‘Deborah’ is a large, elderly woman with speckled-pale skin. Her short, boyish brown curls sparsely cover her scalp, topping a round face—fleshy cheeks dropping into a curved chin. Her eyes, brown-centered orbs loosely surrounded by skin, show a great warmth as she smiles at me: short lips curving and scrunching her small nose.
‘Deborah’ was born and raised in Michigan in the ‘50s, the oldest of her siblings—all younger brothers. Her father died early on, leaving her mother to be a strict but loving caretaker. One time, she recalled, her mom scolded her harshly for wearing flannel pajamas in front of her brothers’ friends in the house, deeming her garb inappropriately seductive.
“My flannel pajamas covered more skin than my summer clothes!” she laughed.
Growing up, she went through the public school system. It was the 1960s, the height of the hippie counterculture and its emphasis on experimentation through arts, music, and drugs.
“It was sure in those days that you’d be smoking marijuana, and you’d be doing other drugs too. I did. A lot of acid, you know, things like that.”
She eventually graduated high school, and was soon married to her first husband, having two daughters together. When they divorced, she retained custody of her daughters. She quickly married a second husband, whose father owned many manufacturing companies. It was during this marriage that she started working for the first time.
“I did a lot of things. I was the office manager, so I hired people, and I was the sales manager. Went to all the conventions and everything.”
She had initially worked under the office manager of her father-in-law’s company that produced the Port-O-BrakeⓇ (http://www.tapcotools.com/products/brakes/windy-sp), a tool widely used in construction. When her boss retired, he recommended her to fill his position. When her father-in-law asked her whether she truly felt ready to be one of the first female managers in the industry, she readily assured him.
“I said yeah, why not, I’ve been doing it for the past two years.”
For years, she and her husband were prospering, she said. But emotionally, he was beginning to nag her dangerously.
“I didn’t feel anger in my life until I was 27. [He] had a way of drawing it out of me, and when I’d feel it getting out of me, I’d grab my car keys and go driving around for a couple hours, push it back down.”
One night, she said, it exploded.
“He trapped me in the corner of our laundry room. I had real long nails, and they were drawn and sharp. Oh, I scratched him and bruised him.”
She said that she realized the power she held at that moment.
“During the time I’m doing all that, I’m thinking, I could kill him right now. And I was 5′ 8″, and I am now, 135 pounds. He was 5′ 11″ and 185 pounds. But I knew that I could kill him with my bare hands. That anger was that strong.”
But her rationality took over.
“I said but, do I want to spend the rest of my life in prison just for one moment of ecstasy?”
Instead of seriously injuring him, she simply ordered a scratched-up husband to sleep on the couch that night. He complied.
Soon after this episode, the couple divorced. She quit her job at the company and took her daughters with her again, as she married a third and final time.
“I wanted a son really bad,” she said, and she was encouraged by the apparent abundance of boys in his husband’s childhood family.
“I said, oh wow, if I got pregnant with him I’d have a son. And plus he’s the best-looking husband I’ve ever had, since he was younger than me,” she joked.
However, they were somehow unable to conceive, she said. They eventually looked towards a new technological advance.
“They invented what they call a test-tube baby—which is all over the country now—where they go in and get an egg from a woman, put it together with sperm. They were only doing it in two places in the country at the time, and one was around North Virginia.”
She and her husband mailed them with their information, asking if they qualified. They responded quickly, in the affirmative.
“They sent me this thing so I could take my temperature before I got out of bed every morning so they’d know when I was ovulating. And so then they told me, come to Norfolk a few days before this day. Get yourself a room.”
They did just that. The surgery was successful: the organization was able to successfully obtain an egg from Deborah, and sperm from her husband.
When she came back for re-implantation, there was a problem.
“He said even for twins or triplets, one sperm fertilizes one egg. And I said, ‘Yeah I’m aware.’ And he said, ‘Well, your egg has been fertilized by at least five to six sperm.’ He said, ‘I don’t know what it’ll be and I really don’t want to put it back inside you.’”
She recalled her colorful youth: “I didn’t realize that those drugs could possibly damage some of my female eggs.”
