AROUND THE WAY WITH KAREEMA
Transcript (Running Time: 18 minutes)Father: Kareema has three older sisters--Deborah, who is 19; Celeste, who is 18; Felicia, who is 10. She has a younger brother, Hasib, who is 18 months, and two nephews--Jamal, who is 3 years old, and Amin who is 1 year old.
At Breakfast
Deborah: Sit down.
Kareema: Well, I got the same color you got, boy.
Deborah: Here, you want this one?
Father: A black family that lives in a city, they have to be responsible to each other. We have daughters; we try to give them the sense of development by giving them responsibility for the younger brothers and sisters.
Mother: She looks out for the little boys and she takes good care of them. She feels if she's hungry then they must be hungry. Every time she eats she fixes something for them to eat.
Deborah: Get the door.
Kareema: Who is it?
Going to Market
Mother: Even though I might take a cab, I still end up saving. Because we are poor and I try to get the most for my money. At the store I go to, out, the quality of service is better, the quality of food is better, than it is in the ghetto.
Kareema: What's that for?Mother: That's the price list, come on.
At the community store on certain days of the month, the prices are higher. At the store that is out, the prices are usually the same. And maybe that's because it it mostly an all-white neighborhood.
No, no, you can't buy that many.
Deborah: Two, two.
Mother: You can't get that many. One butter and one plain. Go get a plain.
Deborah: The plain is blue. Go get a blue one. Take this one back. Take two back and get a blue.
Mother: We can't afford to buy three. Okay, now stop. I've spent all the money. (to Kareema) I know you can't carry it.
On the Block
Father: The girl across the street, Michelle, of the Taylor family, she plays with a great deal. Lisa and Deede, they live right in the same house on the first floor of the Taylor family.
Kareema: You can't have no company. Stop, I'm not playing with you, girl.
Children: Miss Sue, Miss Sue, Miss Sue, gimme A, B, C...
Father: And there's the twin Dicarta girls. The smallest of the two, she plays with her mostly.
Mother: I think she is just about the youngest on the Street.
Father: We worry that she doesn't run across the street, get hit by a car. But we also tell her to stay on the street. Do not wander off. Don't take any time up with any strange people.
Mother: Not to accept.. .money or candy from any strangers.
At the Corner Shop
Bill: You'll lose your job that (Shopkeeper) way.
Assistant: You'll lose your job like that, man.
Bill: You want money every night? You don't get money every night. You wait to payday.
Child: What day is payday?
Assistant: Every six days.
Child: Okay, in six days.
Children: Hi, Bill.
Bill: Hi. Do you want something, baby? What else?
Child: Salt.
Bill: No salt, baby.
Kareema: I want some of those and one piece of gum.
Bill: This?
Kareema: Yeah.
Celeste: No, no, no, no, no.
Bill: What does she want? Don't give me no jiving now. Out side, just go.
Celeste: Come on, Kareema, tell him what you want.
Bill: My woman quit me.
Celeste: When? Which one, what's her name? The one on Blume Way?
Bill: I don't know which one. What does she want with this?
Child: Bye.
Bill: Which one? Bye, now.
Playing a Game
Child: No, I'm taking it.
Deborah: Frederick Douglass.
Celeste: Give me Martin Luther King, give me Martin Luther King.
Felicia: No, I want Martin Luther King. I don't know that other man.
Deborah: Okay, I'll take Joe Louis here.
Celeste: "Benjamin Banniker, born 1731, died 18 years early. A genius of his day. Made first American clock...."
Mother: I buy them black games and black books, black dolls. Because they have to have something that relates to them. So they can learn about black history. Because it is only since the late '60s that they started getting black history in school. Some schools still don't have it.
Celeste: "Dr. Charles Drew, born 1904-1950. Pioneered re search in blood plasma...."
Deborah: You have school history. Did they tell you how Charles Drew died?
Celeste: No.
Deborah: How did he die, Felicia?
Felicia: I don't know.
Deborah: Didn't I tell you?
Celeste: I know, I know. No. He died because he went to a white hospital and they wouldn't give him no blood. They told him to go to the black hospital that was across town. By the time he got there it was too late and he was dead. And your time's up, Kareema.
Deborah: That's not fair because you started talking to her.
Mother: If you want them to have some background and some knowledge of themselves you have to start it at home. Encourage them at home. And that way if you put the foundation they can always build on it.
