Christine Barilka
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Christine Barilka is raising four of her grandchildren with her husband. She experiences food insecurity and steep health-care costs.
Annotations
Child Tax Credit - The costs of raising children are constantly increasing, becoming unaffordable for many families. A Child Tax Credit, which would provide a tax break for all families within a certain level of income who have children, would help ease the costs of providing for children. The federal government has a Child Tax Credit, but the state of New Jersey could implement its own refundable version that would provide even more support for qualifying families.
Transcript: We’ve been married eight years and we are raising four of our, uh, grandchildren.
Context Link 1: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-the-child-tax-credit
Context Link 2: https://itep.org/new-50-state-analysis-state-child-tax-credits-would-lift-2-1-to-4-5-million-children-out-of-poverty/
Context Link 3: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-child-tax-credit
Sexual Assault - There has been a push to ensure that authorities have better guidelines for dealing with sexual assault and provide survivors with the supports they need. Recently in New Jersey, the state Attorney General issued a directive pertaining to how authorities and professionals throughout the state should respond to sexual assault issues. It specifically calls for new procedures prosecuting sexual assault, including better communications with victims and more transparency.
Context Link: https://njcasa.org/news/njcasa-applauds-updates-nj-sexual-violence-response/
Prescription Medicine - Comprehensive legislation has been introduced by Senator Troy Singleton that would not only require that the state monitor and make prescription drug prices more transparent, it would place caps on the cost of prescription drugs that increased at unacceptable rates.
Context Link 1: https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2018/Bills/S3000/2630_I1.HTM
Context Link 2: http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-pharmaceutical-assistance-programs.aspx
Affordable Housing - The lack of affordable housing in New Jersey is a major hurdle for most residents. Nowhere in the country can a minimum wage worker afford a 2-bedroom apartment, and it is especially difficult in New Jersey.
Economic Security - Emerging research is cementing the fact that good paying jobs improve health outcomes for people. Conversely, poor paying jobs exacerbate health outcomes. As such, when people are unable to provide for themselves and their families - when they are not paid enough to survive - it can have negative impacts on their personal health. High levels of economic security therefore damage overall public health.
Paid Sick Leave - New Jersey recently implemented a paid sick leave law that requires all employees to have at least five days of paid sick leave per year.
Transcript: “We only get four personal days but I can take an hour each, each time I can split it up.”
Context Link 1: https://www.nj.com/politics/2018/10/nearly_everyone_will_be_entitled_to_sick_days_soon.html
Context Link 2: http://www.njtimetocare.org/sites/default/files/FINAL%20ESL%20FLYER%20%286%29.pdf
Context Link 3: https://www.ebglaw.com/news/new-jersey-becomes-the-10th-state-to-require-paid-sick-leave/
TANF / SNAP / WIC - TANF, SNAP and WIC are important welfare programs that prevent families from sinking deeper into poverty. In recent decades they've received insufficient support, failing to keep up with rising costs. In order to properly support families, governments need to invest further in these programs so that they can provide the level of support families need to thrive and rise out of poverty.
Context Link 1: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/policy-basics-the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap
Context Link 2: https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-reaching-few-poor-families
Context Link 3: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/wic-participation-and-costs-are-stable
Transcript
You want me to start?
Give me your name and do it again, give me your name, you know, like we started. Maybe we can find a way to tighten the story up. Let’s see where we go from here.
Yeah. Okay, sounds good. Okay, my name is Christine Barilka. C-h-r-i-s-t-i-n-e B-a-r-i-l-k-a. I’m fifty-four years old and I live in South Brunswick Township. I am married to Jesse Barilka. We’ve been married eight years and we are raising four of our, uh, grandchildren. [Annotation #1]
Okay. Uh, you can relax a little more. You don’t need to stand over it.
Okay.
00:00:54
So let’s go back to--
My history.
Yeah, so...
Okay.
Um, start off with, you know, you-- you, we have to, unfortunately, redo this. Start off with that initial-- that, that personal story that you were telling us.
Okay. Oh, um, about, uh…
Yeah, growing up.
Growing up. Okay, um, my father, um, was a drug addict alcoholic. Um, and dysfunction and very violent and abusive. He actually had guns also. And uh, this is how we grew up, uh, my mother getting beat up and police were always at our home arresting my father. Um, uh, it was just very uh, dysfunctional. Um, there was uh, broken bones, uh, he-- my father would beat my mother and uh, break stools over her head. Uh, break bones in her face. She was in and out of the hospital, so my grandmother took care of us a lot while she was hospitalized. And, um, I would be the one most of the time to call the police on my father. Even as little as I was, um, my father-- I remember one time, um, I couldn’t even reach the phone on the wall, so I would take a little bench and I stood on the bench and I, I, I had to dial the zero and my father saw me calling the cops-- I, I musta been really young ‘cause I remember standing and trying to reach the phone, but I knew to dial zero-- and he grabbed the cord and he hung me on the cord by neck, so he tried to kill me when I was a lit-- I was a little kid. I figure maybe three, four? Cause I, I remember looking at my body, how small I was, even though my m-- I, you know, I was a little kid, I knew what was going on. To call the cops and to save my mother. Um...
00:02:56
And you had mentioned, um, initially that um, he had been married, so…
Yes. Yes, my father uh, when, um, when I was born my father and-- my father was married to another woman, and had three other children at the time. He met my mother, had an affair, and I was born through that affair. And, um, after I was born, I would say-- I don’t, I don’t really know how-- cause it’s a big secret in the family, even though my father passed away, I don’t know how long he got, you know ‘til he married my mother. But he divorced his wife, the three children, y’know, they’re divorced, and then he married my mother. And my two brothers were born. But my three, uh, other siblings from the first marriage were very close to me, they took care of me. They always told me they loved me. I remember them always hugging me and taking care of me. And my grandmother was friends with her, with my father’s first ex-wife. So I remember my grandmother taking me over there and sitting at the table and my father’s first wi-- uh, his ex-wife making me food. So she even loved me and took care of me. Like, always accepted me. I was never, like, made to feel like I was born a mistake or anything. And actually I’ve talked to my pastor about that. Because I always felt I was a mistake, or that’s why all these things happened, or maybe God wasn’t with me, because, you know, there was a mistake. But it’s not like that. You know, God doesn’t make mistakes, so I’m not a mistake, but that’s-- I grew up thinking that. ‘Cause I was always invisible. No one ever, you know, any kind of attention that came to me was abuse. Either sexually, uh, I was sexually abused by different babysitters I was left with, even as a little girl. Uh, everybody I was left with abused me, usually in a sexual way. Um, that’s probably why I never left my children anywhere or my grandchildren. That’s probably why I’m very overpr-- even my husband’s saying yes because I’m very over protec-- [Annotation #2]
JB: [unclear] ...stay home with the kids.
00:05:30
I’d rather be on-- I, I we don’t get welfare, but I’d rather be on welfare and protect the kids from anything that I’ve been through in that-- in that department. So we do what we gotta do with that.
JB: Exactly. Like even PJ, the now-five year old, the whole time since we’ve had him, he’s never, ever been babysat by anyone.
We don’t leave the kids with anyone. Ever.
JB: I-I’ve watched him or she or--
Not even sleepovers.
JB: Never. Never.
Nope. And they know that I watch them and protect them. And they can tell me anything. But, um, so anyway, anybody I was left with usually uh, molested me or did something to hurt me. Uh, I remember different homes I was in. But, um, my father uh, would beat my mother all the time. And it was like, horrific. I remember bones in her fa-- I remember looking at her face w-- she was all black from broken stuff and I said, “Mommy, what happened?” Cause I was that small where I leaned against her on the couch, and, and she said, “Daddy did that to me.” So, uh, I said, “Where’s daddy?” and she said, “He’s in jail.” But she’d always get him out again. Like, I, even now as a, like, when I was able to talk normally and functionally to my mother with-without her nuttiness, Um, I, always asked her-- I said why didn’t you just take all of us, live in a motel-- ‘cause the majority of the time we lived in motels as kids-- get rid of him, and just take care of us? Cause that’s what I-- if I didn’t marry my husband, even a-almost marrying a rich guy, I woulda just had all my grandkids, went to the church, maybe got people, women in the church that I trust to babysit ‘em, and continue to work, or quit my jo--
JB: She’s one of the most-- she’s one of the most determined people I know. She would be a single grandmother with four, four--
Yeah. Yeah.
JB: She’d figure it out. She would make it happen.
Yeah. It’s, I, there’s…
JB: I don’t ever feel like I’m needed for her to pull this off, like, she, she, she can do it.
00:07:48
Yeah. I, I fight and, and you know, I, I’ll go to, I just do what I gotta do. But, um, you know, so, uh, my father, like I said, continued beating her, um, I remember him dragging her down stairs by her hair, like, and I would-- I would be standing there watching and uh, that’s probably where a lot of the anxiety I had growing up. It was like, uh, now I know why my brothers did drugs to-- to hide the anxiety, but I never did that. I just kinda went in a ball or hid in corners, stuff like that, with the anxiety. I never, uh, did drugs. It was always handed to me, my brothers would have drugs and they’re like, try that, and I said, I don’t want that! I didn’t, I didn’t, I just was never interested, there’s… I saw, even as a little kid, what happens with drugs to a whole family, even a ni-- even other families, that were associated with us. Like, I really wanna take this crap? I dunno, that’s how I saw it. But, like I said, I do, I really believe God’s hand was upon me. I do. Because there’s been doctors that I went to, in the midst of all these-- cause, then I started having nervous breakdowns, in the midst of it, going to call these different counselors and psychiatrists-- they said to me, it’s just amazing that you’re not, like, in the street, a prostitute, for stuff you’ve been through. But I don’t take any credit for that, I just do believe that was God’s hand upon me, but, um…
You-- you said, in terms of the drugs, you said that your father would bring them in the house?
Yeah, my father would bring, uh, as I became older, twelve, thirteen… my father-- we, we lived in South Brunswick in Kendall Park, and my father was bringing drugs home. He had guns, also, and, uh, he would bring drugs home and alcohol and actually give it to my brothers and beat them bad. Uh, he would bang their heads together when he, when he would-- that’s how they got beat. So I, I, I always called the cops and I would tell cops in South Brunswick here, I said, my father’s home, he brought drugs, and I’ll show you where they are when you get here. And when cops-- they would all come in the house because they all took care of me. They all were always around me and they would drive me to work and, and pick me up from work even when I was thirteen years old and, they were just always around me watching me. Even if I would go sit behind the high school by myself, by the lake. Cop cars would pull up and were always around me and always knew where I was. And there was no cell phones back then, so, the cops just always watched me. And, uh, so, um…
00:10:40
In-- in terms of your anxiety, you were able to work? While you were in high school?
I, yeah, I-- like I said, I worked in the animal hospital and then I started working in diners, um, the anxiety wasn’t that bad until my father actually died, uh, when I was eighteen, uh, he died fixing my car, actually, on the front lawn. He had a heart attack and died. And uh, he was already dead forty minutes and they couldn’t save him but, um, I thi-- at that point, I think there was just as much unfinished business because, at that point I’m becoming an adult, and I’m figuring things out. You know, like this scumbag, I gotta start talking to him about everything that’s happened and settle this and then he dies.
How old were you at that time?
Eighteen. When my father died, I was one month away from graduating high school, so, actually when I went-- when I graduated high school my flowers, someone bought me a bouquet of flowers I put it-- it was on his grave. So, that’s what I did with those. And then I took a picture. I don’t know what, what happened to it but, so, he died and uh, and there was this unfinished business. And that’s when I got, I started having real bad anxiety. I wouldn’t come out of the house, um, I was agoraphobic where I was afraid of different objects, so I started shaking out these different psychiatrists and counselors. And I went to a lot of them because none of them were helping me. I knew when I would meet with them if they were gonna help me or not, so usually I would just get up and walk out. Some would give me crayons to color and I’m like, you know what, this ain’t gonna work. I-I’m not gonna color for you. I need to know what the hell to do, my, my father’s dead and all this is alive. And then I started finding people along the way and I finally found Ms. Brown over in the Metroplex in Edison, and uh, I started sitting on my father’s grave with a blanket and talking and settling things like that. Not only with her, but I would be spending time with him, settling things. And eventually, uh, a dist-- uh, ‘cause I was heavily medicated for a lot of years, and uh, so eventually she, uh, they had a psychiatric evaluations and I was released from medications and the counseling and the psychiatrist. Ever since I think like 2004, 2003, 2004, um, she released me. I haven’t been, and it’s now 2018, and I haven’t been on any kind of, I didn’t have another nervous breakdown, everything was pretty much settled, um…
You, you figure how long, twenty years you were?
Yeah, about twenty years I’ve been without.
No, twenty years you were..
Yeah I was, go-- going through a lot of stuff. Yes. With uh, just trying to deal with, you know, I guess um, my self-image. Uh, eating disorders, you know, from the molesting and, and uh, nobody listening to me and always being alone and, uh, cursed at, called a whore by my father. Pretty much telling me go to hell or calling me whore my whole childhood. And then m-my mother did it. Soon as my father died, my mother started doing it, so, uh, you know the names, the taking stuff away from me, trying to get lawyers and take things away from me, including children. My mother, um, just, I think there’s resentment maybe because I called the cops. That’s what we’ve come to the conclusion or, some kinda bipolar disorder that she has. But, I’m good, you know I’ve been evaluated in so many psychiatric-- getting the kids and fighting judges and, I’ve been through a lot and e-every psychiatric evaluation I’ve been in at, even, like, up in Union. They send me far away where, in ‘cause I know people, they don’t want me to know anybody. And this one guy said to me, after evaluating me, he says, I don’t want you to leave, I want you to stay here. He said I like talking to you and I like being with you. And um, I said I appreciate that, you know, and you know I talk about God and, and my job and, he says, um, you know, you’re getting a good evaluation. But I’ve never had anything negative said about me by any counselor, judge, psychiatrist. Only my mother. That’s the only one who hates me, despis-- she said, I’ll never love you, I don’t consider you my daughter, uh, she tries to take things away from me. She takes me to court. Uh, she has money so she takes me to court a lot.
Did she always have money or is that...?
Uh, she’s retired from the state and she married-- after my father died she married, uh, a younger man. And he worked for the state and he’s retired now, so, they travel a lot. She, um, uses…
So, so there wasn’t any money when she was married to your father?
She got money. But uh, my grandmother’s dream was to go to Hawaii, and, uh, before she died, so my grandmother was very close with me, so she took me with her. So I went to Hawaii, uh, you know, with my grandmother. With the money that, you know, my father died, that, you know. His insurance money. ‘Cause he worked for the state also, so, uh, um. Yeah, so I got to do things with my grandmother and you know, but there has always been this, uh, you know. My mother doesn’t tell me loves me, she doesn’t hug me. She never did. You know, I was always by myself, uh, even now. You know, my-- my one brother just passed away from liver cancer from the anxiety and all the drugs and alcohol he did to suppress it. But he died at fifty, a few months ago, and um, he lives in Florida, he lived in Florida. And my mother travels, she’ll ship him food, um, she’ll ship him money and things where she tries to take stuff away from me. You know, she’ll, or she’ll fly down there and um, stay there for a month, and, uh, you know, no one ever came to any of my places where I lived. You know, my mother never came there. Uh, never an interest in anything in me ever, with anything. When I first got saved twelve years ago, um, I had spiritual parents, and they had money, and I’m very, uh, independent, and I push people away. And uh, my husband will tell you I still battle-- he’s smiling over there because I pushed, when there’s an issue I push away, everyone. Cause that’s what I’ve always done, I’ve always been alone and ignored or whatever.
