. If it were not for her childhood of pain, dysfunction, and poverty, she would not be the Gabrielle that she is today. By no means am I thankful for everything she had to overcome, but I realize it molded her character. Gabrielle’s experience in the slums of rural Oklahoma made her resilient, strong, genuine, hardworking, and appreciative. I realize that the same tragedies might have torn some people down, but for her it all just produced the wonderful person that she is today.
There is no doubt in my mind that Gabrielle will be dealing with issues for the rest of her life- issues of trust mostly. She will constantly be learning to rely on people and she will always be hesitant to lower her guard. In essence, Gabrielle was traumatized by the abusive men, cold house, and empty kitchen cabinets that composed her upbringing. But I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and if all the pain was in order to ensure that she become the person that she is today, then I would dare to say it was all worth it. It was not justified, but worth surviving.
I know my psychology project is not scientific or factual. I know that the project is really nothing more than the story of a girl whose life was not only marked by poverty but by dysfunction as well. But the first step in helping the poverty-stricken population in America is understanding them. We cannot understand them unless we can look into their lives. It’s easy to look at Gabrielle and label her as cold and heartless, because sometimes she seems that way. It’s easy to look at her mother and say her mother was cruel and twisted, when actually she was just part of a cycle of poverty that started decades ago for the Carter family. It’s so easy to judge the people we don’t understand simply because we do not know their experiences, their struggles, and their triumphs. We see the poor as this group of people that we are expected to pity but not as actual people- actual people with actual stories. This is Gabrielle’s story. It’s nothing more. If the only thing that comes out of this case study is my own acquisition of compassion that I never had before, then that alone betters America. I do not know how to fix poverty in America- but at least I am one story closer to understanding it. One story is at least one leap towards a better America.