THE BRINDLE FAMILY
Katie Brindle is a white nine-year-old who lives in a small three-bedroom apartment with her mother, CiCi, and her eighteen-month-old half brother Melvin (nicknamed “Melmel”). Katie’s half sister, Jenna, who is eighteen, lives with the family off and on bringing Rodeo, a six-week-old pit bull puppy with her. The Brindles’ apartment is located in a rundown building in an overwhelmingly white working-class neighborhood that is dominated by small houses. About five minutes away on foot from the residences are small stores, including an ice cream store, a twenty-four-hour convenience store, a hardware store, and a gas station. Katie attends Lower Richmond Elementary School, which is only a few blocks from her apartment building.2 The nearest grocery store, however, is about a twenty-minute bus ride away.
The Brindles’ apartment is not well maintained. The living room ceiling leaks; Ms. Brindle must periodically move the furniture to keep it out of the way of dripping water. The toilet runs constantly. The mustard-colored rag rug at the entrance to the unit has prominent dark stains on it. Roaches appear regularly; even during the day, they crawl up the walls. At night, when the bathroom light is turned on, roaches scatter, scurrying across the white tiles. These ever-present pests bother Ms. Brindle; she calls the apartment a “roach motel.” The physical disrepair of the Brindles’ unit is especially obvious because there are almost no decorations. All of the walls are bare; the kitchen counters are completely cleared off; the living room coffee table is empty. There seems to be no clutter of any kind in the apartment. Ms. Brindle insists that Katie not leave her belongings, such as her backpack or coat, lying around. Immediately upon arriving home, she is expected to put her things in their proper places. Every part of the apartment is always very tidy and clean. The smell of bleach often lingers in the air. The only noticeable decorative touch is in the kitchen. There, a frame of Ms. Brindle’s General Education Degree (GED) certificate sits on the counter. She is very proud of having earned her GED. At Christmastime, the apartment takes on a slightly festive look, with a real Christmas tree (that Ms. Brindle scrimped to buy), a string of lights hung in the kitchen, and a decorative foil picture of Santa that covers the door.
Ms. Brindle is a gaunt thirty-seven-year-old who looks worn down. Although she has a history of alcohol and drug use, recently she has been sober and clean. She was briefly married at sixteen; she is single now. Each of her three living children has a different father, none of whom Ms. Brindle married. Her first child, “Penny” (with Jenna’s father), was a victim of sudden infant death syndrome; although it has been nearly twenty years since Penny’s death, her name often comes up in conversation. Jenna was born when Ms. Brindle was nineteen. Jenna’s father has been inconsistently (and only peripherally) involved in his daughter’s life. Currently, he lives more than a thousand miles away, in Florida. Katie’s father is a man Ms. Brindle had only a brief relationship with. At first, he denied paternity; a blood test confirmed fatherhood. He pays the Department of Human Services child support to help offset the public assistance payment to the family. DHS passes along a small amount of this money to Ms. Brindle. Katie’s father refuses to see or visit with his daughter. At times, after Ms. Brindle makes repeated phone calls to his parents’ home, he sends gifts. Katie treasures the two videos he sent her as a Christmas present a few years earlier. The year of the study he did not send anything for the holidays or for Katie’s birthday. The father of the youngest child, Melmel, is the most visible and active of the three men. He routinely takes his son for visits, often a few times per month. Ms. Brindle is not currently employed. The family survives on public assistance, food stamps, and a medical assistance card. In order to have money to buy the children Christmas presents, particularly a winter coat for Katie, and a doll, Ms. Brindle says she “[let] some bills go” until after the holidays.
Katie is a short, bouncy fourth-grader. Her very straight, thin hair is blonde shading into light brown; it’s cut to just above her shoulders. She is solidly built, but, despite her worries, she is not fat; indeed, she is not even pudgy. Remarks about her body are common at home. Her mother, for example, comments ruefully to Jenna that Katie “has a butt that could kill.” While Katie and her relatives sit around watching television, there is much talk about hair color, hair length, hairstyles, nails, manicures, outfits, and weight. These are matters that preoccupy Katie (as well as many other young girls). She likes to think of herself as being about fifteen. A picture taken on Christmas Day shows her trying to look alluring and coquettish in a fresh white, long-sleeved blouse; a black, shiny full skirt; white nylons; and canvas flats. Her hair is pulled up in a French twist (an elaborate hairstyle more typically seen on adult women) and she is wearing lipstick.
In some ways, Katie acts as maturely as she tries to look. For instance, when she comes home from school, she fixes herself a snack, such as a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup. Her actions look competent and routine as she opens the can, pours the soup into an aluminum pot, and heats it on the stove. She neither asks for nor receives any adult assistance. Around her peers, however, especially her cousin, Amy, who is about the same age, Katie seems more like the nine-year-old child she really is. Much like other children we observed, outside of the home—away from her mother—she is more energetic, louder, and bossier than she is at home. Every weekend, she and Amy play together for hours on end at their grandmother’s house. Katie has a flair for the dramatic and seems to be a “natural” actress. She and Amy have great fun putting on skits of their own devising. Compared to Tyrec Taylor and other boys in the study, gender clearly influences aspects of her play. She is more restricted in movements. Katie plays with neighborhood children in the large parking lot of the Brindles’ apartment building. There she rides her bike, plays tag, and visits with other children, but she does not wander several blocks from home in a group of boys as Tyrec and other boys we observed do. Much of her play is more sedentary than the active movements of boys, with a stress on femininity. In the house, she enjoys her Barbies (she has fifteen). With a neighborhood girl, she will have long periods of practicing the development of herself as a beauty object (something that was never observed with the boys in the study). Katie and her friend will practice dressing up the Barbies and playing with each other’s hair. Katie also watches television and plays Nintendo. As a result of her own initiative, not her mother’s, Katie participates in two organized activities: she sings in a choir that meets after school for an hour, once a week. On some Friday evenings, she takes a van with neighborhood children to a Christian youth program where they sing Christian songs, learn Bible stories, and play games.
Katie has had more than her share of problems, though, and she sometimes volunteers stories of feeling lonely and abandoned. Her mother confided (during the in-depth interview) that Katie had been sexually molested when she was in first grade.3 Last year, when she was a third-grader, Katie missed quite a bit of school. She was hospitalized in a program in part due to her displays of self-destructive behavior.
Ms. Brindle’s family—her mother, Tammy; and adult brothers, John and Ryan; and Amy—live nearby.4 Ryan and Amy’s mother are divorced; Amy lives with her mother during the week and stays with her father and grandmother on weekends. Katie can take the bus by herself to her “Grandmom’s” house; it is a ten-minute ride up one street. She visits almost every weekend. Amy is usually there as well because weekends are when she sees her father (Ms. Brindle’s brother Ryan). Although Ms. Brindle unabashedly describes her relatives as “dysfunctional,” it is her extended family that provides the structure around which she and her children organize their lives. Grandmom baby-sits for Katie on weekends, and both she and Ryan sometimes provide Ms. Brindle and the children with transportation (the Brindles have no car). Katie’s best friend is her cousin, Amy, and Ms. Brindle’s best friend is her former sister-in-law Mary (once married to John, Ms. Brindle’s schizophrenic older brother). Ms. Brindle and Mary talk daily and see each other often during the week. Mary’s daughters, who are in their late teens, also come by the Brindles’ apartment regularly.