00:18:05
And, um, I had spiritual parents who I met in church and they saw me wearing a t-shirt. And I would wear, when I was living by myself, when I first adopted the baby, Jason, the twelve-year-old, um, you know, I’d put him in the childcare in church and I’d be like, what am I doing in church?! You know, I’d just be sitting there and I’m like, what am I doing here? And I had the metal hanger on all the t-shirts, and it had rust on all the t-shirts, and I guess they noticed it and they started taking a liking to me. And they said, “We’re taking you shopping cause you can’t wear those shirts to church.” And I said, “I don’t need anything from anybody.” And then they started taking me-- cause they had money, these, my spiritual parents-- they started taking me to expensive restaurants and, uh, they said to me, “You owe money on a bill?” And I said, “No.” And they said, “Yes, you do.” And I said, “How do you know?” And they said, “Because God gives us a sermon for you, we know when you have problems.” And I said, “You don’t even see my bills!” Which, I was behind cause I’m raising a baby by myself, you know, paying for a new truck because when I left the first fiance I had these five hundred dollar payments for my truck. So, I had to pay that off. I couldn’t just get rid of it.
So, um, plus I was working full time, but they started to pay my bills and take me into their home, buy me clothes. Uh, they started buying me curtains and furniture. Uh, they bought me a new car. My spiritual parents. And um, uh, so when my mother found out that somebody was loving me and taking care of me, uh, she started to fight them. Because she don’t want people to love me or take care of-- like, in other words she don’t love me but she don’t want no one else to have me. Kind of a weird type of thing. And, uh, I guess she was jealous because this woman was now buying me, she would take me to bra factories, take, get me underwear, get my clothes. I-I didn’t have anything. I’m taking care of this baby and barely making it. Um, I went and got food, uh, from the pantry one time when Jason was a baby and I got two boxes of food, and um, my spiritual mom dropped me off with the food at home. And all my cabinets were empty, like my family didn’t even say, well, she has this baby, she has no food, she nothing. She doesn’t even have clothes. But no one ever did that in my family for me. I always took care of them. So, I, uh, I brought these two boxes of food over in Monmouth Junction, the baby was sleeping [microphone bumps] oh! … And I start emptying cabin-- you know, emptying the boxes into cabinets, you know. And I, I filled a couple of the cabinets, there was a lot of mac n cheese and stuff from pantries. And I emptied the boxes and I, and as I turned around to the boxes, the boxes were full of food again in my kitchen. It’s like, a miracle that happened. So I, it scared me. I started to scream. And then I called my spiritual mom and she’s screaming. She said, “That’s, actually that’s in the Bible. God multiplied it.” Even though they were empty when I turned around they were full, again, of food. So, she said bring it to the church, I put it on the altar. And, uh, she said let other people have that cause you don’t need it now, your cabinets are full. So that was like a miracle. One of the first miracles that happened to me. And um, so one day my mother drives by and she, she had uh, a pack of curtains. And she come up to my door actually, it was kinda shocking cause, she walks up to my door. She opens the door and she throws the curtains inside the house. And she said, “Here-- let, let your spiritual mom, uh, put them up for you.” And she got in her car and left. Uh, that was the only time she ever came to my place. One time. And I lived there for years. But she’s, like I said she, um, she curses. And I said to God, I said, “She will call me Christine, cause that’s my name, not whore. My name’s Christine and she will call me Christine.” ‘Cause I don’t go by the name whore; I’m not a whore, I never was one. So, uh, you know, my father called me that and then she called me it. So, um, but my name is Christine. And everyone calls me Christine.
So, anyway, um, so uh, growing up -- I started working police in this township started picking me up and driving me to and from work. Um, and like, uh, favoring me. Taking care of me. Protecting me. Um, I do believe that was God’s hand upon me. And um, I always had a lot of money. I worked overnight in Princeton, also, I was working in a restaurant over there. Um, I made a lotta tips. I always had a lot of money back in the eighties, like drawers full of twenties.
So, uh, define-- define what “a lot” means.
Uh, I, my drawer, I had like this cabinet. I, I could still picture it. It was like, maybe, three feet high. And maybe a foot and a half wide. And the drawers were full of twenties. So I, I remember my father walking in one and day and saying, um, he said-- ‘cause he never really talked to me, but, he knew I had a lot of money. And he said to me one day, he said, “I need some money.” And I said, “You’re not going near that money.” I said, “You are not welcome to anything that’s in there.” And my door, room, my room was always locked. And I said, “You stay out of there.” ‘Cause I knew, he bought guns and alcohol and he gave it to-- he had a lot of other girlfriends. So he would travel to see them and send limos to them to pick them up. And meanwhile, you know, we had nothing. We had nothing. So, um, and then he was beating my mother and then, um, with these other women. And uh, so, I said, “You touch the money, I’m gonna call the cops.” ‘Cause he knew the cops all loved me. He hated the fact that these cops were around me all the time. They were always at the house, always picking me up and dropping me off. And like I told you, none of them ever put their hands on me, disrespected me, none of them ever did anything to harm me or to, in a sexual way. And I was, I was real skinny. I had long blonde hair, you know, I look at pictures when I was in school. I was so pretty then, I was so young and pretty. And noone, those cops would not let anybody hurt me or bother me. They never touched me, never hurt me. And it’s funny because one of the cops that used to take care of me now is retired and works for municipal. And..
00:25:26
I, I know that one.
You do!? Get outta here. He’s wonderful. They, he used to take care of me and watch over me. And actually my husband went to him and said, you know, thank you for taking care of my wife. You know, and he’s like, it’s no problem. He shook my husband’s hand. And I, I, I love all them cops. When I, I go in police, I picked up police reports ‘cause her upstairs, she’s, she keeps throwing cigars down. It’s a racial thing ‘cause we’re like the only white people. This is low income housing and she don’t like us from day one. And uh, she let me know that. But she says, “I’m gonna continue to throw ashes and cigars down. And you’re not gonna stop me. And I’ve always done it,” and, um, you know, going off with the racial thing. And um, so I don’t stop when I believe in something, I pray ‘cause I want God’s guidance, and then I go off. Go to the mayor, I’ll go to the president. You’re gonna stop throwing cigars and cigarettes where my-- you’re gonna burn the baby’s head. I told her, I said, “You’re gonna burn the baby’s head. And you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble cause I’m gonna get a lawyer.” And she’s like, “I’m gonna do what I want and you’re not gonna stop me.” And she’s real big-- she’ll kick my butt! So I just stay in here, I don’t go out there, because… So, I, you know, I handle it. So I stay calm, I took pictures the last couple months. Called, got police here a couple times, got police reports. Gathered, crossed my Ts and dotted my Is. Brought it down to the office, and the office told me to back off, to leave her alone, that when there’s cigarettes and stuff burning-- cause the whole wooden thing’s all burned-- and, we’ll clean it. Don’t say nothing to her. And I said, “Bullcrap!” So, when I called, I says, you know, it’s time for a mayor meeting. ‘Cause anytime I got to the mayor things get done [snaps fingers] like that. Called the mayor, Ronnie answered, I was like, “How ya doin Ronnie??” I was so happy to hear R-- I love Ronnie. I do, I love him. And I told him what’s going on and he says, “I’m calling the zoning board.” So, I said, I already-- I met with them already, and the manager here told me back off, but you see, you can’t tell me back off. I don’t back off of anything.
JB: She really doesn’t.
00:27:55
No, there’s no backing off.
JB: There was this issue with, when we lived in the trailer park, with the school buses. And the bus drivers would say things that were not nice, because of where we lived. Like if somebody was pregnant like, “Oh, should she really be having another baby?”
“Oh, you live in a trailer, you’re having kids.”
JB: And she would say, like, you need to shut your mouth. Like, you would say that in front of children getting on a bus--
But see, we’re in a trailer park so, we’re no good. So--
JB: Because we live in a trailer park and so we don’t, we don’t have any means to fight for ourselves. Well, we kept saying stuff and saying stuff--
Two years!
JB: Two years giving them a chance in the transportation department.
I was calling transportation two years, and fighting with them and, and they did nothing. And I said this is it, now it’s war-- now it’s go time. You had two years to shut your mouth. ‘Cause I used to drive a school bus, lotta years and I loved them kids. It was very hard leaving them and I was a tough bus driver and they didn’t wanna-- when I got a job in the county, they actually fought me ‘cause they didn’t wanna tell my new boss good things about me, ‘cause they knew I was the only one who could handle bad kids. I had all the kids in New Brunswick, they respected me, I had no problems. I respected them, there was no, no bus drivers were beat up. Nobody touched me. I loved those kids. And they knew it, and they didn’t wanna let me go. But when I started driving, you know, I saw what other bus drivers do. And I would tell them, you can’t do this and that and this and that, cause you’re gonna get your butt kicked! They will wipe the ground with you, you can’t do that. “They’re gonna respect me first!” I go yeah, well, have fun in the hospital and don’t call me, because you’re gonna get your butt kicked. And that’s all that happened-- kids beat em up or whatever happened. So I said to the Board of Ed, “Your bus driver, I used to drive!”
JB: She went-- she went to a Board of Ed meeting.
I went to a Board of Ed meeting. So I, I went to the Board of Ed meeting, and I, I was never at one, and I said, “What do I do?” And they, he said, “We’ll give you five minutes on the floor.”
00:30:00
And I said, yeah, okay. So I, I had my eye on the pad, I’m like, this ain’t gonna be five minutes. So I prayed, “Give me words.” I went up. And it’s funny, ‘cause the whole place is filled with people, all the Board members, and I, I froze. ‘Cause I, I can preach in front of Christian people. But secular I’m not, it’s, it’s not pretty. I don’t, I freeze. So I’m looking at all these people and I’m like, and it was silence. So everyone started moving around cause I froze. And then I remembered what, what the Bible says. ‘Cause it says just open your mouth and I’ll fill it. So I went-- like that, I actually did that-- and the word started coming out. I says, “Let me tell everybody about your bus drivers. First of all, I grew up in South Brunswick,” I says, “I was a bus driver, and I love these kids.” I says, “I got custody of all my grandkids. I didn’t as a child say, ‘Oh, when I grow up, I’m gonna live in a trailer park.’” I said, “It happens. It’s better than being homeless and losing the kids. So I am raising my grandchildren in a trailer park. It does not mean we’re dirty and disgusting and we’re all prostitutes and all that stuff.” I said, “There’s families in there trying to raise children, may three, four hundred dollars a month.” I said, “It’s very difficult.” I said, “I didn’t want my children in the system.” So, everyone is quiet, there’s-- there’s cameras and everything, right? ‘Cause I didn’t know it was on TV.
So, I said to them, I said, “I’ve been trying to tell the, uh, superintendent for two years now about stuff that’s going on in the bus.” I said, “Your bus driver is saying the kids smell like pee, they’re making fun of autistic children in our community, and my older child is telling me every single day and I’ve been keeping note for years now, everything that’s going on this bus, and nothing is done.” And I, I pointed to the one guy, I said, “And you’re up here--” I said, “Everybody’s applauding you because you’re saving three cents per square inch on your air conditioning in the, in the school system.” I said, “but I’ve been telling you that my children are being harassed for two years and you ignore it?” So everyone is like “Whoa!” I just was letting it rip. I was pointing to all of them telling them, I said, “It’s a bunch of crap.” And I says, “You’re rich, and I’m not racial--” I said, “I’m-- I’m raising mixed children.” I said, “It’s funny, when I drove a school bus full of rich Indians, you stop door to door, no problems. But you come to a trailer park and I gotta fight with you to get off the damn highway cause people are trying to hit the kids. No one cares about people living in a trailer park.” I said, “That’s a problem but you can go house to house,” and I said, “and don’t tell me you don’t do it, ‘cause I did it when I drove a school bus. Oh they, that’s the taxpayers, that’s, that’s the rich people-- they got five million dollars houses. Go each houses but they, even though they’re right next to each other. But we gotta walk up in snow and blizzards, the kids are asthmatic, I’ve been fighting you people about bringing the buses into the trailer park farther and you won’t do it because you’re trail-- it’s a trailer park.” So I was going off. So I know I was up there more than five minutes, I’ll tell ya right now. So finally, the superintendent says to me, “Christine, this is gonna be nipped in the budd today. This bus driver is gonna, this is gonna be taken care of today.” So I said, “Fine.” I said, “Have a good day.”
I closed my iPad, walked out, and I was chased by people, even the Board members. And I said, “I have children home and I don’t have time for this.” “Well, Christine will you, you know, we gotta talk.” I said, “We’re not talking nothing. I’ve been telling you guys for two years and now I let it rip.” So they’re like, “This is gonna be televised!” Not my problem. You should’ve answered me. So, that next day I’m at work and I started getting threatening phone calls and emails. Threatening me! Saying to me, “You better come to this board office. Now for a meeting.” I go oh! Two years I’ve been trying to talk to you.
00:34:25
JB: [References former superintendent]
He was threatening my life. So I call my husband, ‘cause I’m at work, I said, “You know what, before I start shaking my blood pressure go up, can you call him?” And he, my husband was a wrestler in school, my husband’s a calm Christian. Don’t mess-- there’s a point where he’s gonna kick your butt. He never fought--
JB: Yeah, there’s, you don’t want to get me, like--
Don’t aggravate him. So, I, I, I had him call the superintendent and he threatened the superintendent. He goes, “This is my wife,” he goes, “you call her again and I’m calling the cops. You don’t want us to call the cops.”
JB: I said, “Would you want me calling your wife and saying that she has to come talk to me and she has no choice?” I said, “You want me doing that with your wife and your family?” I said, “Don’t ever talk to my wife again or you’re gonna regret it. Don’t EVER, ever, ever call her again.”
He’s calling me all day at work. What are these words? I kept calling my husband.
JB: Within a year, he was fired and--
They got him out of there. The parents-- what happened was, um, he kept saying to me, “You gotta come here.” I says, “Okay, if I come here,” --’cause I knew I wouldn’t-- I said, “What are you gonna do when I get there?” She says, “You’re gonna sit there and we’re all gonna be around you.” I said, “Oh, like a witness stand thing? Like I did something wrong?” I said, “No, no. This is not court of Christine. It’s not gonna happen. So, you deal with what happened,” He’s like, “This is like a big mess!” I go, “You guys should have called me back. That’s all you had to do!” I’m in a trailer park, doesn’t mean I’m a piece of crap.
JB: He said to me on the phone, he said, “Your wife can’t make those kind of accusations and then can’t-- not meet with us.” I said, “She just did.” I said--
I did! What are you gonna do about it?
JB: I said, “You had two years to respond!”
00:36:15
I gave them two years!
JB: “You had two years to respond to our concerns and you never did anything, now you can deal with the sandwich that you have to deal with.” I said, “Goodbye.”
