The mom’s a piece of work herself. She’s a sweet person, and I actually like her, and she’s a lot more intelligent and resourceful than she gives herself credit for, but she has ISSUES (that’s letters the size of the HOLLYWOOD sign).
She grew up in absolutely attrocious conditions. The worst day of her own family (public assistance, drugs, etc.) was probably better than the best day in her own childhood. Her own mother was retarded (she was high functioning [could cook and sew and such] and the retardation was more from being malnourished than anything genetic, but she was/is essentially very simple), her father was inhumanly evil (physically, emotionally and sexually abused his daughters) and the family lived in grinding poverty (sharecropper’s shacks, in a tent for a while, etc.). She was date raped when she was a teenager, got pregnant, her father told her he’d kill the baby if she kept it, so she went to a Holyroller home for unwed moms (this would have been in the late 60s), had the baby, and when the first adoptive parents fell through she actually ended up caring for the baby for a month, after which she had to give it up and of course it was wrenching. She married a stockbroker from a well to do family and things were good for about twelve hours, then her husband’s alcoholism accelerated, his investments and businesses all tanked, a margin call left him far less than broke, his family lost all of their money as well, and by the time she was pregnant with her youngest son she considered abortion herself because the marriage had fallen apart. She still feels terrible guilt over it and the kid uses it against her (“Well if you’d had your way I would have been cut out! = Gamebox bought with rent money” type of stuff).
About this time her firstborn son found her. He’d been adopted by a dysfunctional holyroller couple and, like so many kids from ultra ultra conservative environments, was into drugs, and that wasn’t a pleasant reunion. He’s since been to prison and gotten into lots of trouble but seems to have at least semi gotten some of his shit together, at least enough not to call her screaming in the middle of the night.
She feels terrible guilt for the way her children have been brought up, largely because she admits she married their father mostly for his money and sees this as her fault. (Her ex-husband, who never paid child support even when he was jailed for it, is one of those puzzling people who never works, drinks heavily, and yet somehow never seems to miss a meal- always has somebody to sponge off of, still talking about how he’s going to make his comeback in commodities 20 years after he lost his license, etc…) But it’s hard to feel complete sympathy for her; for example, for years and years she lived in Panama City Beach, FL, because “I’ve always loved the beach and I have to have one thing in my life I like!”. She worked as a waitress/bartender usually at nights while her kids were at home alone, and from May to September her tips were great. But every year the same story: she didn’t budget her summer income, bought a bunch of CDs and videos and games and other shit she could have lived without, business died after Labor Day and stayed dead until May by which time she was living on assistance and working 2 nights a week, and she was caught twice working for under-the-table cash at various jobs while on assistance and not reporting it and that got her in huge legal trouble (in fact it gave her a criminal record, which is why she can’t qualify for an apartment), and when the $10,000 fell into her lap she could have cleared her record by paying the state back the $5000 she owed them but of course pissed it away in about two months instead without paying any bills. When called on doing stuff like this and how to avoid it her fallback is always a pitiful melodramatic “I’m just stupid uneducated poor whitetrash! What do you expect!”
But anyway, her experience with adoption makes her hate the notion. As a born-occasionally Christian she has major problems with abortion. So the baby’s going to end up living in a kitchen drawer in the apartment while Dinah’s sets off for her collision course to sell cookies and shoestrings door to door for that UFO cult she’s destined to join.
I would almost be willing to take this baby myself if I were more firmly established and settled and could stand babies. Middle class southerners have always had a standby for what to do with unwanted babies, but in the first place black maids are a lot more expensive now and in the second this family’s not middle class. Such a pity such a pity such a pity. I hope this kid will get a break.