Celeste: I won. Where's the prize? Where's the prize? Where's the prize?
Deborah: Right there!
Celeste: Where?
Deborah: That knowledge on the table!
Father: That's enough cutting, you don't need more than that.
Mother: I don't have to be at work until 5:00. I wanted a job with those kinds of hours so that I would be home when Kareema got home from school. Because she looks forward to that. Most of the time I try to cook before I leave. And if I don't, then Deborah cooks. And then she's home for the rest of the evening.
Father: Okay, take the gum out of your mouth. You can't eat your dinner with gum. You know that.
Celeste: Just because she wants a private secretary.
Deborah: So?
Celeste: So.
Deborah: That's all you do is stay on the phone anyhow.
Celeste: Am I benefiting by calling the driving school for you? Am I benefiting? How?
Father: She knows that I go to school. She knows that her mother goes to school. We tell her why we go to school, to make ourselves more skilled--to make a better life, for all of us. That way we influence her to learn and tell her to learn more that she can develop very early in her life.
Bedtime
Kareema: Mommy. I have to tell you something.
Mother: Oh gee, what do you have to tell me, Kareema?
Kareema: I have to tell you.
Mother: Okay, you can come and tell me.
Kareema: Can you get me some birthday hats on my birthday?
Mother: Yes, when your birthday comes. It's not your birthday now, is it?
Kareema: No.
Mother: That's all you had to tell me?
Kareema: No. I want some vitamins.
Mother: You don't need any vitamins tonight. Come on, in the bed.
Father: Be a good girl.
Mother: I think it's wrong for parents to try and put their values on their kids.
Father: She has to have her own values to please her, to make her content. To make her function. Because her life goes on. Because she's into the future. I'm the past. I can only hand down my wisdom or her mother hand down her wisdom.
Mother: She's supposed to sleep in her own bed.
Father: Like you sleep in yours.
Mother: You're so silly tonight.
Father: Goodbye, Kareema.
Kareema: Play, Mom?
Father: Goodbye, Kareema!
Mother: No, you can't.
Father: Good night.Kareema: I want to sit with you.
Mother: No, you can't.
Father: Good night!
Mother: You've got to go to bed. And get your rest. Other wise you'll be tired. Then you'll fall asleep in school.
Kareema: I want to put something on my finger.
Mother: I don't see anything wrong with that finger. I don't see anything there. I don' t see anything on that finger at all.
Kareema: I know, but it hurts.
Mother: You must have smashed it in the door or something because you don't have a splinter or anything in it.
Kareema: Put a band aid on.
Mother: I don't have another band aid.
Kareema: Let me see.
Mother: Go to bed, Kareema.
Kareema: I saw one.
Mother: Go to bed, Kareema.
Kareema: I saw one.
Mother: Come on, good night. Good night.
Father: Good night.
Kareema: Wait. Fix my lunch.
Mother: You're not going to have one. Kareema, get out of here and go to bed.
Kareema: Can I have a pear?
Mother: You can't have anything. You never want to go to bed. Most times the best jobs that black people could get was when I was looking, to be a teacher, or you get a job in the post office. But now it's not a closed thing. Now there are so many different avenues open. They can go to college. They can go into a technical school. They can set their own goals. They see that life itself is a learning experience.
Father: Their values will probably be different than our values.
Mother: Of course, because each generation is different.
Father: The only value I have right now as far as she's concerned is to grow up to be a strong, beautiful black woman.
Mother: Come on, big girls don't cry. Come on, come on. It's time for you to go to bed. It's
eight o'clock.Kareema: I don't want to go to school.
Mother: Well, you got to go. You gonna be a dummy? Huh? Go to bed now, I'll see you in the morning.
Kareema: My finger hurts.
Mother: I don't see anything wrong with your finger, Kareema.
Kareema: It hurts.
Mother: It doesn't hurt. Go to bed.
Kareema: My thumb's broke.
Mother: I don't see anything wrong with your thumb.
Kareema: Well, it still hurts. I want to go to sleep now, cut the lights. Cut off the lights.
TRANSCRIPT OF "A CASE OF FAMILY STRESS"
The following transcript of the recording, "A Case of Family Stress," includes, in the right- hand margin, one teacher's notes which may be useful to you in organizing students' analyses of the mother's remarks. You may also use this space to make your own notes about stress or sources of support in this young mother's life.