I’m different at work. Because I don’t want to get in trouble because I like to speak and fight and I’m-- he calls me pitbull. Because I’m ready to fight for a meeting, I’m ready to fight, I’m ready to, you know, president if I, but, whatever. Um, at work I’m really quiet, so I go into work and one of the guys are like, “You were on TV.” I go, “Shut up!” I said, “Please don’t say nothing. Shut up!” He goes, “I never heard-- I didn’t know that you had that in you.” I said, “It wasn’t me,” I said, “I have a twin.” I said, “It wasn’t me, don’t believe anything I said.” I go, “Forget it. If you need a lobotomy, I’ll pay for it. Take it out of your head and don’t tell nobody in this place cause I-- I really don’t want anybody to know what I do on-- you know, personally.” ‘Cause once I, when I became a Christian they hated me to begin with, ‘cause I used to party with them before I was Christian. Once I became a Christian, you know, um, I changed and they would text me and call me, you know, “I wanna meet with you. Let’s go out. Let’s eat.” You know, no! I can’t do that, you know, I have children, I’m married, you know, my life is different. So you know privately, they come to me now. “Can you pray for me?” You know, “I wanna change my life, I don’t know how.” You know, so a lotta good things are happening but, um. Yeah, so I like to fight, I like to be, I don’t know, I just like all that, I--
[Laughs].
I’m so used to fighting for my life, my-- since my childhood, just fighting and then fighting for my kids and fighting for my grandkids and fighting the community and, and now her and, and, God, he just, everywhere I go I have favor. I mean, I call up and Ronnie works with the mayor. You know, I been to the mayor and Ronnie before, you know, took care of problems I had in that trailer park real quick. So, you know, my you know, not that i’ve never done anything wrong but my credibility is good. You know, I’m raising my grandkids. Ronnie knows me from when I was young. You know, I didn’t do bad things, and you know, I, I’m just trying to survive and do what’s right. Make things right. Raise my kids different and, and that’s the opposition I get because I, I don’t want them to do drugs, I’m upfront with them. And my, you know, brother that is alive and my sister-in-law when they did talk to me years ago, when Jason was a baby years ago, before I got saved, she’d say, “What do you think you’re perfect? What do you think, your kid is perfect?” And I said, “I’m gonna try.” You know, so, um, she just hated the fact that-- some people hate when you want better things. You don’t have to be rich to want a better life. You know, we move out of the trailer park and right away everyone wants our trailer. ‘Cause I went to the Board of Health and had the whole thing ripped apart, to make sure no mold is in it, you know. ‘Cause I want my, I like my family safe. They’re asthmatic, the kids, so I’m trying to, uh, you know, the trailer park wouldn’t do nothing cause we’re, you know, trailer park people.
00:39:48
JB: We had bad neighbors kicked out.
Yeah, we got them evicted. No way, I don’t take no crap. You come in here with drugs and you’re dysfunctional, I’m not saying you’re bad people… I, I think that’s a little spider over there. That you’re kicking, on the floor. Is that or is that one of their, their toast from this morning? I think it’s toast or something. It’s toast? The vacuum don’t fit there. So, uh, so, you know, I forgot what I was saying.
We’re talking about you being a fighter, um-
Yeah. I, I, I like to fight. And I do. I, maybe I don’t even like to fight I just, there’s always something that comes up and I don’t, you know, she’s and she laughs at me upstairs throwing cigarettes and i’m thinking, she’s not going to get away with that. ‘Cause there’s gotta be some kind of ordinance or protection I have that you can’t do that.
You, do you think, you’re talking about fighting. Do you think that there’s-- from what you’ve described of your childhood-- but do you think because of the economic circumstances you’re in a position where you have to fight more?
Yes, I do. And that’s funny you even say that because, it’s, it’s-- you know, I try not to think about money. I really, I try not to. Because I know that God blesses us. I work hard, you know, I’m consistent, I work hard. Um, um, you know. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m rais-- you know, I’m basically taking care of him and the four children. We, we, we don’t get welfare. We don’t get, we-- they won’t give me food stamps. I think I make twenty dollars too much for food stamps. You know, I go to the pantry, um, I do get a paycheck, you know, so I have to pay the car payment and car insurance is almost two hundred a month. And then we have, uh, Jason, who has a-- who’s a diabetic, you know, he has an insulin pump. Um, he goes to the Philly hospital. That, that you know-- the pump, luckily my job pays for it. I have good insurance through the county government. That pump is five thousand dollars and it’s a little tiny thing. And I have to fill it, you have to keep all these supplies. In his room there’s a big dresser with all the supplies, needles and stuff that I use to fill it every three days. Uh, he’s getting a new mechanism implanted where it constantly shows his sugar and that’s almost, I think a thousand, it might even be more.
JB: Yeah, it’s probably more than that. But it’s the, it’s the newest glu-glucose meter on the market.
00:42:30
So he doesn’t have to take more needles.
JB: Keeps track of his sugar. It gets put on his stomach also and it tracks the sugar every five minutes. And this one, it-- he never has to check his sugar again.
No, it sends it to us on our phones.
JB: So they’re working on using this one as the, as the prototype for like, the artificial pancreas.
Yes.
So between that and the pump the two things can just work off of each other and he can have--
Less needles.
JB: --without him doing anything.
No needles. ‘Cause, you know, he’s got-- if you look at him there’s, there’s needles, he has needle marks all over him. It’s, you know his fingers are-- all the skin’s coming off from, you know.
JB: Yeah...
Stabbing his fingers. And, you know, sometimes, you know, like when he plays basketball, you know, he’ll, uh, the needle will come off and then I gotta, you know-- it’s like a slingshot, the needle, it shoots into him. And he jumps and then sometimes it bleeds. Sometimes he’ll cry. Sometimes he’s like, “I don’t feel it.” So, you know, it’s um, a little bit stressful. The supplies, uh, luckily my insurance pays for that but, um, the insulin and stuff like that we have to pay for. It’s maybe a hundred a month. For the insulin. You know, um… [Annotation #3]
JB: For the-- for all the different supplies, probably.
Yeah, and maybe more. I just, you know, round it off.
00:44:00
So, what do you, what do you, earn a month?
In a month? I bring home, uh, maybe five hundred fifty a week.
[to JB] And then you said you make fifty a week.
He makes fifty dollars a week.
JB: About fifty dollars a week, yeah. Yeah, she probably brings home like, now that she gets paid differently…
Yeah I get paid every two -
JB: She gets paid twice a month now. Uh, like, not like every two weeks.
Just the fifteenth and the thirtieth. Or the first and thirtieth or somethin’.
JB: So that’ll take two paychecks out of the year, by doin’ that or whatever. So now she gets paid like, a little more each paycheck
Six hundred a week, ‘cause now they’ve combined it. ‘Cause I would get three, some months I’d get three checks and I’m like oh, thank you, ‘cause we’d get ahead with certain things, you know.
Is it - that’s interesting, because that’s a question I was gonna ask about.
Mm-hmm.
Was there’s that-- there are four months out of the year that, where you would-- there’s an extra week. Um, and I know a lot of people find that there’s a little bit of a boom but it-- it does create some level of uncertainty. Does, does this help like kinda leveling off the money that’s coming in or which way, which way’s easier?
JB: Um...
I, I don’t know. I think it doesn’t even matter as long as my paycheck comes in. I just think, okay, when am I getting paid next? And what has to come out? The car insurance? ‘Cause, you know, car insurance and car payment of three, four, five-- so that’s almost a hundred dollars left for two weeks. So I go to the pantry. Christmas-- since I got these kids, anonymous families buy all their presents. Anything these kids write down they buy. So I’m real--
Through-- through the pantry?
Yeah. So there’s anonymous people that have been helping us.
JB: This one family has adopted us.
Every year, yeah. I guess they get to know us, whoever they are, but um.
JB: The Christmases that my kids have had, you could write a movie about the kind of Christmases they’ve had--
You wouldn’t believe.
00:46:06
JB: Like, some of the stuff you see around the house is from them--
You can’t even walk. Yeah.
JB: --buying them. It’s-- buy like beautiful comforters, like things that they would need.
--By like miles. Like pillows, comforters, like not garbage either. Not like Walmart crap, you know? They order stuff through mail.
JB: --Like Goldstein warrior--
--Like hundred dollar shirts, I can’t, the kids look at them I’m like...
JB: Not like, ministry stuff or whatever. They’re getting, like, stuff, like that their rich uncle would buy or whatever. They’re getting amazing-- I have pictures like that show, like…
--We have pictures--
JB: --presents stacked around, like the tree it’s like--
--No, yeah, yeah. Just--
JB: --it’s nuts.
It’s unreal. Just like, gift cards, stacks of gift cards. Not only for them but for us to go out and eat alone or, you know.
JB: It’s, it’s, it’s amazing.
People just come giving out, you know, anonymous people.
JB: They’re the most, you know, since I haven’t been able to provide our own Christmases, it’s been the most beautiful Christmases I’ve ever had in my life.
We have-- we never bought a thing. We don’t have it.
00:47:19
JB: Nope. I have, yeah, we haven’t been able to. But it’s been the most wonderful Christmases that I’ve ever had. Since it’s been-- since others have to provide it, it’s just been--
--And Miles, you know, the nine-year-old that has emotional problems. From when I first got him and he, he saw some domestic abuse and suffered a lot. But, um, you know, he, he likes certain things like he like KISS, the group KISS. Don’t ask me why, I have no clue. You know, like, KISS is like, forget it, you know. And, and talked-- he like wrote on the papers--
JB: [interjecting, unclear]
[Laughs].
Yeah, like, I watch what the kids write when their Christmas-- Christmas, uh Christmas wish that she sends me. You know, I’m like, no, you’re not getting a Ferrari. They write Ferrari, or you know, stuff like that. I’m like, no, you know, you write you know, like, movies that you like and, and they know we’re Christian. You know, stuff like that. And Miles writes, “I want a KISS
poster.” And, “I want KISS Pez candy things,” and I’m like… so I told Jeannie, Jeannie’s like, “Let them write what they want. You know, whatever.” The-- the, whoever it is that buys stuff, they go on the web and buy it. They make sure these kids have everything they ask for. That’s why I’m like, careful what they write. ‘Cause you can see that they got stuff out-- in the mail. ‘Cause it’s in the box still when they wrap it.
JB: And they always ask, like, what, um, what’s one thing as a household that you need? And the one year we wrote that we needed bunk beds cause living in a trailer like, you gotta try to stack people on top of each other--
00:49:00
‘Cause, you got a room like this and we’re living in half the size of this, so I’m like, alright.
JB: And, and, and another, uh--
Facility.
JB: Another facility we’re able to get donated-- they got--
--We got two bunk beds.
JB: --We got two bunk beds around the same time.
But it, with the ceilings were so low, they couldn’t sleep on the top. Because it’s a trailer, it’s not--
JB: --the bottom half of the bunk bed is what we saved and the one kid sleeps on it.
We cut, yeah, it, so he has the bottom part for his bed.
JB: But we saved the pieces for the [unclear] to use as two separate beds…
It’s cool, we got it, so. Yeah, you know, everything worked out.
You said, um, you weren’t in, you know, the paycheck goes to a certain point, you know, there’s a certain amount left. So it covers rent--
Yup.
--Car insurance. What else?
Um, uh, the insulin supplies. Um, we need paper towels-- that’s why you see paper towels everywhere, because you have a child that’s checking sugar and uh, needles, um, you know, and I want sanitary-- we don’t just use towels to dry. So, you know, cases of paper towels, we go to Costco, they’re like sixteen dollars every couple weeks--
JB: Well it’s also, you know, important with a diabetic that he doesn’t get sick.
--He can’t get sick.
00:50:21
JB: Like, like other kids. Like, like he--
--He’ll be in a hospital.
JB: --Like, when he gets sick his sugar will go like--
--Like six hundred, seven hundred, down to forty. It--
JB: It goes all over the place.
Yeah, and then he, and then the medicine he takes, like, he had-- he had poison Ivy all over, he had to take steroids and so I was on the doctor-- on the phone, in the hospital five, every five minutes. ‘Cause his sugar shoots up and I don’t want him to have, go into a coma. So, she’s like, “We can do this on the phone,” ‘cause he don’t wanna be in the hospital. He’s like, “Grandma, please don’t put in a hospital.” So, you know, a lot of stuff’s done on the phone, but through the last couple years he’s had it, we’re good.
JB: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
We’re pretty, we can get the sugar down, we know what to do. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re a good team with it.
JB: He actually, he’s actually very, honestly, he’s actually very like into, like, he won’t even let us touch each other. He’s not the kind, he’s actually very clean anyway. So, he doesn’t get sick hardly at all.
00:51:29
--He’s pretty, he’s, he’s pretty funny, though. Like, when he first became a diabetic, it affected me because, um, all the sleepovers and friends he had just cut him off. ‘Cause when parents see needles, they’re like see ya! And you never see the parent again, you never see the kid again. He says, “Grandma, I don’t have any friends. I don’t have sleepovers anymore.” And--
JB: He has friends but they’re all from a distance, so.
So--
JB: And like, going to their house and all the stuff like that.
Yeah, he don’t--
JB: So it’s like, the fun stuff that he from kids, he doesn’t--
--He doesn’t have that now. Yeah. That all stopped. So--
JB: And it’s getting to the point where it’s creating issues, like, he has resentment and stuff now.
Yeah, yeah. So--
JB: Especially going into his teenage years--
Well now yeah, yeah. He’s, you know, he’s got hair on his body he’s going through puberty, and he walks around here and, and he’s like, you know, ‘cause he’s hairy. I said, “I’m hairy too and so is he. You know, and I’ll kick your butt, you know, like what’s the hair have to do with… you know, you’re dead meat.” You know, I, and I remind yas, cause you know, we have a Bible study in here every night with the boys. I remind them I’m-- we’re raising men, men of God, fathers, neighbors, friends, employees, maybe bosses, maybe a pastor. We’re not just raising you guys-- there you go, out the... it’s not gonna be like that, you know, it’s, it’s not like that. You know, we’re, we’re raising--
JB: --and they see the other kids that are causing trouble out in the neighborhood-- just ‘cause they’re over eighteen doesn’t make them a man. That’s, that’s like, a man-child. They’re still a boy.
Nobody watches. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody watches their kids here--
JB: [Unclear] --they’re men. They act like men.
00:53:00
They see the kids, cause our kids are never left alone. They don’t go out by themself. I said-- well, well, “They’re outside playing,” I said, “Well, we’re not going out right now, you’re gonna wait.” We don’t just let them, uh, you know, and you don’t go in no one’s apartment, you don’t take food from people. It’s not that we’re, oh, hol-holier than thou or high and mighty. I know what happened to me as a kid and it’s not gonna happen to you. So, they don’t know, they, they know I says, you know, “Bad things happened to Grandma, you know, when I was little.” and I wasn’t watched, never, you’re not gonna do that. I don’t care how much you cry. We all go out together or he goes out with them, you know, they’re never just left off. We don’t do that. We’ve never done that with them it’s-- no matter how tired. Him and I, we don’t go out to eat, we don’t have time alone, it’s very hard. You know, we have, and our marriage is still good. When we’re in church, we’ll sit together in church-- he works in the church, but when he’s not working in it, you know, doing cameras and stuff.
JB: And even when she’s at work, you know, she’ll call me whenever she can try to-- carve out whatever time we possibly can.
-- Yeah ‘cause we don’t really, we don’t really see each other that often. But--
You work forty hours or…?
Yeah, Monday through Friday. Seven-thirty to four-thirty.
You-- [to JB] What day do you work?
JB: I, I just work on Saturday. But it’s still that’s--
‘Cause it’s hard.
JB: Working the day that she’s off, you know and then we go to church--
All day. All day on Sunday.
JB: All day. Say, like, um, eight until likely almost one, I’m, I’m at church because I’m there before even all the other people get there. I pray, you know, we all pray with the pastor and everything before everybody arrives. I’m an usher, I videotape the service and stuff. And, you know, I, you know, just, I just do whatever they ask me to do.