With this endeavor a failure, her husband left his job at a Michigan branch of the Kreisler Manufacturing Corporation, feeling that the company was going out of business. With their daughters now in 6th grade and 8th grade, the family moved to Houston in search of a fresh beginning.
While her husband searched for a new job, she was hired as a secretary at a corporation, eventually rising out.
“I got the best job I’ve ever had in my entire life. I’d always wanted to be promoted out of secretary—well, finally the boss put me on inside sales. I got my own office.”
She said she was doing extremely well.
“I brought my paycheck home one day and said look at this: I think you’ll be pleased. I’d gotten a raise in springtime. And they never did that, this company. And I said wow, making $1350 now. In 1984 that was pretty good money for a female.”
Everything changed, almost instantaneously.
“Then I had two brain aneurysms. Took me out of the workplace; I was out for eighteen months. I was in the hospital for two and a half.”
She laughed, recalling the irony of the situation.
“I lost my sense of smell during the 2nd operation. But I’m sure God did this for me too, because he knew in the years to come that I was going to be homeless, and I really didn’t want to smell where I was at.”
However, at the moment it was hard.
“When you first lose your sense of smell totally, no food tastes good. Even your favorite food. I had no appetite at all.”
Her family ensured that she ate anyway, and she soon gained back most of the weight she had lost while in the hospital. However, to this day she feels the effects of this episode.
“I’m missing a week of memory. From the time I didn’t go to work, thinking I had the flu, ’til I’m laying in a hospital bed and a brain surgeon’s telling me I have two brain aneurysms.”
After her recovery, her family—daughters now teenagers—moved to Austin. After her daughters graduated high school and became independent, she and her husband divorced—and she became homeless for the first time. It was 1990.
Life soon darkened: one night, she was beaten up badly in a motel room by a homeless man. Her daughter picked her up the morning after and called her grandma in Michigan, asking her to take care of Deborah. Without hearing an answer, she took Deborah to the airport and sent her back home.
In Michigan, her mother refused to house her. Deborah lived on the streets there for many years.
In 2002, her mother had a heart attack in a department store at the age of 84. Deborah was the first of her siblings to arrive at the hospital. The doctors apprised her of her mother’s situation.
“I said, wait a second. Are you telling me that even if I ask you to do everything you can to save her life, and she manages to stay alive, she’ll never be normal again. ‘Yes, she wouldn’t be normal if she was 19 and this happened.’”
She told the doctors that her mother would not have wanted anything extraordinary done to save her life. They let her into the room to say her final goodbyes.
“I went and put my hand on her ankle and it was cold as ice. I said, ‘So long mom, say hi to Dad for me.’ And then they turned the machine off.”
She waited for her brothers’ arrivals to tell them what happened, and they were quiet.
Throughout her time living homeless in Michigan, both her daughters back in Austin married, tok jobs at airline companies, and began to build families, she said. They were able to fly Deborah back to Austin periodically to visit.
“Every one of my grandkids’ birthdays, and Christmas, I flew down here. And both my daughters would allow me a couple of nights in their house. Then I’d fly back home.”
She had just applied for disability benefits in Michigan, and been told that her chances of receiving it quickly were extremely high, when she flew down for her granddaughter’s 8th birthday. She made a decision.
“When my youngest daughter said, ‘I’ll take you back to the airport in the morning, Mom,’ I said, ‘No, I don’t need to go back to Michigan. I’ve applied for disability and I should have it soon, and this is where I want to retire, around my kids and grandkids.’ And I said, ‘Just drop me in front of the Salvation Army.’ So, she did.”
Ever since, she has been continuing her struggle to gain good, affordable housing. After another stretch of stays at motels, she found her first home in Austin.
“Got into a really nice two-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex. It had a fireplace, a dishwasher, everything. And I went out and bought couch to sleep. And everything seemed to be perfect. The rent was cheap, it was $650 a month.”
In addition, she adopted two dogs as soon as she moved in: both of whom brought her great joy. One, named Digger, she eventually gave up to the police.