Double lines in the transcript indicate places where the recording might be stopped during a second hearing to facilitate discussion. At each break, give students a chance to make notes and to clarify the facts they have learned.
This mother is participating in a program which helps families whose children may be endangered by abuse or neglect. In this conversation with her doctor and case worker, Jill, she reexamines incidents and feelings in her life and thinks about how she can help herself.
Purpose of Interview
Doctor: Well, the sort of things that I would like to talk about today have to do with your feelings about Renee at times that things really get bad with her. The reason is really to try to find out what your feelings are, how Renee responds, what happens when she gets on your husband's nerves, and then also to get some impression of how we help you, if we help you around particular things. Now, I remember, because Jill mentioned it to me, that a couple of weeks ago there really was a serious problem. Maybe you could tell us about that.
Mother: I don't really know how it started.
Doctor: Uh-huh. What were they doing?
Description of the recent incident
Mother: Well, they really weren't doing any thing. I think really it was me. They were out on the back porch and Renee started to cry. And I hate it when I'm upset and she starts. I took her in, sent her to her room and she cried twice as much. So I hit her. And I hit her. And I hit her. And I started screaming at her, yelling at her from the top of my lungs. And I picked her up, threw her on the top bunk bed and then hit her in the leg three times. And I knew what I was doing at the time I was doing it. But I couldn't stop myself.
Doctor: You couldn't, because you were just so angry.
Mother: So that's when I slammed the bedroom door and that' s when I tried to call Jill and I couldn't get Jill and I couldn't get you. My girlfriend wasn't home. So the next best person was my mother. And I stayed on the phone with my mother until I calmed down.
Doctor: Wow.
Mother: It's been quite a few times that's happened.
Doctor: Really.
Mother: Nothing that's ever been like it was then. Because before I could turn around and just send them out and sit down and have a cup of coffee and I'd be fine. Mostly when I'm talking to somebody I'm fine. But when I'm sitting there thinking, things get worse.
Need for someone to talk to
Doctor: Let's go back to when you were pregnant. She was your first baby. And what was it like in your life then?
Background...unwanted pregnancy
Mother: The first four months--well the first three months--were hectic, trying to tell my mother I was pregnant and I couldn't. So I dreamed up this story.
Doctor: How come? Because you were embarrassed about it?
Mother: No, I was afraid how she was going to react. So I made up this story that I wasn't feeling good.
Doctor: How old were you?
Mother: Nineteen. Eighteen. Eighteen. And then I went to the doctor. And I was trying to get the doctor to say I was pregnant. He examined me and everything but wouldn't say I was pregnant. So I told him I had pains right here, and that's when he asked me if I had relations, and I said yeah. And he wanted me to take a urine specimen and bring it to the--it was a laboratory. So I told my mother he was checking my urine specimen for all different things. I figured my mother knows, she's gonna kill me.
Doctor: What were you afraid she was going to do?
Mother: I was afraid she was going to beat me again. And my mother kept saying, "Sit down and have your supper." And that's when I said I wasn't hungry. "Sit down and have your supper!" And then she said she called the doctor and he couldn't tell her anything. So I called him back and. I knew that he was saying, "You are probably pregnant." And he kept saying, "Do you want me to tell your mother and father?" I'm saying no. So I sat down. Hung up, sat down. Kept watching TV. My father didn't ask me nothing. And I knew he was waiting for me to tell him. I wouldn't say a word. So, finally he popped the question. And I said, "Oh, he said I'm probably pregnant." Like it was nothing! And I kept on watching the TV. And I could feel my insides saying, "Oh, Jesus!" So he said, "Well, you can't cry over spilt milk." Then my mother started in.
Doctor: What did she do?
Mother: All she kept telling me is that I embarrassed her and my sisters. And she wasn't,
because I was pregnant, she wasn't going to let it affect her. She was still going to hold her head up proud, and I was the one that was the low one. And so I thought to myself, "Well, that's not too bad. She said her piece, she isn't going to say anything else to me." And the next day she still wasn't talking to me. You know, I had shamed her and everything else. But then the next day it all changed. She was showing me her stretch marks. What it was like when she was pregnant with my sister. She told me don't get nervous but she wanted me to get married within a month and out of the house.Doctor: And out of the house.