But I’m not there with them in the first… I’ll go to a different church ‘cause I have a Bible study, I have a teacher that I go to cause I like, um, when they teach.
JB: ...so then there’s no point in them listening to the same thing twice.
00:55:17
So then when we’re done there, and then we go to our church and then we’re together the second service, you know, twelve-thirty, one o’clock, so, you know, we usually get home about two-thirty, three, and then I, I cook something or make handmade pizzas or something in the, in the kitchen. But, you know, that’s, that’s our day. And when he does, um, work, he has to charge the Uber because I’m not picking him up, I’m not lugging four almost grown men, uh, three grown men with a baby out the door at eleven o’clock to pick him up, that’s not happening. So, he’s gotta take an Uber, so we gotta keep that credit card down because every year, we, it’s really hard not to use credit cards. We even cut them up one year and then went and got them again because he’s gotta get a Uber. How’s he gonna get home, you know, he can’t walk on the highway at eleven o’clock at night..
JB: I, when I used to work at the gas station across the from trailer park, I didn’t have to pay for transportation. I worked there because I would walk home. I wouldn’t have to pay for transportation.
Across the street. So he worked a lot and he made a hundred and fifty or two hundred a week, but he can’t do that now.
JB: But, but now with the baby and stuff like that, I also just can’t…
You still work at the gas station?
JB: Yeah, I’m still workin’ there…
But he cut it down to one day.
JB: Yeah, I cut it down to one day, so, just…
‘Cause I’ll drop him off at three and then eleven at night, these kids are slee-- you know, I have the baby. And, you know, the other kids, they-- I can’t just, they were babies, I was able to pick em up. I can’t pick up, they’re a hundred and fifty pounds, a hundred and forty, I can’t-- You can’t wake em up either, they won’t get up. If I drag em by their feet out here they’ll just sleep right there. [Laughs] I tried and I’m like, “Please get up!” and-- he has to literally pick ‘em up!
JB: To get them on their feet--
‘Cause they’re busy, you know, we’re in church a lot. They’re in different activities and, you know, there’s just a lot goin’ on and I can’t-- and then the baby, you know, I wake her up at eleven, she’ll be up at three in the morning party time think it’s time to get up and it ain’t even worth-- you know, God’ll provide. He can’t drive, he’s gotta take the Uber, charging it for one day and then I pay it. You know, we don’t charge anything unless I really need milk or paper towels or something important, then we’ll charge.
There’s, there’s a then-- you have the card but it’s...
JB: We, we, we pretty much always keep it clear. If it’s an emergency or--
00:57:38
[Sighs] We try to. Now, I think there’s two-hundred and fifty on it and I always think about it, I’m like, oh my God, I said, “Please Father.”
JB: And it’s been on there for like a few--
--For a few months. We had to.
You paying, you’re paying on the car you said.
Yeah, my car. There’s eight more payments on it. I pay two-fifty a month.
So then at least, you know, there’s a new car so you won’t have to pay for, for maintenance costs, right?
No ‘cause I won’t, forget it. When I was first married to my first husband we had cars that were-- we would buy on the side of the road for two hundred, and, cause you know, my first husband worked, uh, during the day and, um, when he would go to work I’m like, you know, I need a car. ‘Cause we had, you know, Shawn and Lizzie, they were little. And, uh, we’d buy these little cars. And one day I’m going up Route One-Thirty, I’m driving him to work in South Brunswick and I’m going back home to Hightstown and it started to snow blizzard and I was in this, I was in this real old car. And I broke down in the snow blizzard with Shawn and Lizzie, they were in the car seat, with one was two and the other was like six years old. And I just sat there and cried. The car wouldn’t start, the air-- and the heat stopped working. And the kids were just in their pajamas ‘cause I just threw ‘em in with no shoes or socks. And it was getting really cold. So I’m crying and then a cop pulls over. And I’m crying and he goes, “Hurry up, get the kids in the cop car.” So I put them in the cop car. I said, “Officer,” I said, “You don’t know me, but this is the last time I’m buying a junk. I don’t care if we have to eat hot dogs, I am not buying a junk again.” I said, “I-- If you didn’t stop, we probably would’ve froze to death in this car.” It was a blizzard. My kids were freezing in the back. I said, “This is the last--” I cried the whole way. He drove me home. I cried in that cop car. Never again. I will pay a car payment, never will I break down with kids.
JB: And to get her to get like, a creampuff even, to like lower the payments and she still-- “I am not gettin…”
I won’t do it. My-- I woulda died and my kids, my kids were crying they were so cold in the car. Never, I said I would not put my family through that. I can’t do it. I know that we would have more money, you know, it’s like five-hundred a month I’m paying, you know, with the car payment and the car insurance is through the roof, you know, and uh…
How much would you say?
CB: I’m paying five-hundred a month.
JB: Two-fifty and then it’s a hundred and sixty-three.
Each month. Car insurance.
You’d still have the car insurance--
JB: We still have-- yeah, the car insurance, that’s because it’s full--
Full coverage. ‘Cause it’s still being financed.
Then, as you’re, as you’re trying to do the calculations, are you calculating, you know, what it might cost you if it goes in the shop?
JB: Yeah, yeah--
Well, we try to trade it in. I got eight payments left, turn that in, and then I get another one. But I, you know, a miracle has to happen and it happens.
JB: Or we just got, and, and if it doesn’t, then we wait til the day we’re supposed to turn it in and turn it in and then--
Then we start new again.
JB: They want you to pay all the payments you have left and pay for--
--add it onto a new car. Cause I got a little, a little Toyota. Now we got custody of the baby, now we’re like a clown car. I make two trips because I have full-grown men almost in the car. I drop him off and then I go pick up the other ones so I’m constantly driving. So sometimes I get home and I’m just crying. I’m, I’m so wiped out. You know, the kids want to do more sports. You know, they want to play more, more things and I said to the boys, please don’t do that to me. Because it’s so much driving now that I do, just going to church or basketball. They wanna play baseball, they wanna play soccer. I said, I said, “I can’t do it. I, I can’t do it.”
JB: ‘Cause every little thing, it’s like, we gotta get a prescription--
I gotta drive.
JB: I can’t drive.
Pay Uber fifteen dollars, you gotta I said, sometimes I say to him, like, “Alright. I only have the two kids, the other two are with the grandmother or something. I’ll pick you up at eleven o’clock tonight so that you don’t have to take the Uber and we’ll save the fifteen dollars on the credit card.” Eight o’clock and I’m out. I said, “Call me. Wake me up, get me up.”
JB: Are you gonna be able to get up? Should I bother calling? No.
I can’t get up, I says, I can’t even stand up, sometimes.
JB: Being I take care of the kids all week, I know the position she’s in, so I’m not worried about saving the money, I’m understanding of what she’s about to go through and I’m not gonna ask her to do it unless it’s, she wants to.
01:03:01
Yeah, he’s not gonna force me to pick him up and drag the kids.
JB: So if she can’t do it, okay. As long as I don’t have to walk [laughs].
I can’t do it. So every year, you know, we have a thousand dollars on each credit card from Ubers, from him going to the Emergency Room, cause he, you know, he has epilepsy, he gets fevers. I don’t want him to die. So we have all these kids, I don’t wanna call nine-one-one. You know what it costs for an ambulance. ‘Cause you get that bill and if you don’t pay that they take you to court, so I have to drive him. We gotta take all the kids to the hospital so they’re all wrecking the hospital. Like, you know, rubber gloves the doctors hand them boxes, there’s gloves all over the place. Balloons from the gloves. You know, he’s with a fever.
JB: ‘Cause if I have over a hundred and two fever, you know, I’m supposed to go to the hospital--
‘Cause he can have a really bad seizure, so--
And, you know, like you said - you don’t like to use babysitters.
No.
And you don’t necessarily want to, you know, even then there would be an expense to those babysitters.
Yup. No. No paying-- I’d just rather take ‘em.
JB: ‘Cause we know they’ve always been with us and we know--
I’ll sit in the car with them with the heat on and just send him in. You know, there’s been times I sat in the car. They’re all sleeping and--
JB: ‘Cause I-- I usually feel good enough, I know I’m sick or whatever, but I’m just going there to make sure nothing bad happens.
Yeah, they wanna make sure his temp goes down and, and that--
JB: --Soon as my temp, soon as they give me their, their medicine to get the temperature to go away.
It’s, you know, the Uber, the money, the gas. We have all the kids. And uh, with my mother constantly taking us to court. You know, me missing a lot of work. Luckily I have sick days. I have a new boss now, I had to talk to my boss and embarrass myself-- my mother’s psycho and she takes me to court every month and I have to take all these sick days. And I show him the paper and he says, “Do what you gotta do, don’t worry about it, you know, you’re not gonna lose your job.” But, it’s embarrassing!
01:05:05
JB: Because, not only does she have issues with her family, when I accepted Jesus and, uh, got saved, my family--
Wiped him out too. And his family has money-- his family there’s doctors, lawyers, there’s teachers--
JB: [Unclear].
They’re, they all have. Like one has a mansion, we were going to their house for Christmas.
JB: Yeah.
They won’t help at all. They’re-- they’re Atheists, they don’t believe in Christ.
JB: He’s a cancer doctor.
They think that--
JB: He’s a cancer research doctor at Sloan Kettering in New York.
Yeah, like they’re-- they’re all educated.
JB: His wife is a lawyer.
So they--
JB: That’s my cousin and her husband. They actually grew up right next door to me, in the house next door growing up. So like…
But, you know, there’s, there’s consequences when, you know, when you want a better life and a better life for the kids and yourself.
JB: Because being these kids aren’t--
You’re cut off!
JB: --aren’t necessarily my blood, they’re my kids to me. I accepted them--
--and adopted them!
JB: On paper they’re my kids. But to my family--
They’re not.
JB: They’re not blood. So they won’t sit there and make the effort to see the kids and to--
Or to see him.
JB: Do what they have to do. But they want to just see me by myself sometimes.
They wanna just pick him up and take him.
JB: They can’t just have me a la carte. I finally had to say, like, that’s it, it’s all or nothing. You get nothing or you get everything and just, that’s it. I’m not going to let my wife and my kids feel unwanted by my family while I’m off doing something
But you have to, you also have to realize, like, when, when him and I first got married money was coming. Their family. We got a thousand dollars, we got five hundred, his dad paid our bills. Money was-- you know, once we got all the kids and he’s like, you know, they wanted him alone without me or the kids. He’s like, “No, this is, this is not happening like this.” And eventually they didn’t give, they didn’t help anymore. They don’t, they don’t care about the kids, they don’t care about me, and they’re like, whatever. They can, they travel, everybody flies everywhere.
JB: --because they would be pursuing-- where are my, where are my grandkids? I wanna see my grandkids. Just like you were saying about your own nieces and nephews, cause it’s important to you to see them. If somebody said you couldn’t, you’d be like, I’m gonna see them, right?
‘Cause they, like, they travel. They go on these big trips and they go to Disney all the time. We were like, almost in a shelter, and nothing! Nobody called, nobody said nothing. Like, “You guys need help?” I mean, we’re talking a doctor and a lawyer. You know, living, paying five thousand a month in their-- to rent a townhouse. Coulda said, you know what, here’s a couple thousand. That would’ve helped us to even get into an apartment, you know. [Annotation #4]
JB: And then my other cousin, you know, he’s the Vice President for Shaw Carpeting, in like, the southern half the country. And makes like three-hundred grand a year--
So his, his house is like through the roof, you know?
JB: But that’s, that’s not God’s will. You know, so he wants us to go to him and for him to take care of us.
And he does. We’re taken care of.
JB: We trust Him and that He can provide for us.
01:08:39
And that’s the-- whereas, some people can turn to family as a safety net, you have church.
JB: Yeah.
And, and the pantry, right?
JB: Oh gosh, this pantry here--
Jeannie is like, like amazing.
JB: They’re--
They’re-- everything’s taken care of. They get everything taken care of.
JB: They, they know our story and they love the fact of what we’re doing, trying to raise our grandkids and they do anything they can for us. Anything, anything they can.
And they like, you know, we need this, this, and this for the kids and like--
JB: They’re like, what do you need? What else do you need?
We don’t really say anything, though. They gave us, like, a Keurig coffee machine. Or, like, a toaster. But I just want, like, what the kids need. I just need to be able to take care of the baby and I want milk in the house and, you know, stuff like that. You know, I want the kids taken care of. ‘Cause we’re okay, you know, we can eat grilled cheese. You know, the kids need vegetables. ‘Cause, each child has its, you know, their own disabilities. You know, the baby’s gonna need surgery in her eyes, uh, you know.
That, that creates, um, there’s a balance there, right? You know, you have money and you have-- whatever money comes in you have to look at the various ways--
Yes.
01:10:03
So sometimes, are there things that you said, okay, I can’t do that this month, it’ll have to wait?
Yup. Electric. I don’t-- we don’t have cable, ‘cause I don’t want the kids having that anyway. We have all Disney movies and we have, uh, the pantry gave us like video game systems people donate. But we have all Disney movies, all rated G. Nothing PG-13, um, I don’t let them, uh, ‘cause I don’t want them to, you know, to see any, any cable. Plus the cable bills, you know, we can’t have we-- if we had a cable bill it would be, like, what are they like a hundred and somethin’? It ain’t happening. It’s just not happening here, so, we have Peerflix. I think we pay, like, six dollars a month. It’s all Christian movies--
JB: It has all Christian and family movies so there’s nothing, like…
Yeah. And we, it’s only that much money a month, so. And my husband, he always, every year he’ll um, squabble and fight with uh, um long dist-- uh, internet.
JB: --internet provider.
Companies and get them so that we only pay like forty dollars a month for internet.
JB: I had a hundred, like a hundred with Verizon Fios and I pay fifty dollars a month.
He fights with them and says, “I’m leaving you guys,” and goes to another company and then they give hi -- so, we only pay, and all their whatever mechanisms they have that have internet, they watch-- my husband is very good with computers, so he sets up all their iPad or whatever they have for the, uh, internet so that they can only see child things at their age. So they can’t see someone naked or, you know, see something bad. Uh, no, no--
JB: Yeah, it sets to one specific website so on Safari that they’re allowed to go on and that’s it.
No public websites, uh, nothing like Facebook, uh, he talked to the police, the police told him, you know--
JB: Mm-hmm.
Uh, what to do and everything’s worked out on, on anything that they watch. Um, you know, cell phones, the internet’s off. Cause my-- that’s another thing. We had to get a cell phone, um, the cell phone bills were like two hundred, three hundred dollars a month because I need one for work. That’s number one. He needs one here ‘cause he’s epileptic, okay, and then--
Do you have a house phone?
No. And then Jason needs one when we go, say we walk around the store Shoprite, I like for him to have it. ‘Cause if he’s in the bathroom and his sugar low, I want him to dial nine-one-one. Or to be able to call me. Or, “I don’t feel good,” ‘cause sometimes it’ll drop and he gets incoherent and he won’t even talk, so he can wander into a road, so, um, so. The financial-- we took a financial class in our church and the man that runs it says, alright, first we gotta cut up credit cards, pay them off, you know, little by little, so we got that paid off. It took a while. I got a pension loan through work, paid off any debt we had since we got the kids, any credit cards, so it brought our credit up. That’s the only reason why we’re here. Because I did that. But it had to be taken out of my check, four hundred bucks a month. So that was…
JB: That’s kind of why we struggle...