“I really couldn’t afford to feed him as much as he wanted to eat. Sometimes, his dinner was ramen noodles. And apparently he got skinny.”
Two policewomen knocked at her door and promised to find a loving home for her dog, where he would be fed back to health.
“I said, one last shake, Digger. And we shook hands, and I said take him now. I didn’t even watch him go, he knew he was leaving.”
The other dog, Annie, is a small dog that continues to bring her joy to this day. At the duplex, Deborah would often sit on the front porch and watch her play in the yard. Annie believed herself now to be her owner’s watchdog, Deborah recalled with a smile. It was an attitude that meant the tiny dog would bark at any stranger that walked by.
During this time, she also invited a homeless couple she’d become friends with, to live with her.
“And they ripped me off.”
They stole her tools she’d kept in a drawer, she said. When she found out, after having to fix the deadbolts on the door with a butter knife, she was furious.
“That night, when they came in, it was the middle of the summer. And he had two frozen pizzas he’d gotten at HEB on his food stamps. And he said, ‘Here’s dinner tonight. Let me put them in the oven.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’”
She kicked them out.
Otherwise, everything seemed to be perfect for a few years. However, she soon found out the unpleasant way that the duplex housed bedbugs.
“I lived with those bedbugs for four and a half years. The first year, I hired an exterminator. Paid him $250. He came three different times, and each time he said he’d use a different chemical this time, use a different chemical this time.”
However, his efforts were ineffective, she said. So finally, about six weeks before we met, she said she had had enough.
“I left with nothing. I had an outfit of clothes on, stopped at Salvation Army and got a new outfit of clothes, and threw the ones away that I came out with. Didn’t want to take the chance to take one bedbug with me.”
The next place she found was a boarding house, where she currently resides. It’s a small house with two bedrooms, she said, but too cramped for her and Annie, and not accommodating for her now that she’s in a wheelchair. She is in the process of moving out: she gave the owners thirty days’ notice, and will move out on December 3rd.
Next, she plans on going to Salvation Army again, she said, to look at further options.
“I need to ask for some program, where they’ll get me a house. For like $500 a month. I’d love that.”
Throughout this time, one point of sadness for her has been her daughters’ lack of help.
“Both my daughters are… upper-middle class. They both have beautiful homes, and each have an extra bedroom in their houses. But do they ever offer Mom a bedroom? No. Did Mom ever ask for one? No. But, I wasn’t allowed to see my grandkids.”
She said that one one occasion, when she was going to store her winter clothes in her daughter’s garage, her daughter came to the door covering her granddaughter with her arms as if to protect her.
The next time she saw her granddaughter, it was her 16th birthday. Her daughter took them out to eat for lunch. Deborah was bursting to get to know her granddaughter more deeply.
“But I knew better than to ask any questions that could get me into trouble again. So I didn’t say much, just listened.”
However, she did ask about her granddaughter’s graduation.
“I said something about, well I know [she] graduates this year. Sure would be nice to be at her graduation. And she said, ‘Oh she’s not going to have a graduation, Mom. She’s not going to a high school. She’s doing it online, on a computer.’”
But Deborah later found her granddaughter on Facebook, she said.
“I look at her picture. And she’s in a classroom at Lake Travis High, and I said well, I thought she was on a computer instead of going to high school. My daughter just doesn’t want me at her graduation.”
Deborah believes all this is due to her daughters’ feeling ashamed of her. She accepts this, but still laments the fuller life she could have led.
“I could have furnished them for a while; I have $200 worth of food stamps. I could have baby-sat for them. For just a bedroom! And they both had bedrooms, you know. And they never once offered. And I don’t know whether they thought I wanted to take away something they had? I don’t know. They’re treating me like a child.”
One condolence she has from her time on the streets, however, is a renewed faith.
“But it’s interesting, but homelessness brought me back to God. Because as a child, I always went to Sunday School. Every morning. But I went to what they called a non-denominational Protestant church, but I think it was pretty close to Baptist. The only thing they taught me was a fear of God. Not love.”
Living on the streets forced her to understand a higher love.