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Carleen's mother had a movie star name--Marilyn--and she knew she could improve her prospects in life if only she could get a cosmetic makeover, win a beauty crown and start accepting offers to star in Hollywood movies... |
Dreams die hard in a land
of squalor & hopelessness
By GINA GALLO
of TheColumnists.com
It started as a venture in community relations. A local
library invited a group of Native American high school students
to participate in a weekend seminar designed to help span the
bridges of cultural diversity.
To entice the most reluctant, the workshop promised refreshments,
goodie bags and promotional treats for all participants. In between
the freebies, moderators would conduct exercises in creative
writing, public speaking, and discussion groups. Not exactly
earth-shaking excitement, but enough to attract 32 kids who’d
either spent their lives on the reservation or resided in dusty
desert towns too small to qualify for more than a speck on the
map.
Toward the end of the seminar, students were asked to either
write an essay or give a speech about one of the most memorable
incidents in their lives. And while some kids covered the usual
topics like best Christmas gift or family celebrations, one 16-year-old
girl chose a much different subject.
The slender girl who stood at the podium was not a commanding
presence. She had what psychologists call a ‘flat affect,’--ancient
eyes dulled by too much reality in too few years, voice diminished
to monotone. But as Carleen told her story she owned that room
and everyone’s attention. It was her unspoken words that
told the real story and exposed the broken dreams barely concealed
by her shroud of apathy.
Carleen spoke of her mother, Marilyn, described as a dreamer
and a ‘confused soul.’ Pregnant at 13, a frightened
single mother the following year, Marilyn nursed her dreams instead
of her child. She was going to Hollywood one day. The life of
a movie star promised all the glamour and riches of which she’d
ever dreamed. It was worlds away from the harsh subsistence of
her own life, and exactly what her favorite movie tabloids featured
every week. Since she already had a movie star’s name, she
figured she was halfway there. Once a talent agent discovered
her, she’d be on her way to the big time.
According to the magazines Marilyn read, a lot of starlets were
discovered in beauty pageants. Not many of those around the armpit
of Nevada where she lived, but that was only a minor detail.
More daunting was the problem of transforming her squat proportions
into runway material--a duckling-to-swan conversion she thought
could happen with just a few simple changes.
While Carleen poked through their Saltine-cracker breakfasts
or the chalky boxed mac-and-cheese that was their staple dinner
menu, Marilyn would wax poetic. Beauty queens were usually blondes,
she told her tiny daughter. Blondes with bright red manicures
and necklines low enough to advertise their real talent. If she
could just manage one session at a beauty salon and some sexy
new clothes, it would all start to happen. Winning the title
of a pageant queen would change their lives.
Marilyn’s delusions were as fierce and as focused as her
dreams. So when men offered her money for her time--or her five-year-old
daughter’s, she justified it as a wise career decision.
Why not get paid for what others were giving away? It was only
for a little while, just long enough to save the money for her
beauty transformation. Once she won that pageant crown, she and
Carleen would put this portion of hell in their rear-view and
head for the Hollywood life.
It was nearly a year before Marilyn made it to a beauty salon.
Her money went faster than she’d anticipated, especially
after the men stopped paying for her liquor and drugs. Finally,
with $50 in her pocket and the reluctant Carleen in tow, she
headed into town.
On appearances, Crystal’s House of Beauty was not a testimonial
to the glamorous life. Located between a feed store and the post-office,
the dingy storefront had a broken screen door and windows filmed
with grease and dust. But inside, circa-50's posters of blonde
models with outdated hair styles were taped to walls like fly-specked
affirmations of Marilyn’s dreams.
Carleen said that the proprietress, a burly woman who alternately
pumped gas at the Phillips station across the road, wasn’t
exactly welcoming. Her bulldog jowls only creased into a deeper
sneer as her eyes moved from mother to child in open contempt.
“You got the wrong place. You two don’t belong in here.”
“I have money,” Marilyn told her. “Enough for
a perm and color and....do you do manicures?”
“I don’t do nothing for no Indians. You need to go
on back to the reservation. We don’t want your kind around
here.”
It was Carleen's first time in town, her first experience with
the outside world beyond those men who used her in the dark.
“Go on, now. I said to git. I’ll call the sheriff if
I have to.”
It was more than the child could grasp.
“Why are you yelling? My mama’s here to get blonded,”
she announced. “She’s going to win a beauty pageant
and be a movie star.”
Carleen told us she must have said more. She was defending her
mother, defending the dreams she’d been fed since birth.
But she couldn’t recall anything beyond the ham-sized hands
that knocked her across the room and out the door.
“You must be crazy! You Indians think you can be like white
folks? Ain’t no damn buckskin beauty queens!”
After that came a sequence of events that still remains unclear.
There was the taste of blood and dirt, the gaping wound in her
knee. And Marilyn, bruised and limping toward the pick-up truck
where another man waited. They’d hitch a ride, her mother
told her. Just up to the next town so they could find another
beauty salon.
It was just after dawn when the sheriff found the battered child
on the roadside. It would be days before her mother’s body
was discovered, weeks before Carleen was discharged from the
hospital and assigned to the custody of Family Services.
Carleen finished her story by turning abruptly and returning
to her seat. While workshop monitors struggled with their composure
and swiped away tears, the 31 other students simply sat with
stoic expressions, their eyes as flat and guarded as Carleen’s
had been. It was the only the speech-assessment cards they turned
in later that offered a glimpse of their real feelings.
“Same story, different details,” said one. “Life
sucks.”
“Everybody’s got a sad story. This ain’t the only
one.”
“If it bothers you, why you ask us about it?”
And Carleen’s own comments:
“Talking about it don’t make it better, even if somebody’s
listening. Listening ain’t the same as doing something.
But nobody's gonna do anything. Who even cares? Nobody I ever
met.”
©2004 by Gina Gallo. The Gina Gallo caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustratons are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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