Ooh my goodness.
JB: ...the trailer, and that we can afford this now. Because we were paying on the credit cards the whole time.
There was a lot...yeah..
...And exactly, you know, within a, a year or six months of not paying that anymore, this became available again…
01:13:53
And then we were able to take it, but, I was able to catch up. But, um...
But still it’s a trade, right?
[Together] Yeah.
Less money in your paycheck so that you can deal with the debt...
Yeah.
And kinda start fresh.
Yeah.
...and…
But still there’s this, and, and, like I said, we try not to worry, but there’s always this little, you know, something. Like, okay, what if, what if there’s no money for, for that. Like, what do I do? And, you know, Jason needs, you know, his supplies are a hundred dollars and how do I do that for the next two weeks ‘cause there’s fifty i-- right now, if you looked at my account I think there’s twenty dollars in there and I get paid tomorrow. So that’s, that’s, that’s it. There’s twenty dollars in my bank. I can even show ya on my phone. Think it’s, I bought strawberries and yogurt so that me and the-- that’s what we like to eat. [Annotation #5]
JB: And what’s in savings there’s backup for rent--
That’s for rent, I don’t like to touch that.
JB: There and that’s like, untouchable. I mean if we’re running out of, like, food, and we need to buy food then, you know, we gotta do what we gotta do. But we do whatever we can to not touch it.
You know, the kids, they can’t go to school with sugary snacks. We have to have crackers, or when we go to the pantry I follow them in. I’m like, you know, cause they usually make the card up and give it to me, but, knowing how I am if you followed me around with a camera you’d pretty much laugh. Because I go in there, I’m like, “I need the sippies, can I have those?” Because, um, the diabetic needs them at school, so he’s, you know, to keep the sugar up. And crackers. Uh, the cheese. “Do you have any frozen meat?” Yes. Or no. But we have a gift certificate. --I’ll take the gift certificate for a free turkey, it doesn’t even, it doesn’t even matter. And they’ll say, this and that and give me jars of peanut butter, they’ll give me the big jars of peanut butter. But one’s allergic so he needs sunbutter which is five dollars a jar for a little jar. So I have that aside for him. Um, we need whole wheat bread because um, the nine-year-old don’t poop, you know, because he still has that issue of control from, you know, when he was a baby. He’s getting better, you know, at least he goes every day. But he needs fiber so we need fruit for the kids, you need fresh fruit. And that’s a fortune. Um, you don’t get that free. So uh, you know, me-- I, I, I’m fifty-four, I still get my period, so I gotta, my doctor’s on top of me, I had to give blood, because, you know, I get the kids all the stuff, now I gotta buy spinach to make sure that my iron stays up so I don’t pass out and I’m in the hospital for a week, you know, getting blood. So, I have, everything’s very expensive. You know, I go to the vegetable stands, you know, I try to fill stuff there. I can get two bags for like, twenty dollars which is not that bad. You go to Shoprite it’s like, three-hundred and fifty dollars, so, you know, there’s different things that we all need.
What about hygiene bars like toothpaste--
The pantry.
So they, so they…
They give me cases of women products I need. When it’s there I’m, they don’t even give it to me, I’m like, “Can I have that?” And, “Can I take that? Can I take these too?” We have a dishwasher. This is, this is how, like, we came into this. Because we’ve had nothing, we have a dishwasher in there. And Jeannie’s like, there’s a case of dishwashing tablets-- take em. And I’m like, nah, so she threw them in the box anyway, right? So my husband’s putting stuff in the dishwasher, and I’m taking it out and washing it. He’s like, “What are you doing?” I said, “We don’t, we don’t deserve this, so we’re not, we’re just gonna wash ‘em by hands.”
JB: I said, “Maybe you don’t, but I do.”
[Laughs].
So he was using it, and I’m like, “What are you doing?” That’s how like set I was on, that, this poor living, you know? He’s like, so I went to Jeannie and she’s like, “We still have that case of the dishwashing tablets.” And they’re like nine dollars for a little bottle.
JB: It’s, and it’s the ones with the Cascade--
The Cascade Platinum. So she goes, “Here’s a Shoprite bag. Fill it up.” And I’m like, “Jeannie,” I said, “I don’t even use it.” She goes, “Chris, I use mine twice a day at home.” I said, “I can’t do it. I don’t, there’s something that’s stopping me from doing it. I don’t, I’ve lived in laundromats, doing dishes constantly, like, or buying paper plates and paper whatever. And she goes, “Use it. You have it.” And I actually came home and I said, “I think I have a problem, I can’t use it because I’m so used to being fricken poor, I don’t feel I deserve it.” So, just this week I start using it, we’ve been here two months. Now I’m filling that baby, I’m like, you know I paint my nails, they don’t chip now from washing dishes. I just can put everything in there, take it out, and put a new load in. When the kids eat dinner I’m not using, I’m using our--
JB: [unclear]
We’re, we got tons of those.
JB: It’s like a huge bag, you know.
She goes, “Use ‘em, they’re here.” You know. Like, take ‘em, like. So, you know, I’ll take baby wipes for the baby. You know I’m, she-- usually a sign’ll say “Just take one,” but I grab like three off the shelf. I said, “Is this okay?” And she’s like, “Yeah, it’s okay.” Cause baby stuff, maybe nobody has babies that needs it and...
JB: Yup.
01:19:26
The stuff is usually the same stuff there so I grab it. There’s a lot of stuff that’s expired. I’ll look cause noodles are-- really don’t care, you know, uh, bottles of water, soda, you know, stuff like that I don’t care. But I look through everything. If, stuff like that she says, “Look,” you know, I’ll look. You know, the baby needs food. You know, she needs stuff she can chew that she won’t choke to death on. So if they have cases of the little oranges I’ll say, “Can I have them?” and she’ll say, “I’ll take a few out of the package for ya,” and I says, “Throw them in the bag.” I, I’ll ask cause I don’t care.
JB: We even got a whole case of the hot hands, like, uh, like a hot head that gets warm--
He uses at the gas station.
JB: We put them in our socks. You put two pairs of socks on, you put them over your toes so your feet don’t get cold…
--When he works twelve hours in the ice.
JB: If you’re gonna be outside a long time, that’s how people who work outside, that’s how we stay warm--
You know, I ask for…
JB: --Even with boots, I still need that when it’s like ten degrees outside.
Yeah. I ask for like oatmeal and they give me like industrial sized pancake mix. ‘Cause like, you know, I don’t just make a s-serving of pancakes. We’re making, you know, four pancakes per kid. So, you know, the money thing is, uh, you know luckily we have them. And like I said anonymous people, sometimes bills are just paid, we don’t know how. They just, people pay em. Um, you know, people hand us gift cards. I went to-- you know, the other church where I go to Bible study, they walked up to me and handed me a Walmart card, so I was like, “Oh!” But the teacher will give it to me ‘cause they do it anonymous, they just hand it. And I get to Walmart, I’m thinking, “Alright, I can get a case of diapers. And some wipes.” ‘Cause when I got to the register, it was two hundred dollars on the card. That, to us, is like four thousand. I’m like, “Woo-hoo! I can get potato chips! I can get supplies for the school!”
JB: [Unclear].
Because the school, when they need supplies I gotta get a case of, you know, Cheez Its for the diabetic. I get cases of stuff. I’m like, woo! You know, I can get cases and…
JB: He has to have them in his backpack for school, too, for when his sugar gets low.
Like here he’s gotta keep them in his backpack and in the school, so. And juices, they gotta go to each teacher, each bag. So, you know, we’re talking Ziplocs, you know, we’re talking all the supplies that I need for…
What do you do like in August when it’s time for school supplies?
Um, oh boy, it was rough. One, one year we, we spent like a hundred dollars. And I said to him, “That’s it, I’m just sending the kids with nothing.” So we sent them to school with nothing and the teachers actually, uh, emailed me and said, “Don’t worry about it cause actually, so many parents, uh, bought so many things that there’s a lotta extra, don’t worry about it.” And Jeannie called us and says, “We have backpacks full of supplies.” And not just like, crayons and a pad. Notebooks, everything. They fill backpacks and gave it to all the kids.
JB: [Unclear].
So, even now they still have crayons left. They have stuff that they do projects on. ‘Cause I’ll ask Jeannie, before I buy something, I’m like, “You know what, I need crayons and a paint set. I need, you know some, some notebooks,” I said, “Do you have anything there laying around?” And she’s like, sometimes she’ll say, “Yes, I do,” but then, I’m working, so how am I gonna get there? He can’t go there. He walks there now.
JB: Even like the birth-- the birthday presents.
It’s like a half hour he’ll walk.
01:23:01
JB: Yeah, the nine year old, he just had his birthday. We have an extra birthday present in there for him and--
--I can’t have a party.
JB: --The big nerf gun or whatever. We didn’t even--
--She’s like, “You want a Nerf gun?” I’m like, “I don’t really like the kids having guns.” She goes, “There’s, there’s four guns here. They’re real big. Your husband can play with the boys.” And I’m like, “Alright, I’ll just take em this time.” They’re little. It’s a Nerf thing but it’s not like something that’s gonna penetrate your brain or anything.
JB: Yeah.
But I tell the kids how dangerous, you know, you find a gun, you shoot. You gotta be careful what’s, what’s, you know. So I’m like, ah, just take it they can play in the p-- I said, “In the park we do that. Not in the house.” ‘Cause the baby will have suction things all over her. She’ll be like the moving target for the boys [everyone laughs], you know, cause she’s got-- she’s, she’s black, so she’s got this big round face with an afro out to here. They’ll be shooting her, right?
JB: Oh yeah, as, as she gets over she’ll be, she’ll be--
Then she’ll be eatin’ a foam…
JB: She’s tough. She’s a tough girl.
Yeah. She’s, she’s, she’s like another woman in the house.
JB: She’ll fall down and like, hit her head or something, she won’t even cry--
--She don’t even cry, no, she’s, she’s, been through a lot already.
JB: She had to fight to live when she was born, so, I mean. That’s the way the oldest one is too cause he was--
The twelve year old.
JB: Cause he was born-- [unclear].
We, we initially talked about-- let’s go back to how you came to raise four grandchildren as your own.
Yeah. My, um, my, like I said, my um, my hus-- my first husband and I divorced ‘cause we were very, very young. And when we got divorced, we had joint custody, but he was doing drugs with the kids and drinking with them in his home. And in my home that, you know, I got an apartment near by and they weren’t allowed to, you know, of course I never did drugs or drank or anything like that, so, they weren’t gonna do it in my home.
How old were the kids at this point?
Uh, twelve. They’re four years apart, so I think it was, it was around early teenage years. Ten, twelve, something like that in that area.
01:25:10
How long were you married the first time?
Well, sixteen. Maybe ten years? But we were together a long time. Right? Let me see. I don’t know, I’d have to look at my marriage license and all them numbers. I’m not good with that’s-- he’s the banker mind, if I told him he’d remember.
Well, how old were you when you got married?
Uh, seventeen, eighteen, maybe? But I was with him very, we were together very long. He used to pump gas and he would give me free gas all the time but I would, I was always interested in just taking care of my family and someone was with me in my car and they said, um, you know, to him, you know, “Why don’t you come over our house?” And I go, “I don’t want him to come to my house! I just want the free gas he gives me all the time.” ‘Cause he would pay for the gas, I don’t want him to come over ‘cause I’m not interested in relationships. I’m a kid, and I have to work, and I got, and I. You know, I just had to do what I had to do. I, so it was kinda shocking cause he came over with a tow truck for a date, and I’m like, “That’s a piece of junk,” and he’s like, “You wanna go in it?” And it was like, smelled like gas and it was like, jumping cables and all this crap all over and, and I said, “I don’t, I don’t really like this. I like just my own car and being in my, my room and stuff.” I like, I wasn’t interested. With my father being dysfunctional, who wanted to be with a man? Who, I never saw anything good about a man, you know? Either molested, hurt, or something happened, like, what’s good about… just stay by myself and, and not bother with people, you know? But um, as I went through my divorce, um, my husband, my first husband was telling the kids that I didn’t love them, that’s why I left them, and I ke-- I kept taking them to court and telling the judge that he’s telling the kids this stuff and they think I don’t love him, uh, them and it’s, it’s him I don’t wanna be married to, I’m trying to explain to the kids.
So the judge said, “Alright, I’m gonna just put yous in counseling.” So we go to counseling and my ex-husband turns it into a marriage counseling session and I was like, “I’m gonna walk out of here because I’m, I’m not tryna fix my marriage I’m trying to fix what he’s saying to these kids. They’re my kids, I gave birth to them and he’s screwing them up.” So, counselors talked to judges and the judges didn’t want take the kids away from him ‘cause he didn’t want runaways, so we kept joint custody. So I finally took the kids and started them, uh, living with me.
I was making a lot of money at work, I was working a lot of overtime so I was making tons of overtime and I also, um, have a license to cut hair. I worked in a salon a long time before I, um, you know, before I worked for the county, so I still have a license so I if-if I would work in a salon part time, I was making money in tips at least. And I still keep my license so I can do my own nails and not, cause I can’t pay for pedicures and manicures. But, anyway, so the kids, um, started staying with me and, and there’s rules at my house, you know, they, and they wouldn’t turn the TV off or anything. So I screwed, made holes in the wall so I can unplug things when it was time for bed at ten. I wouldn’t let them go out of the sliding glass door. ‘Cause if they went out I would lock the door and then they had to sleep outside on the ground and that’d be, you know, I wouldn’t let em back in. So they didn’t go out, so, who likes to, what teenager likes living like that? I like living like that, cause that’s how I, I was always a good kid so, um, I didn’t go after drugs and stuff so eventually, um, with them going back and forth and my husband partying with them and, uh, getting drunk with them, my son started doing heroin and I got him involved in all these different programs with the police. They’d come to the house, they took him place, they played football with him, they painted his room, and one time my son painted his room black when I was at work, so I called the police and uh, police came over, and they said, uh, “What did you do?” and he says, “My room is black,” and they had swastikas on there too. And I was, I didn’t, that’s what my ex-husband teached them, that that’s okay. So when I called the police and the police said to my son, “If you don’t paint this room over tonight and your mother calls me, ‘cause she has my number, and if you don’t repaint it, I’m coming tomorrow and I’m painting your room pink and I’m painting flowers-- I’m putting flowers in your room.”
[Laughs].
So that night Shawn painted his whole room uh, a light green, he painted over the black. So, when the cops came back they were ready to paint. They don’t care. You’re gonna have a powder puff room, it doesn’t matter to us, you wanna play games? So the cops like took over, ‘cause my husband, my first husband was such a jerk doing this crap, the police had, I had like ten husbands at that point. Taking care-- I’m telling you, police have always taken care of me in this town, you know?
Yeah.
And, uh, not now. Except for Ronnie, he’s a good guy. But now the cops come in and they’re just like, “Can’t you just move, she’s throwing cigarettes on ya?” I’m not moving. You’re gonna stop her from doing it. So, you know, cops are a little different now. They don’t get involved in-- there is cops that recently did come to my house when I called on her, or we had packages stolen out there and we got insulin and needles getting delivered out there too, so, now he’s gotta sit here and watch for a truck, but the cops come in and they play with the kids. They start playing with the kids, but I don’t, I, I’m just like...
JB: Mm, most of the cops are actually really good, there’s one cop that came in and gave us an attitude.
