Current Temp: 33°

News > Special Reports > A New Dawn

Nowhere else to go

Faced with eviction and her mom's drinking, Dawn's forced into homeless shelter; prison might be next

By Mary Meehan

mmeehan1@herald-leader.com

Dawn Nicole Smith gets $20 for selling an old red Nissan, the same car that took her to jail so long ago.

Of that last $20 for her family of six, $6.19 goes for 12 cans of Miller Lite for her mother, Brenda Raines. It's Valentine's Day 2006, and before the night is over, Dawn buys another 12-pack.

Dawn, 23, has been making daily beer runs for her mom in Nicholasville. If drug court knew, she'd be out of the program.

She says sometimes she does it because she sees Brenda cry and shake after going too long without a cold one. Sometimes, she admits, the beer makes her mom a little easier to handle.

But not today.

By 7 p.m., Brenda's eyes are red from the drinking, and dark and dead from stress.

She hasn't been out of the house for two weeks. Not since her husband, Larry Raines, went to jail on a charge of incest. The green towel in her hand is covered with rust-colored stains, and droplets from a nosebleed trickle like a line of angry ants down the front of her once-white nightgown. Sitting on the couch, she swings from happy to sappy to angry as if someone is changing her emotional channels with a remote.

Drug court is making Dawn, who is pregnant with her stepfather's child, and the kids go to the Salvation Army homeless shelter in Lexington. They have been living with Brenda for two years, but authorities don't want them around Brenda when she has been drinking.

Neither woman is working. The heat has been turned off. They're being evicted.

Brenda keeps saying in front of the boys that the Salvation Army is where the really bad junkies live and that the kids won't be safe. She says they'd all be better off sleeping in the car.

Kobe, 4, recovering from dental work, is calm for once, sleeping. David, 5, plays with some plastic dinosaurs, but the slightly pinched look on his face makes it clear he's just pretending not to listen. Mary, nearly 1, sleeping in her crib, grasps a half-filled bottle in a chubby fist.

Tonio stays close to Brenda, fetching her beer and cigarettes. Nearly 7, he doesn't say much. He hardly ever says much, except to scream at something he's trying to kill in a video game or to whisper "I love you" to his mom.

Brenda, swaying on her feet, says again and again that her life is over and she's going to Jesus soon. Slowly, silently, Tonio tears the sides off what is left of a small candy box until he has a flat, shiny red heart. He gives it to his grandmother, who clasps it to her chest and says she'll keep it always and take it with her when she goes to Jesus. He grabs onto her arm, in an embrace that is not a hug but more like an anchor, as if he can keep the bad things away from her if he can hold her firm to this one spot.

Sitting on the couch in the next room, the house strewn with clothes and mattresses and plastic garbage bags that serve as suitcases, Dawn hears it all, getting angrier at every word.

Her face doesn't change much. Her voice doesn't rise. But soon, it's too much.

"This is what she used to do to me when I was a kid," she says. "She was always talking about how she was going to kill herself. I'd be so scared I would go to my granny's and cry."

Tonio will be up all night. Afraid.

"You can't tell those stories," she finally says, standing in front of her mother.

Beer in hand, leaning in so she's inches from her daughter's face, Brenda laughs.

The next morning, Dawn makes one last beer run. Two tall boys. The shiny red heart is adrift in the wreckage of the house.

All she can take into the Salvation Army shelter is some clothes and shampoo. No television. No PlayStation for the boys. Not even any formula for Mary. From a house filled with stuff, she manages to keep only what she can fit in the trunk of the car.

While Dawn is in the bathroom cleaning out a cabinet, Brenda comes in with the phone. She's called the prosecutor's office and is arguing that it should drop the incest charges against Larry that she herself set in motion.

Tell them, Brenda demands, thrusting the phone towards Dawn, tell them you want to take it back. Dawn, literally trapped in the small space, tells whoever is on the line that she just wants Larry to get help. She doesn't want him to go to prison. With a smirk, Brenda goes back to her bed and her beer.

SITE MAP
NEWS
SPORTS
ENTERTAINMENT
BUSINESS

LIVING
EDITORIALS/LETTERS

COLUMNISTS
BLOGS