Shelly
Mar 10 '06
The Bottom Line Just a sort of open prayer for a very special Katrina evacuee.
So I want to process something. My apologies in advance as this will not be a thesis with supporting arguments or have much scholarly merit, but I know that there are several members of the epinions.com community who have been dealing with the aftermath of Katrina - and other members with loved ones who are too. Maybe I'll rework this later into some kind of "piece" or delete it entirely, but right now I want to share.
For those who don't know this, I work for a charity in the Chicago area that helps people with basic needs assistance and self-sufficiency grants - paying for rent and child care while a working poor person participates in a high quality job training program, for e.g. I am passionate about the mission, in part because I was once what you'd call a "transient" teen. I was emancipated from my family and the years between 15 and 17 were pretty rocky.
During that time, I did reach out for help. I begged a girl I met in a cafe to let me use her phone and phonebook for an hour. The programs I called basically did nothing for people in my situation. To live in a shelter as a teen, you had to get parent's permission and be in school. I had already dropped out and my parents lived out of state. I asked each person I spoke with if they knew of any program that could help and was basically told "no" or I was sent in circles by being told to call places I'd already called.
For this reason, I loved the fact that my charity never does that. We actually try to find a way to help someone and if we can't, then we try to find real referrals or solutions. I've been at my job for 5 years now and started in program management. I'm now in fundraising and marketing.
Over the course of my years here, I've met many clients with many stories. I also did intake, which meant that I talked to literally thousands of people, getting snapshots of their lives so that I could determine the next step. Part of my job now is to get those stories out in the open so that people will not only understand the issues, but will hopefully be motivated to give.
Last year, about 5,000 Katrina evacuees came back to the Chicago area so we sent out a special solicitation and luckily we were able to help many people resettle here. I've been meeting clients and taking their pictures and now I'm even working with a well-known filmmaker to make a documentary about our clients. I wanted to show a Katrina evacuee and I selected a 12 year old girl I'll call Shelly.
I've filmed Shelly a few times and went out yesterday to film her with the priest at her school who serves as one of our volunteer Fund Managers. For the first time in five years, I think I've met the client that I can't walk away from. I will worry about her on an ongoing basis. I will be making coffee or writing an epinion or hopefully doing something as mundane as this in a few years and I will stop and wonder about Shelly.
Shelly lived in New Orleans with her mother and her stepfather. Right before the hurricane hit, Shelly told her mother that she could hear a voice that was telling her the family had to leave. Luckily they did because their home was destroyed and they lost several family members to the storm.
After the initial evacuation to Alabama, Shelly's mom called her grandmother up here to take her for a year. She agreed. Now Shelly is living with her grandma on Chicago's south side. Over the past several months, we've helped her with clothes (Chicago winters are rough on evacuees), books, school supplies, counseling and plane ticket home for the holidays.
I wanted to show Shelly in the movie because she is like any 12 year old girl. She wants to be a model. She never misses an America's Next Top Model show. She loves to write, loves to dance, loves to sing. She believes in God and believes that God will see her through. She knows she was hard on her grandmother when she first arrived and now she really wants to make things work in Chicago. She misses her mother terribly.
Shelly's mom is still in Alabama. Her stepfather is in New Orleans working on the rebuilding there. As I continue to film her, I learn more and more about her story. Yesterday, I learned that her father actually lives here in Chicago. I asked how her father was doing. She looked at me with eyes that betrayed her words - "He's doing fine."
I learned later that her Dad is actually thought of as one of the neighborhood's homeless crack addicts. He came near the school and was nearly removed until Shelly told the head of the school that this was her father.
In the film, Shelly shows pictures of the devastation in New Orleans. Her destroyed room, the mold on her walls, etc. She points to a bright yellow teletubby in one photograph, but she is at once light years beyond her age and a vulnerable little girl. She is very grateful for the help she's received and loving to the adults in her life.
Here is what is rocking me about her story: Everyone knows the storm wreaked havoc in thousands of lives. Many people relocated and the story the media tells is one of impoverished people happy to get a new lease on life in Texas or Alabama or where ever they may be. I think for the first time I'm realizing how all the stories I tell - about people living paycheck to paycheck or somehow maintaining such a delicate emotional and financial balance, etc. - are really sinking into my heart through Shelly. Her family, like any family, had problems before the storm. Her father is obviously a part of why the family moved away from Chicago when Shelly was 8 to start a new life. Now it's unclear whether or when her stepfather will come back to Alabama to be with her mom, who just had a baby two days ago. It's unclear how long Shelly will stay with her grandmother. This storm took one family's delicate balance and spun people who love each other with all the complications that love brings to different parts of the country and this little girl who is fast-approaching womanhood is trying desperately to hold on to innocence.
When she talks about her father "doing o.k.", her mother who "might need my help with the baby," or her dream of Tyra Banks taking her to Paris and making a model out of her - I can't put my finger on it but I just feel so worried about her. She is trying so hard to do the right thing, and her grandmother is taking good care of her, but she is up against so much.
It's apparent to me that I'm at a loss for words right now. I guess I just wanted to share that for the first time, I've met this girl who stands apart from all of the people I've met through my work because she is all the people I've met through my work. The difference is that with adults, I can say, well, there's hope that they will get a job or get clean or find a way. For a girl like Shelly, the pain she's trying to release through God, through doing all of the right things, that pain is hitting her at a defining moment. And after everything she's been through, now she has to deal with her dad - a man she hasn't known for years who's basically been steadily screwing up his life.
She is a loving girl and I believe that she will find a way through. But she won't find a way through unless people are willing to help her and support her right now. We will try to do that in our small way, but I'm just sending out this open prayer that her emotional world will stabilize too.
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Member: Meagan Downey
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