Yeah, I don’t really care though, I don’t. Doesn’t even bother me, but, they come in and they play with the kids and, and I’m like, “I have a problem here,” and he’s like, “These, these kids are cute,” and they’re playing with Barney and the cops are making them dance around the room and I’m like, oh my gosh, if I had my camera on, but. Some are, some are okay now, but it’s not like it used to be, you know, it’s not like it used to be. And I really miss those guys, I do, like... When I go in the police station and get police reports I see their pictures on the walls and I just laugh, I’m like, we had some good times, you know? They, they’re really good guys, you know? That was a blessing in my life to have them all take care of me. But, yeah, so the cops, I did w, you know, but then he was, he’s been in and out of jail.
I tried everything, I put, I worked with probation officers, I called cops on them, I had ankle bracelets put on em, I had… ahhh… I had so much with my son, like. I never enabled him, I never gave him money. Just, so much stuff that I’ve tried doing everything, s-- I put him, he was in a rehab in Florida. And, you know, my mother doesn’t like me, so I told her, “Just leave him be, I have him in Florida, I’ll fly there, I’ll get money, I’ll work extra, I’ll fly there every other weekend or one weekend a month to stay with him.” And, he’s in a rehab doing really good, and he’s like, “I miss my mom.” I said, “You can call me anytime.” So my mother sends a plane ticket and brings him home without my permission. Starts doing drugs again and he was in jail all that time. She does-- I don’t know. Anything I do she hates. And it was the best thing to do with him being there, ‘cause he was doing so good. He was taking medication, working. Soon as he came here, went right back to New Brunswick, was sleeping in the street. So, you know, um, so he was in and out of jail. I had him arrested. Then I went to the prosecutor, had him taken out, then I brought him in this, put him on probation. Then my daughter started doing heroin, she got pregnant, uh, my ex-husband let her hide, uh, her boyfriend in the attic of the house, he di-- ‘cause he didn’t care, he was drinking and drugging with them. So, uh, she was pregnant and had a baby. So I raised him. He was born addicted to morphine and heroin with broken bones, ‘cause the father was abusive to my daughter.
And now, that one is…
Jason. That’s the twelve year old.
Okay, so that’s the first one.
That’s the first one. And then, um.
Abusive, so, in what way?
He, uh, he was beating her, plus teaching her how to do heroin and she was sixteen.
And you say that b-because they couldn’t afford an abortion or?
They couldn’t afford, um, he wanted her to have, um cause she came to me, she said, “I want to have an abortion.” And I, I was just kind of shocked, but I don’t let my kids see my emotions too much cause I’m like a tough mom, you know? They know when I’m mad. They don’t say things to me, they don’t raise their voice, and if I don’t like what they do or say, I just tell them don’t call me. And then they cry and they call me. So, it’s my way or the highway. You know, God gave me stewardship over you. I’m in charge, I’m gonna try to teach you the right thing from stuff that I’ve learned. I’ve never did drugs, I can’t help them in that department, but I do tell them-- it’s in steps. I’m gonna steal this guy, steal this and then I’m gonna go buy a needle-- can’t you stop in a step? “Mom you don’t understand.” Okay, well, I don’t understand but, um, you’d rather be in jail your whole life? You haven’t seen me in how many years? You know, you look at me in a camera. You know, “Love you Mom, see you next Saturday.” “See you in two weeks.” You like living like that? Everybody’s dying, you know, people are dying. Your friends. Everyone’s OD’ing and dying. Right, you wanna be in there? Have a good one. What am I gonna do? You know? Have, what am I gonna do?
But anyway I got the bab-- my daughter’s baby. And, um, and then was, uh, started raising him. He was born-- like I said, he was born addicted to morphine and heroin. I sent her off to a rehab and the father of Jason is still in jail, even to this day, and it’s twelve years. Um, and then, uh, I sent her off to Florida to a rehab. I talked to the prosecutor, and the prosecutor said, “I don’t know who you think you are,” ‘cause I said to him, like, “Can we talk privately?” and he sa-- he was like, had an attitude cause he makes all this money and I’m just a peon. And I said, “That’s my daughter,” and he said, “I’m not letting you do anything like take her out of jail and fly her to Florida.” And I said, “You’re gonna do it, and you’re gonna let me. ‘Cause it’s my daughter and I know what’s right for her. I want her outta here, I have the baby, I want her outta here.” So when we went in front of the judge, the judge allowed it. I stuck my tongue out at him, I just shut my mouth cause I didn’t want to get arrested. I was pushing my luck as it is, you know? So I got her taken out. The judge let her come home with me. Got her washed up. Well the judge kept her a while, so that she kicked from the heroin. So she was in jail for a month, ‘cause they foam at the mouth and they, they get violent. ‘Cause they hallucinate and see things and sometimes they kill themselves. So, I said, “Keep her in jail,” and they says, “Do you wanna go visit her?” and I go, “No. Just keep her in there.” So, she was in jail for a month. And she told me she spent that whole time on her knees cause she said a black lady would be praying over her to get it-- to try to get the demons and all that. You know, the hallucinations to stop.
So after a month, I went back to court, got her out of jail, flew her to Florida, scratched up money to fly her to Florida. Flew her over there, kept her there. And then, um, she was clean for, uh, let me see, nine, ten, eleven-- for three years, she was clean. And then she met a rapper in New York, a black man. And he started teaching her to do heroin again, they did heroin. He was beating her, like, horrendous. And I got, an, an, um, Trenton DYFS got a hold of me and said, her children, um, we’re taking her children. And I, um, I says, “I’m gonna get em,” and they said, “No you’re not, they’re going in foster homes. In two separate foster homes in Trenton.” And I said, “No, they’re not.” And, so I went to court and then Trenton, uh, um, DYFS was threatening me, they were calling me anonymously threatening, uh, my home, my life, the kids. Because I, because I butted heads with them. So when I got the kids, uh, I talk-- you know, the Milltown police, I think I told them what happened and everything, so we were protected, everything was okay. So we started raising the kids. And uh, and then, um, you know my da-- the, the, the two children, their father died. He OD’d with the heroin. And, um, after he died, you know, my daughter wasn’t a real big threat anymore, with the heroin, she was staying clean because she says, “I miss my kids.” Because I realize, you know, she don’t have money for lawyers, neither do I. But if I go in front of a judge, a judge gives me what I want. Because I’m not a drug addict, I’m consistent, I have a job, I have a car, I take care of the kids. And she even tells the judges that. She’s like, “My mom can take care of them, I can’t.” So, uh, and all the times we were in and out of court, um, you know, the judge would, judge in my favor. But I told her, I said, you know, “Put everything else aside. You’re a mother. And if you wanna fight for your children you can fight. I’ll never tell you not to fight for them, but I’m gonna fight too. So I’m-- I’d rather you fight because that makes you a woman and that makes you strong. I don’t want you to be a doormat. You know, be strong and be a fighter.” So, you know, she fought when she can.
But, she did get pregnant again, she’s living in an, in an apartment in, uh, Menlo Park. She has her own apartment. And she got pregnant and she had a baby, a little, uh, a black little girl. Her name is Lily. And, uh, I didn’t know she had her until she was about four or five months old. She was in a foster home cause when she was leaving the hospital when she had Lily, this, the guard said, “Don’t you have other children?” and she said, “Yes,” and the guard said, “Where are the other children?” and she said, “My mom’s raising them,” and they said, “Come back in the hospital with the baby.” She said, “Mom I almost got the baby out of the hospital without them questioning me.” So once they questioned her, they took the baby from her, put her in a foster home, and um, that’s when my daughter told me that she had a baby, cause she hid. And other people knew my daughter had a baby, but, my daughter said, “If you tell my mother I had a baby I’m putting her up for adoption immediately.” Because I don’t think my daughter has a problem with me, I think it’s just the woman thing, you took my kids and you’re not gonna take this one. I think it’s separate from the mother thing. ‘Cause she knows I take care of them, she writes me letters and everything. She knows that I take care of them. And if they want to call her they do. I don’t always go there ‘cause I can’t drive anymore than what I do-- it’s crazy. So, um, so, you know, I’m, you know, I’m raising the kids and so, uh, now just December her intestines split open.
So I went to court and I went in front of a judge, ‘cause they said she wasn’t gonna live, and I went to the judge and I said, “Um, my daughter had a baby and uh, the baby’s, you know, year and a half now, she’s been raising her, but she might die.” So, the judge actually started to cry. ‘Cause it, it’s very emotional when I told the story. So, the judge says I’m just going to give you custody, so he gave me custody of her right away. And I’ve been raising her since December. She’s just turned two, um, and, and uh, so now I have all four grandkids. Um, I don’t get, uh, any food stamps or anything. Uh, we’re in low income housing. We lived in a four-hundred square foot trailer with all six of us. And uh, and just kept praying. My, my, I had faith that a, a miracle has to happen for us to get out of there, and it did. And we’re in low income housing and, uh, we have a three-bedroom. All the furniture and everything was given to us. People bless us with it or gave us gift cards. All the food we have is from municipal in South Brunswick. Um, you know, uh, the kids are-- we go uh, basically day by day. You know, with the money. We have a little bit of money in the bank for rent but, as of right now there’s maybe twenty dollars in my checking. So, just buying yogurt and strawberries on my way home I was nervous. I, I went in there, I’m like, “Oh crap.” I was a little nervous. Because I get, um, I get gift cards from the pantry every month. Fifty dollars every other, so it’s basically twenty-five dollars a month. Anything helps, that’ll help. And I usually get a case of diapers with that.
1:44:13
You mentioned, um, how many of the kids are on meds?
Uh, let’s see. Um, Miles, uh, Miles takes medication.
He’s the..?
He takes three different pills. He’s the nine year old. Because of the abuse that he suffered before I got custody of him. Um, he was two and a half when I got him and it was, he, he, he remembered weapons and the fighting and so, he has meltdowns that are usually, uh. I had to hospitalize him. UMDNJ. He was in, uh, a psychiatric program for a month. And he gets very violent even though he’s nine. He can throw furniture and, and it’s hard for my husband to hold him down. He runs into traffic.
He gets that Hulk thing right?
Yeah, yeah. There’s like some kind of strength that comes from somewhere and he doesn’t remember. So he has extra medicine he takes with that. We try to calm him down cause I don’t like medicating what I don’t. You know, luckily we got a good child psychiatrist and he just gives me, I don’t know, like he trusts me also. ‘Cause I don’t, me, myself, I don’t like even taking Tylenol. I’m just not a pill person. Or a drug person. In the last year I’ve had surgeries on my arms and I think I took it, I had, uh, I couldn’t even. I couldn’t even cry it hurt so bad. I think two days I took narcotics. After that I’m like, this stuff makes me drool. You know, I’m like, walking around like. I sa-- I said to my son, “How did you do drugs?” He goes, “That’s why people try to kill themself because they can’t take it!” I said, “It’s dis-- it’s the worst feeling. Like the, the second day of taking, you know, Percocet, you know, I felt like crap. I don’t know how you do it.” He goes, “That’s why we keep doing it, Ma, because then you don’t feel that the day after and the day after.” Oh my goodness, so, you know, I don’t like over-medicating for the kids. So I have the two year old, she’s not on anything now, but she’s gonna need surgery on her eyes. So we’re probably gonna have to travel to Philly hospital. I have the five year old who takes ADHD medicine because he, he’s like a ping pong ball bouncing off the walls. You can just get dizzy watching him, it’s... I says, “You know what, we gotta take him to the doctor. I, I waited a couple years, maybe he’ll grow out of it. ‘Cause I don’t like medicines.” Finally I took him, and I said to the psychiatrist, “Do something with him because I can’t take it any--” My husband and I were like, “We can’t take it anymore, that’s it.” So we put him on something, it helps. And he said, “Grandma, I can concentrate now.” Like in school, he can finish a project now. He doesn’t color and then run in there and then run in there. It’s like he sweats cause he can’t concentrate, so.
And how old is he?
He’s five.
He’s five, okay.
The nine year old is on two different psychiatric medications. They’re weaning him off of one, he says, “I don’t like getting fat, Grandma,” ‘cause the medicine makes him fatter. So the doctor’s putting him on something else that’ll keep the depression, um, more level. And, but he does have a pill for his meltdowns because, and we can’t even control him. So, I think we used a couple in a couple months. ‘Cause we, we really try not to do that. It knocks him out fifteen minutes and then he don’t remember, uh, he usually doesn’t remember when he has his meltdowns ‘cause he loses his mind or something. But it was dangerous cause he ran into highways and we used to live in a trailer park by the highway and he would just run. And I can’t chase him with a baby, uh, so that was a little tough. Um, but you know, we try to deal with it. It, it’s hard because you can’t control him.
But usually we’ll call the cops, and cops-- most cops have a psychology degree and they’ll sit and talk to him, they don’t have to take him. ‘Cause I told him, I said, “You know what, Miles? You know I can’t control you.” And he says, “I know that.” And I says, “When the cops come and they can’t control you, you know they’re gonna take you.” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Okay, so keep that in mind when you’re gonna start. When something does the lightswitch, walk away and stay away. Or think of a, think, read, play a video game.” You know, nothing’s violent-- we have no violent shooting things, legos, or Charlie Brown junk or whatever, you know, we don’t let them do that. So, even on their tablets they can’t watch violent-- they watch Christian. They like rap music so they watch Christian rap. Stuff like that, so, nothing’s feeding anything. And, um, uh, you know, so we try to, you know, he’s on medication. And there’s copays for all this.
Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna ask-- how much is covered of all those meds?
Well, um like I, like I said, my husband, most of the time we gotta pay ten, fifteen, sometimes they’re free-- I guess generic stuff? But some medicines you can’t get generic. You know, I guess the pharmacy just does it automatic. But, like, PJ, um, his medicine is controlled. So each month I gotta go there and pay for it and get it with a prescription. The doctor can’t just send it cause it’s, boost, I, I don’t know what it’s called. He takes that. Miles, MIles takes the three medications. Eventually he’ll be off the other one. Jason’s a Type One diabetic, so, he has bottles of Novolog, the insulin, the needles. We have a dresser for-- full of supplies that you have to get. Needl-- a lotta needles. Uh, lotta testing strips. Not only for home but he has to carry it in a backpack, and he’s gotta send it to school. So I gotta pay for all these different supplies and watch because, now we have a, you know the neighbor that does drugs so packages are being stolen. I have to call the police. UPS-- if it, if I don’t see a truck pull up and they just drop it, it’s gone. So the cops told me it’s probably on, uh, Craigslist, cause that’s what they do. I don’t know, uh, we don’t have the web like that, we don’t go on all that stuff. So I, I don’t even bother. So, you know, um, it cost money. Um, you know, to, to pay for all this-- the insulin and all the supplies.