Mother: So that my daughter would have a name. Well, my baby at the time would have a name. And then it came time to being married--I wanted to marry bad at the time--but the day it came to get married, I didn't want to get married.
Doctor: And so you changed your mind and decided not to.
Mother: I couldn't tell my father, and I couldn't tell my mother. I got in the church, all the way as far as the church, and I thought to myself, "I can't." And there wasn't that many people in the church. So I thought I could run down the aisle and run out of the church. But I figured no, my father is going to stop me. So then I figured I'd go up over the aisle and run up the side door. But I figured, you know, by the time everybody got through chasing me, they would have caught me anyway's. And then where could I go if I did get away?
Doctor: And then what was it like when it came time for Renee to be born?Mother: Oh, the end was beautiful. I didn't have any pain.
Doctor: You felt good.
Mother: I was tickled pink. I felt life. I used to get in bed and I used to lie on my stomach, then turn over quick, put my hand on my stomach and just feel the kicks. And I used to get my husband to feel the kicks. He hated it, but I used to make him do it anyway's. And then I couldn't wait for the day I started labor. And at the end of the pregnancy, I'm thinking to myself, I got the crib, I got everything all set up, I got no baby. Then I started to get depressed. And then I was in labor and didn't even know it. And then once I did get into the hospital, I couldn't wait to have the baby. The pains were like hell. But I still couldn't wait to have that baby. And then I woke up and put my hands on my stomach and I found I already had my baby. Nobody would tell me what I had.
Doctor: What was it like when you first saw her?
Mother: Oh, I don't know. I was all excited, and I thought to myself that there was no baby more beautiful than the baby that I had. And then we had a fight because I wouldn't let her go. Because they let me hold her. But then they wanted to take her right back. So we fought in the hallway for a while.
Doctor: Had you wanted a girl?
Mother: Oh, I wanted a girl in the worst way.
Doctor: You did? How come?
Mother: I don't really know.
Doctor: Tell me what it was like when you first got home with her.
Mother: Everything everybody, said to me I cried. Anytime anybody wanted to hold Renee I cried.
Doctor: How come?
Mother: I felt Renee was mine, nobody else's.
Case Worker: Was somebody helping you take care of her, or...
Mother: Everybody always came over to help. And then Dr. Moran made it the plan so that I wouldn't have Renee for a while. And I was supposed to go see a psychiatrist for after women have babies they get depressed. And I wouldn't go to see the psychiatrist. And for the main reason because they took Renee away.
Doctor: Because you were afraid that they might take Renee?
Mother: They did. They made plans that my sister-in-law had her one week, my mother had her the next, my sister had her the next and then she went back to my sister-in-law.
Mother: My sister-in-law and Dr. Moran.Doctor: Without consulting you?
Mother: Yes.
Doctor: Oh, wow.
Mother: So, I lived on the third floor, my sister-in-law lived on the first. I didn't feed her, I didn't change her. I didn't give her a bath--nothing.
Doctor: How come? Because you were so depressed that they felt that you just couldn't take care of her?
Mother: Well, I think mostly it was my sister in-law. You know, she felt as though I shouldn't. And at the time I figure I can't be mean to anybody. So I didn't say anything for the longest time. Then when she went out to my mother's I didn't see her for the whole week. And I figured that did it. She fed her, she changed her, she bathed her.
Doctor: No kidding. So like for the first month of Renee's life, how many days did you take care of her?
Mother: I had the first week.
Doctor: The first week and that was it! Up until how...
Mother: Three months.
Doctor: Up until she was three months of age. And then what happened?
Mother: And then I was downstairs in my sister in-law's house and I kept saying to myself, "This is mine, she's nobody else's." - So I picked the baby up and I walked out.
Narrator: The mother continued talking about her first marriage, which had lasted two years, during which time she had a second child a boy. She said her troubles with the children began after her marriage broke up. She first came to the hospital when she found that the son had swollen lumps on his head. She suspected he might have hemophilia.Mother: He had fallen three times. And that's when I figured I got to bring him in because it looked big. It looked weird--to me it looked like he had a football in his head, coming out. And it was at nighttime and that's the first day I met Mrs. Bradshaw.
Doctor: That was the time.