My husband is epileptic and uh, trips in the car, you know he doesn’t drive, they pulled his license. So he just has a state ID, we have to pay an Uber. I work for the county, uh, so I, I drive all day for a living or I’m in an office. He needs a ride to the hospital or for one of the kids go to the doctor. All the appointments, you know, we go to church Wednesday nights. And all the appointments have to be made for after six. So I’m driving all day long at work and then I have to drive the kids and get all their physicals or whatever because my husband don’t drive, after six because we gotta schedule everything. We have to go to Philly because now the child, the diabetic goes to the Philly hospital. So we drove, I had to take off of work, you know I only get a certain amount of sick time throughout the year. So I’m taking one hour here, two hours here. Okay, the kids have to go to the doctor at four, I’ll take from three o’clock, I’ll take personal time. We only get four personal days but I can take an hour each, each time I can split it up. So I try to take one hour. So I’m always working out in my head-- the money and the hours I take at work. I’m not, I won’t lose my job, but I have to have... I go from December thirty-first ‘til December thirty-first with all my sick, personal, and vacation days. So I space everything out and um, because you can’t go to the end of the year with nothing left. Like, if it, if it, if it’s November, and I got no sick days left, and I got no vacation days left, that’s big trouble. Then you’re called in. It’s like, you gotta space it out. You can’t, you can’t have nothing left. [Annotation #6]
And that, that’s on the job side of this, not you saying, “I need to have a couple in reserve.” It’s them saying, “You’re taking too much.”
“You’re taking too much and you have no more.” You can’t, there’s times when I get a fever or get sick, you have to think about that. I was in the hospital. So anytime, with my thyroid I was like, I was so dehydrated I needed ba-bags of fluid. I couldn’t even stand, I couldn’t even walk. Could not even walk, right? I was hunched over. I went to work where, and I would, I was, I was like, I said to my doctor, “My heart rate’s like, through the roof.” He goes, “You gotta go to the emergency room.” I said, “I can’t go ‘til Friday at four-thirty.” So I would just sit like this until Friday four-thirty, drive myself to the hospital cause my husband can’t drive, and actually there has been times when he drove me when I was out. He had to drive me. It was illegal and he had to drive me. Otherwise I probably would’ve died.
And this is because the, the cost of an ambulance you said, right.
Yeah, because it’s like, five hundred, maybe more now, who knows how much it is? So, uh, I would get to the hospital and I-- every time I went to the emergency room they would keep me. So I’m like, if I go on a Friday at four-thirty and go to the emergency room they’ll keep me, and they’ll keep me, uh, until Sunday night and then I’ll beg em to let me go. Cause usually [114:30] they got me stable and my thyroid and my heart stable, but I couldn’t see - everything was double. Because the thyroid was causing pressure in my brain, so everything - I was seeing two of everything. So I didn’t know and I had to feel which one was. So I was seeing double of everything. I, I couldn’t even walk. I would walk to get, I couldn’t even get to the chair it was so bad. It was, it was so bad my husband… I would lay on the floor, I couldn’t get up. But I would wait ‘til four-thirty on Friday to get, so I would use my, I wouldn’t use sick days and I would be in a hospital all weekend. And my daughter would take the kids to her house so that my husband, in case I died, he wanted to be uh, cause I had heart things all over me, the thyroid levels were so much in my, in my, uh, they were stored in all my muscles so I couldn’t even lift my arms. I couldn’t-- you could, you could barely move like this. So I was all hunched over, so my husband’s, like, “I wanna be with my wife.” So he had to get the kids to my daughter and then take an Uber to the hospital so that he can sleep next to me in the chair for days in case something happened to me. Or just to be able to lift my hand or give me a drink, cause I couldn’t even, couldn’t… So it was, it was rough. Let me tell ya. I don’t-- my doctor said, “You almost died,” he said, “I don’t even know how you lived.” I don’t even know how I made it. But it took ‘em a year to stabilize it and the, the double vision went away. Oh, God.
And you said, what, what did you do for the county?
I’m a driver. I drive, like, a emergency vehicle.
Okay.
It’s kinda like an ambulance or the transport. Whatever the county wants. The veterans, uh, sometimes handicapped people going to work. Uh, we pick a bunch of ‘em up and take ‘em to New Brunswick. Um, I used to transport prisoners but we don’t do that no more. The sheriffs do that now.
So if you have double vision, that, that’s...
You have no idea what I went through. I was try-- I, I, I was calling, now the doctor in Saint Peter’s that was helping me through all this, she told my husband I was like the second, she’s a teacher, she educates other doctors, I was in her office almost every day, calling her, threatening her, fighting her. I’m like, “You better make me better, because I’m gonna die today.” Everyday I’m like, today’s the day. I’m just, it’s, I’m gonna die. I was, there was nothing in my body, I couldn’t even hold myself up. My blood pressure was-- what was it, like, it went from fifty to fifty over forty. It was like, there was like nothing, no life in me. And I was like, I’m gonna die today. She gave me her own personal cell phone number. She’s like, “Don’t even call the hospital, or, don’t call anyone, just call me personally from now on.” And she, she helped me through it with a lot, I was taking a lot of Prednisone. A lot. So much, I mean, I, I was on like bottles of that stuff. Just to keep me that I was able to sit up. And keep swelling down in my brain. So she goes, “You gotta, you’re gonna have to go to the Philly hospital and they have to cut your skull because they gotta relieve pressure in your brain. They’re gon--” she said, “They’re gonna cut here.” ‘Cause my eyes were starting to bulge. You ever see people with bulging eyes? So, she goes, “they have to cut your skull and, and bleed that so that..” I mean, that’s how bad it was. I don’t, I think back, I don’t know how I survived that.
JB: I remember hearing that one-- I don’t remember that part.
Remember when there was the pressure?
JB: I remember dealing with that but I don’t--
I said to her, “I am not going to a Philly hospital to have my brain cut.”
JB: I’m sure! I just don’t think that got forwarded to me [laughs].
Remember when she said, “You gotta go to the Philly hospital.” I was working up in East Orange. She’s like, “You better go now,” and I said, “I ca-- I’m not going to have my skull cut. I have little kids, my husband don’t drive, I’m gonna be by myself and you’re gonna cut my skull?”
JB: [Unclear].
That’s what they do they have to relieve the pressure.
JB: You don’t need to really, like, say it like in a cleaned up way, like. It’s difficult like, one week a month being married to a woman. Can you imagine being married for like a year during this kind of a thing? When you’re married to a woman who has bad thyroid problems it’s quite an adventure. It’s, it’s not easy.
Yeah, it’s been rough. And then, then when they put me under all these machines and tried to destroy it, you know we’re talking time off of work. I’d call my boss, “I can’t stand up today, so I guess I’m not coming in.” She’s like, “What!?” And, you know, not to get personal, but, you know, I’m fifty-four, I still get my period. When you have thyroid problems, you bleed really bad. It’s called hashimotos, where you get-- you have to go get blood. It’s that bad. Your, your blood level drops and then you’re, you don’t even know. You don’t know your name, your head starts spinning. You go to the emergency room and they’re like, “Well, let’s see, your blood, uh, you don’t have any.” Basically. It’s that bad. So, everything is tied in with the thyroid. Um, time off of work, the money. My husband, and, you know, my family hates me. So when my husband would say, “I just wanna get to my wife,” you know, “she’s, she’s in the trauma center at Princeton Hospital and uh, they’re x-raying her heart, they don’t know what’s wrong with her.” And they’re like, you know, “We’re sick and tired of driving you around.” Meanwhile, I could be dying, that’s how, you know, my mother. Like I said, she doesn’t care. She doesn't care. I said to my husband, “That’s it.” I said, “It’s all done, we have to do things on our own.”
You know, we ca-- no one helps us with money, no one helps us with the kids. Yet everyone’s trying to take me to court and take the kids away, you know. And then I figured everything’s calm with my mother now. I don’t talk, I don’t bother with my mother, nothing. And now I get another court notice-- the father that died of the two boys, their grandmothers, well, they’re all black. So now there’s an issue because I’m white raising the children and they’re black, they don’t like it. So, uh, it’s always a racial thing, which is ridic-- I don’t even teach these kids that. And um, so, they decide that, uh, they’re gonna take me to court. So, um, one is in and out of mental institutions and the other one’s a child psychologist. And I told my daughter and my daughter said, “That’s funny, a child psychologist that let her grandson beat the crap outta me in front of her and never said nothing but yet she’s gonna take you to court and try to take the kids.” So I said, “Let’s see what happens in court.” So, we get into court and these people trash me just like my mother. Names-- pages and pages of, so the judge, the judge does this, and he’s staring at me looking at all the pages that they wrote. Cause they have a lawyer and I don’t, cause I don’t have money for a lawyer. And the judge is looking at me, all these pages, and he says to me -- cause I’m thinking, they got a lawyer, I’m done. You know, I’m just, sometimes I’m just done, you know? [Sighs].
02:02:43
So the judge is looking at me, and he’s looking at all these papers, and he says “First of all,” he said, “Christine Barilka,” I go-- he says, “Is that how you say your name?” I go, “Yes.” And he says, “First of all, I want to say,” and he looked at the other grandparents-- he goes, “First I wanna say,” he said, “you wrote some pretty bad stuff about Christine in here.” He goes, “First of all, it’s unacceptable. I’m not gonna accept it in my court or in front of me.” He goes, “It’s unacceptable, and it’s slander, what you’ve said about her.” So he’s staring at them and I’m like, whoa, this is the first time-- ‘cause usually I go to court, my mother’s calling me names, I’m slandered, my husband can tell you, I have been slandered for years. And there’s nothing I can do about it unless a judge stops it. And usually the judge just sits there and listens ‘cause they have lawyers. So I was thinking here ya go, you know. So. The judge says, “First of all, Christine and Jesse adopted these children,” he goes, “and the court deemed them, um, responsible, and to use their own discretion who they want to see the children.” And, and she said-- and he goes, “I don’t like what you wrote on here about her,” he said, “And if Christine is deciding she don’t want you to see the children then you’re not gonna see them,” he said, “Have a good day.” And I was like, whoa! ‘Cause we’d been letting them see them. They just hate me. It’s like my mother, the same thing, everyone’s trying to-- no one can take the kids, they all try, but no one can.
So, and I’ve never had a lawyer once and they spend all this money on lawyers. No one’s able to take the kids. I left and I was letting them see them, it’s just, the problem is, they, they have mental problems and they overfeed the kids. Where the kids were in the hospital cause they were, they - she’s obese, the other grandmother. So, they’re over feeding them and they’re always at the doctor or the hospital cause they can’t even stand up right. So they doctor said, “No more overnights.” If the kids, if they wanna see em, let them go during the day. So I told the grandparents, “Doctor said you’re not allowed to have them overnight. They have to come home at night.” They didn’t like that, that’s why they took me to court. Now they don’t see ‘em, ‘cause I’m done [claps hands]. I’m done battling, I’m done telling them-- don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t give the kids that, they can’t have bags of Reese’s, they can’t do this, they can’t go out of state. You’re taking them without asking me. It’s done. [claps hands]. Now I have rest. Now I don’t have to worry anymore.
I don’t have no problems raising the-- the kids have emotional problems, especially Miles. He has enough emotional problems. And then they make matters worse. So I’m done. So I’m enjoying the rest, I really am. And I’m thanking God that he had favor with me in court this time, ‘cause it’s about time that I was not slandered. So, uh, yeah so they lot-- they all take a lot of medications. There’s copays. The insulin, um, and that has to be refilled ‘cause the bottle goes to school. The bottle’s got to be in his backpack, cause, you know, He has also the pens in case the, the pump stops working. So we have to keep supplies for the pen. It’s just a thing that, it’s like a regular pen and it stabs him. That’s good for thirty days. You gotta write a marker on it when you opened it, ‘cause insulin in the pen only lasts thirty days. So we gotta watch that. Um, you know, it’s-- it’s, there’s a lot on my plate. There’s a lot on my plate. And my, my doctor, my regular MD told me, he says, “You know, there’s a lot on your plate,” he goes, “And that’s why I have you here all the time ‘cause I like to watch you, make sure you eat,” because then I start starving myself. I start getting overwhelmed with a lot of stuff that’s going on and, uh, and then I stop eating. And then I get anemic and sick. Then I’m in Princeton Hospital, then, you know, so. He says, “You come here. You don’t even need an appointment or, or to pay, you just come here and you talk to me. I’m always here for you.” So, you know, I make sure that-- and he won’t renew any thyroid or medicines that I take for cholesterol or my thyroid until I see him. He makes sure that I get my bloodwork, that I’m kept up with. Even the nurses there, they talk to me.
‘Cause it’s easy to, to not do for yourself, right?
Yeah. That’s why I get sick. Because I let things go and let things go--
You’re focused on other people.
Yeah, because I have, you know, my husband, and, you know, epilepsy. And I have to watch him and even when I, even at work, sometimes I get sick. And I, I actually crawl out the door to go to work, and my husband’s like, “You should call out.” I says, “I got four sick days, and this kid has to go to Pr-- to the, uh, Philly hospital. So I’m gonna have to work.” So I, I crawl to my car. I actually crawl to my car. Get in my car, and then I, I get to work. And then I’ll get into, if, if I’m driving like one of the big buses or the ambulance, I’ll just lay in it. I’ll try to lay like a half hour and it may be without throwing up, and I’ll try to have a little coffee and just kinda.. So that I can sit up. I’ll take Tylenol, try to get a fever down if I have a fever. Um. It’s just hard, you know, all my clothes, sometimes you get a fever and you want your clothes off ‘cause it hurts your skin. So I’ll take my uniform shirt off and hope there’s no camera in the bus ‘cause sometimes they watch us. And I’ll just, I’ll go and I’ll just, I’ll put my seat back, you know, like five minutes. Just try to get my head-- there’s been times I don’t know how I worked. And then I’ll have another driver, like, please just watch this vehicle. Let me just sleep for a little bit in the back. And they, you know, they don’t tell on me. ‘Cause they know I have so much on my plate. You know, I have to save my days. I ca-- I have to work sick. So it’s, you know…
And you said, what, you make about… between the two of you take home is like around six hundred?
About six hundred a week.
And that’s just, you said you thought it was about twenty dollars above...
Can’t get food stamps cause, it’s twenty dollars too much.
And so, that, that--
That, that’d be great if we can get foodstamps. [Annotation #7]
The gov--gov-- the government subsidies are just out of your reach.
And they said that they even changed it again, that it’s even higher the rate. So, um, you know, it goes higher and higher. It’s harder and harder to get help. We get WIC for the baby. So, uh, we get five a half a gallons of lactate milk. Which is good. Five half a gallons, they’re-- two, three dollars for a half a gallon. You know, we get two loaves of bread, we get two bottles of juice. So that helps with her, to keep her nutrition. ‘Cause when we first got her, she hardly had any hair and she was anemic. ‘Cause my daughter don’t have money to take care of her, she was eating muffins. You can’t give a baby muffins. Babies need toast, they need eggs, they need milk and yogurt and fruit. Every day. You know? And, and so do the other kids. So luckily all their blood work, none of them are anemic now. It’s, it’s a lotta work though, because I gotta think in my head-- okay, strawberries are on sale, they’re coming out, so they’re three-seventy-seven at stop and shop, and I can get a couple of them I can cut them up. Freeze them. And make, put that with yogurt and a little handful of spinach and this, make them smoothies. So, uh, so that they’ll eat. Because, you know, the doctors check them. They go for physicals, they just got blood work. They better not be anemic. You know, you have children, you gotta take care of them. And it’s not that the doctors judge me, cause they know I try and they know that-- they give me a lot of credit for taking all these kids. But they still want them healthy, they’re growing. My diabetic, you know, they want him to eat carbs. Meanwhile his sugar is through the roof, we’re paying for more supplies, we’re paying for more insulin. But she says, “Don’t limit him, because he’s growing, he’s in puberty.” It’ll stop him from growing if we stop giving him carbohydrates. So the kid’s eating, you know, through the roof, all this food.
[To the baby] There’s Lily. She’s our Lily. Oh my God, the cops love her here, they play with her. They’re like, “She’s a beautiful baby.” But, uh, she calls me “Hama.” You hear her? She’s like, “What is she doing home? Hama.” So, you know, it’s more money. I, I try to look for different programs. Uh, WIC said they’re gonna have, uh, certificates for free produce. You go to farms and pick what you want. But she said, “You gotta call between this and this time to see if we have them cause once they come in they go quick.” So, you know, I’m hoping I’ll be near New Brunswick when I call and they have them, because then I, I get them apples, I get lettuce because they like salad. You know, avocado. I like avocado, it’s good for me, it’s not only good for them. So, uh, he’s taking them-- he’s taking her to go get the kids off the bus. So, you know, different food costs different money. I try to look for-- if I hear something’s free somewhere, I try to get there. I try to, I try to somehow get there. Or I’ll send my husband. I’m like, “You know what, it’s worth it for the fifteen dollars in the Uber. Take the baby’s carseat and take her there ‘cause they have all free stuff.” You know, so I, I try to work things out, what’s best for the kids. But then my doctor makes me take care of my-- I forget about myself and then I have to start taking care of myself, so... And then I take care of my husband, his nutrition. You know, he’s not allowed to have a lot of salt. It causes more seizures. So lotta stuff from the pantry we can’t, I have to put back because it’s salty. It’s a lot of, I guess, I don’t--
It’s processed food, right?
It’s all processed. That’s why I ask, “Do you have any fruits and vegetables?” ‘Cause in the summer, Terhune Orchard… not Terhune, uh, Soons, gives them boxes and boxes, there’s vegetables all over. Now me? I love it. I’m like, it’s heaven to me because I’m like, give me shoprite bags. I fill with tomatoes, cause I chop up tomatoes and I’ll put tuna fish in it or chopped up chicken for myself. They won’t eat it but that’s good for me. And then, I try to think what I like. And the zucchini I’ll chop up and put it in spaghetti sauce for them. Uh, you know, corn, apples, even if they’re rotted. I’ll cut it in half, throw one half out and the other half’s good. Doesn’t matter to me, I’ll take whatever. ‘Cause it keeps the kids healthy and it’s free, they give me everything I want. I’ll take tons of stuff. I come out of there with tons of stuff. Lotta people don’t take it when they come to the pantry, it sits there. You’ll see it the next week. And I’m like, “Just give it to me!” And they’re like, “We’re-- take whatever you want,” cause they know that I’ll use it. I’ll make, uh, stuff in a crockpot for myself and I’ll freeze it. And I have, uh, vegetables and meat to keep my iron up. So that I don’t get sick, so the doctors’ like, just drink a lot of water and eat a lot of spinach. The spinach is a lot of money too. They have it free, I take bags of it. I’ll just rinse it and freeze it or whatever. Dice it up with garlic and eat it-- whatever.
So, I, I make the best of whatever I can find or do. So I, I reach out and try to get however much free as I can. I do! I’m, and I even point other people like, that don’t have money or anything. I’m like, you can go there for twenty-five dollars a month you get boxes of meat and food. But see, it’s processed, so I don’t get that here. So I don’t want that here. So, uh, you know lot of whole grain chicken nuggets. If someone gives me gift cards I go to Shoprite, I get whole grain chicken nuggets. I get, like, sweet potato fries and stuff like that. Stuff I can bake that’s healthy for them to the best of my ability. If you saw my freezer it’s, uh, I get steakums. My husband likes fish, so I try to get fish. You know, I try to think of what everybody likes. And, and healthy. And the baby, it’s hard, ‘cause they want her blood level to stay up. And luckily everybody’s blood just came back normal, thank goodness. That’s a, that’s a battle, let me tell ya! But, now summer’s here, I make smoothies. Buy a lotta yogurt and put fruit and vegetables in a blender and, they love it, they think it’s like ice cream, so.
They, they get, uh, lunch and stuff through the schools, or?
Yes. Since ther-- since I have Medicaid, uh, all I have to do when I fill out paperwork for the school is put a case number and that’s all I have to fill out. I don’t have to fill out anything else for the kids-- no history, their information. You put a case number and all the kids have free breakfast and lunch, or anything they want to eat in school is free.
Then, summer comes, and you said that’s good cause there are certain things you can do. But then there’s new costs right?
Yeah, there’s new cost.
You have to feed…
Yup.
You’re gonna have to feed them lunch and breakfast.
Yup. Now, both of the boys, now Jason goes to-- in July they’re both going away. Miles goes to the Kiddie Keep Well. It’s like a handicap kinda special for children in Edison, and that, that’s like, uh, it’s like six thousand dollars. And I said, “Forget about that.” Cause I, when they-- when they offer things for the kids, I’m like, I call Neil, uh, DeSai, he’s in charge of community ed and all the trips and stuff. And like, when Jason had to go to the CHOP hospital I said, “I have the other two boys in school.” and it’s a lotta money for morning care and aftercare. And I told him, I said, “He’s going to CHOP hospital and I’m not, and the children cannot, I’m not driving them hours and hours in the car and then sitting in the hospital. It’s not happening.” Because, I’ll probably go crazy with all these kids in the car-- in a little car! Right? And they fistfight and everything, I’ll have to separate them. And the baby’s pulling hair, she’s pulling her glasses off, so it’s, it’s like, I, I, you know sometimes I wanna pull in a police station, you know, and just say, can you, just somebody help me.
You know, I pray, “Father, I just need a van.” I need a bigger van. So we’ve been trying to trade the car in but they want five grand down. I’m like, where am I gonna get that? I’m raising, I told you people, I’m raising four little kids with no money, you know. “Well, here’s a van.” I says, “I’m not buying a thirty five thousand dollar van when I can go to, uh, Pontiac and get one for twenty grand.” You know? And they’re like, “You get what you pay for.” It doesn’t matter. I don’t, I, I work five minutes away, we go to church five minutes away, they’re in basketball five minutes away. Why do I need thirty five dol-- it’d be nice to have a good van. You know, it has everything I need in there. But I can’t do it. So I gotta wait ‘til I’m done paying this, making double trips with the kids fistfighting in the back. But I call Neil and I said, “Neil I need, you know, Miles is gonna go to this camp.” He’s like, “Don’t worry about it, it’s taken care of.” So that’s five, six thousand taken care of. Jason goes to a diabetic camp up in Pennsylvania. Two, uh, weeks outta the month, and that’s five thousand for uh, ten days. Because doctors come there. Everyone there that works there is diabetic. Kids that come there-- everyone there has insulin that they put in a pump or a needle. So, he does, he-- I said, “This is something he has to do because he feels different from other kids. I want him to go where he’s the same as other kids. And it’s important for that even if it is just two weeks out of the mo-- out of the summer.” So every year, he’s been going for a couple years now since he’s been diabetic. So just this year, we reapplied, and we’re like, “Please, Father, just let this go through,” because, I can’t pay that he wouldn’t be able to go or I’d have him out there selling candy or something, I don’t know what. And, uh, so, they, they-- I always write a letter to the owner of, it’s called, uh, Camp Nejeda. I write letters to the owner and tell him every year what’s going on. But this year we have the baby now, I’m raising the other kids. I don’t get money. I have no means of paying thousands and thousands of dollars, plus buying all the stuff he needs. He needs clothes for ten days. He-- they don’t even have that many clothes. So, I’m, I have to somehow work out for them to get clothes. There’s a, in South Brunswick High school there’s a closet where everything is free it’s, uh, Wednesday afternoon. But I’m working, that’s more time off. My husband can’t go there, he don’t know what I’m... So, I can get clothes for them for their camps, set up ten days for each kid. Jason has a sleeping blanket, I don’t think Miles does. So I’m gonna have to tell Jeannie that I need another sleeping blanket. And hope that, you know, the-- they have gift cards or something I can get him one. But they, now-- they, the camp called back. Now Jason’s Camp Nejeda for the diabetics it’s five thousand. They emailed my husband said it’s, it’s there’s, I guess somebody paid for them, for him. So each kid is-- I want them to do things like other kids do. You gotta fight, though. You gotta fight. You gotta write letters, you gotta call this one, you gotta… And, and I don’t-- like I’m not embarrassed about anything. I’ll call and say, “You know, what I don’t have the money. Is there a way?” I’ll even work there! You know. My husband already said-- “I’ll clean toilets.” You know, whatever we have to do. I have a license to cut hair. Somebody need haircuts? You know, whatever, whatever the case may be. So, I do what I have to do and I ask wha, who I have to ask for anything. And I’m not embarrassed about it. I’ll email, I’ll go to different buildings, facilities. I’ll go into different facilities and talk to people. You know what? I need help. I got these kids, I want them to do this and that, um, is there any way-- like, I wanna take’ em to Disney. That’s like, way far out there. You know I pray, “Father, I wanna take them to Disney.” There’s gotta be a way, I even called Disney. I said, “I don’t have any kids dying, thank God. I have a diabetic that’s has to be watched constantly.” But I said, “They all have a disability of their own. Is there a way to get to Disney with these kids?” They’re like, “Nope.” So, you know, I’d love to take them and do stuff like that. They always ask me-- “Are we gonna go to Disney?” I says, “One day.”
You get a vacation during the summer?
Um, I get, like, ten days. But I, I took like, from here ‘til December I take like a Friday and a Monday so that we can go to the pool. We have a pool now, like I told ya. My mother took the pool away from us but we have a pool here. So I said, that’s good, I’ll take a Friday and a Monday. Then I have four days off. And then on those days, we’ll swim during the day and then any doctor appointments that any of them need we do at night. Or at four, or at three. I’ll be like, “Yup, I’m home today, can you see both of them?” One at three, one at three-thirty. And usually I have to beg, I’m like, “Please, squeeze them in. I’ll sit there, I’ll even wait.” Just so we can get things done on my vacation days so, as per vacation day, there’s really no such thing.
Okay. So you’re not going away or not...
No. No, we don’t have money to do that. This is where we’ll stay. This is it. This is our vacation. And you know, it’s funny ‘cause, like I said, my mother has money. She even has timeshare in, in Orlando, in Disney. She takes my other brother there. You know, she doesn’t bother with these kids. They know-- you know, she knows they don’t have it. I just don’t understand, you know, how you could be so hateful. If you have, you know, even my pastor will say, out loud, he’s like, “You know, there’s people in this church that are prospering that have a lot of money,” --this is what he says-- and he goes, “And there’s also people in the church that are really struggling,” he goes, “that could really use some help.” He said, “Everybody just keep that in mind. ‘Cause we are a family and there’s a lotta people prospering in this church right now.” Now there’s a lot of millionaires that go to that church and they pay for a lot.
My church has a lot of big events. Rock climbing walls, everything’s free all the food when they have these big events that come up. Helicopters land with Easter eggs and everything. Nobody has to pay anything cause, why do people donate money? For the kids to be doing good stuff like that. Pay for classes that, you know, like, for instance, I never went on a women’s retreat. I always send my husband on his with the guys, and the church’ll pay for it. Because I think he deserves it, he’s with them constantly. You know, I’m at work and at least I get a little bit of mental uh, you know, rest. And, I always wanted to go and I always pray, you know, “Father, I wanna go. I’ve been wanting to go on a retreat so bad and I’ve been waiting years.”
And, uh, last month there was a woman’s retreat to uh, Ocean City in New Jersey, it’s like two hours away. So the pastor’s wife comes up to me and said, “Are you going?” I’m like, “I can’t afford that, it’s like two hundred dollars a night.” And they’re staying three days, you know you buy your own meals. One meal is included. And it’s just a lot of group and praying and stuff, right? So I’m like, “I really wanna go but I, I can’t do that, that’s crazy, I could never do that.” So the next day when I went in the pas-- Priscilla called me over and said, “Uh, are you gonna go?” and I said, “I already told you I’m not gonna do it.” And she said, “You send your husband on ‘em.” I said, “Yeah, but the guys all pay for him. All the, all the men in the church. You can’t pay all that money like that.” And she said, “Well, someone just anonymously paid for you.” She said, “So you can’t back out.” I said, “I can’t go.” And she said, “Someone paid for you today. For three nights in a two hundred dollar a night motel.” Actually, it’s three hundred I think, it’s the Port-O-Call, three hundred a night. She goes, “Someone paid for you.” She goes, “Not only that, they paid for your, for the big meal that we all have together.” She says, “And you’re going.” I says, “I can’t.” I says, “My husband has no car, he has epilepsy. He has all them kids, what if something happens?” She goes, “The church is here and all the guys in the church live around and he can call somebody. If something happens.” So, she said, “There’s no excuse.” My husband’s like, “You’re going.” I said, “I can’t.” I said, “I’m really nervous. How am I gonna do that? Like, just go and have fun by myself? Like, it’s not possible. I mean, much less, I just started using my dishwasher, now have fun? I can’t have fun.” So, uh, he’s like, “You’re going.” My husband made me go.
But uh, I did go, I’m telling ya I had - I, I never had such a good time. I was just by myself like, the women can be together or you can just stay by yourself. And this is like, a big deal for me because it’s always about someone else. And this time, I walked on the boardwalk. I got up early, I went and got Starbucks and sat, you know, by the water and, and just spent time by myself. And if I wanted to be with the girls I went with them. Didn’t cost anything, like, everyone was eating breakfast and ordering food, like, throughout the day, but I kept in my purse I had wheat thins and I had a jar of peanut butter. And I would just sit and eat that, for, you know, like, breakfast. And they’re all spending fifteen, twenty dollars on their breakfast. And I sat by myself and they’re like, “Don’t you eat?” and I said, “Well, I have a lunch, you know, with everybody. Or a salad. Or a chicken sandwich, you know, I’ll buy something cheap.” But I said, “My breakfast, why spend. I don’t have that money to buy that.” So I do what I do like at work.
When I’m at work, I have peanut butter, you know, the pantry gives me all that peanut butter. And then I put, I have crackers with it. You know, that’s what I had this morning. And I, my coffee I make home. You know, I don’t buy coffee out.They gave me, the pantry gave me the keurig machine. You know, and I just uh, I fill coffee in the thing. And they give me coffee too. So, you know, I do pretty good. I try to save as much, cause we also, you know, have a diabetic. So when we’re on the road or traveling somewhere and his sugar’s low, and you know we don’t have any juice left or anything. Then I gotta stop and buy him food. So sometimes, you know, going out for the day with a diabetic child-- it’s costly. So we try to stay home a lot because that costs a lot of money. You know, he’s gotta eat. And he’s a big kid-- he wants a sub. You know, a little pack of cheese and crackers ain’t gonna cut it. You know, he’s gotta get his sugar up, otherwise he’s you know, in the hos-- in the emergency room. And then my husband’s sugar drops cause he’s epileptic and, you know, the seizures, so when he has to eat. If we didn’t pack peanut butter and jelly or crackers with us, we try to go to Wendy’s, cause it’s four for four. So both of them can eat for eight dollars. But that’s still in the money that, we, were trying to live on .You know? For gas. You know, emergencies. Emergency room, extra medicine, cough medicine. You know, they’re all asthmatic. Luckily they haven’t needed their nebulizer machine, it’s in the closet. But they need Claritin otherwise they can’t breathe, they’re coughing up blood and they get allergy stuff. So we’re talking stuff in between that I gotta buy. It’s a lot, it’s, you know, it’s always something.
That actually is a good way to end it, I think. It’s always something.
Yeah, it is always something. So any, you know, anything else that we may have not said again or you want me to say again, you know if you go over it--