Mother: I was introduced that she was the social worker and she was just there to talk to me. And I thought to myself, "I'm going to have trouble with her." But I remember this hospital here aggravating the hell out of me. 'Cause I had come up, turned around and told them about the lumps. And I knew what they were getting around to. This was at the time I started talking with Mrs. Bradshaw. That's when everything started. Because I didn't feel that Mrs. Bradshaw was being honest, which I still don't think she was being honest. And I felt like she was trying to pull the wool right over my eyes. And I'd go in and I tried to talk to her. I signed the papers for the investigation and then after I signed I says, "I signed the papers for the investigation, now I want you people to check and see if he is a bleeder." And she turned around, after I signed the papers and everything and she says, "We're not interested in that. We're interested in what you were doing to him."
Doctor: But it was before the problem came up that you began to feel angry toward Renee.Mother: Yeah.
Doctor: You and your husband had split up at that time. You were all alone at that time?
Mother: I was alone with my two children and I had for the whole summer Ethel's two girls.
Doctor: As well. So you had a whole lot of children that you had to take care of all at once. How old was she at that time?
Mother: She wasn't even two. She was about a year-and-a-half.
Doctor: But was she starting to behave like a two-year-old? Is that what it was that got to you? What were some of the things that she was doing that made you angry?
Mother: She just got into twice as much. But yet things that she would get into were normal, but it aggravated me.
Case Worker: Did you know then that it was normal, or is it looking back at it that makes you realize that it was normal?
Mother: No, it's looking back at it. At the time, it seemed like she was doing everything wrong. Like she was doing stuff to spite me.
Doctor: You really felt that.
Mother: Because when I said no, she understood. And she would go right back to it. And it was just like--the look on her face as if to say, "I don't care what you say, I'm going back after it anyway."
Doctor: Did you have anybody that you could talk to?Mother: I didn't have anybody then.
Doctor: So that there was nobody that you could call to give you any help with that. Was your mother any help at all?
Mother: We weren't even talking.
Doctor: How come? Had she rejected you?
Mother: I was getting a divorce.
Doctor: And she didn't like that either?
Mother: No.
Doctor: She thought you were shaming the family again?
Mother: Yeah. Because I had two kids this time. If I had had one kid and didn't get pregnant and gotten a divorce, that would have been one thing because it was a mistake what I was doing. Then my father found out, that he wasn't coming home nights. And that's when my father tried telling me that you can produce kids with out being a man or a woman. When you're a man you take care of your responsibilities, you go to work, and you're able to sit down like two human beings and talk to each other without screaming and yelling. We didn't know how to talk to each other. I didn't care what he thought and he didn't care what I thought.
Doctor: But, like, when Renee really got on your nerves, then you really just had no choice but to hit her. That is the only way you knew how to handle it?
Mother: Well, first, I started out screaming. That's all I would do to her is yell at her. But still nobody else could do anything to her. And then it turned out that's when the hitting business started. And I'd get her on the rear end and throw her in the crib. She'd get right back out of the crib, I'd hit her in the rear end, put her back in the crib. Then it turned out to be bigger things. Uh, getting underneath the stuff in the sink. So then I decided I had to do something with that. So I took everything out from underneath the sink and put everything up in the cabinet. And then it was, you know, everything she did she took her brother with her.
Doctor: So that got you even more mad.
Mother: The only thing that it really was, that I see now, is that they were brother and sister and that they were close. They weren't really doing anything wrong. But at the time to me, it was, like she was doing it in spite. And another problem I had was listening to other people saying Renee was spoiled rotten and that I had done it to her.
Doctor: Who said that?
Mother: Oh, my mother and father told me that constantly. Everybody thought she was beautiful as a baby. The way everybody used to buy Renee things. Then her brother came along and every body brought him stuff. And when they came to the house, it even got as bad as they walked straight into the bedroom. So what I had to do was lock the bedroom door. And as people come in the house I made them say hi to Renee first. Then they could go see the baby. Because Renee used to go into a corner.
Doctor: Because she wanted some attention too? Mother: Yeah, well, I knew she wanted attention bad because people that were coming to the house came to see her before and all of a sudden there is this baby in the house. And it was just like she was neglected. But then the first time she heard him cry, because she had knocked him over, she bent down and she started to cry and tried to pick him up. That's when I slapped her in the rear end twice and then I picked the baby up and then I let her hug the baby and kiss the baby. And tried to explain to her that he is only a baby. Everything he was was good, Renee was bad. An I even go tot think that he was good, and Renee was bad.