My new friend Harriet and I were laughing about the things our mothers told us when we were kids—like not to wear patent leather shoes because boys could see up your skirt; make sure to always wear clean underwear in case we were in a car accident; and most importantly, to sit with our legs together, close together.
“It was so silly,” we agreed.
“As though something would fly up there,” I said.
Harriet snorted. “Fly up there?” she said. My mom was afraid something would fly out. I guess that’s the difference between Catholic and Jewish mothers,” she said.
“Hi Grandma E. Come in my room I have something to show you,” says three-year-old Bronson. I’m thrilled that my husband and I are past the point of having to reintroduce ourselves to him every time we visit. Unlike my older two grandsons who live just 10 minutes away, Bronson and his parents live as far away from Milwaukee as you can get and still be in the Continental U.S.—San Diego, California. So, while San Diego is a beautiful place to visit, we don’t get there as often as we’d like.
It’s been interesting to watch him grow in three and four month increments. One visit he’s crawling, the next he’s walking, and the next he’s talking. His vocabulary has come a long way. He knows all of the names of dinosaurs. And he can give detailed instructions about how to skate board. But like many little guys Bronson’s age, he says “yike” instead of “like” as in “I yike dinosaurs;” and his favorite affirmative expression is “ohtay”.
When my husband and I made the trip to San Diego in January, we noticed a little trouble with “p’s”. He doesn’t make the p sound when it’s at the beginning of a word. He substitutes it with an “f.” For example, he asked my husband to “fush” him on the swing. He asked me to play “fuzzles” with him. And when he has to go to the bathroom, it’s time to “foop.” Adorable right?
A few days into our visit, we were finishing dinner at a nice restaurant. I always sit next to Bronson so we can talk. I said, “I see that you ate all of your rice and beans. I’m glad you like them.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I yike rice and beans.”
To keep the conversation going I asked “What other kinds of food do you like? Do you like cheese burgers?”
“No, I don’t yike cheese burgers.”
“What about brats, do you like them?” I asked, hoping that our Wisconsin roots have taken hold.
“Yes, I yike brats.”
“I bet you like cake, too.”
“Oh yes, I yike strawberry cake. Will you make one for me?”
“Yes, I will make you one when you come to visit me in Milwaukee,” I said.
“Ohtay, let’s go,” said Bronson.
Then I asked if he likes pie.
“No, I don’t yike fie.”
“Really, don’t you like apple pie or blueberry pie?’
“No I don’t yike fie,” he says with increased vehemence.
“Didn’t you have any pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving?”
He responds at ear drum piercing three-year-old volume, “No I don’t yike fuckin fie. Fuckins are for hawoween. Fuckins have yights in them in all of the houses. I don’t yike fuckin fie!”
The whole restaurant went silent. “Check please,” said my husband.
Brenda and me at the YWCA’s Circle of Women in 2012
She was crying so hard I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. But I knew it was Brenda because her name popped up when the phone rang. “What’s happened, Brenda? Tell me what’s happened,” I pleaded.
“I can’t take it anymore. Elaine, I just can’t take it any more,” she said through sobs of utter, utter defeat. “Could you meet me? Just for a little while. Please.”
We made arrangements to meet at a coffee shop near where I just finished a yoga class. The daytime class was a new found luxury for me after leaving my full time job and declaring myself on indefinite sabbatical.
I first met Brenda over twenty years ago. With her young son in tow, she cleaned the offices of the YWCA. She could have been any other cleaning lady except for the gold star in a front tooth that sparkled when she smiled and hinted at a soul that shone brightly.
The YW was still relatively small back in 1995, but we had big ideas—a job center where women could obtain a GED and get job training in nontraditional fields like the construction trades; affordable housing combined with wrap around family support services; and a women’s business incubator to provide a path to financial security through entrepreneurship. It was all part of the vision for the Women’s Enterprise Center we were building on King Drive.
I was in charge of fundraising. I don’t remember exactly how much we needed but it was more money than me or the YWCA had ever raised before. The Michigan-based Kresge Foundation offered a challenge grant of $500,000 if we could just raise the rest and demonstrate that we had community support.
How did the YMCA always manage to raise so much more money than us? Why did the Boy Scouts always raise so much more money than the Girl Scouts? How did universities like Marquette manage to gather a room full of businessmen, ask them to write checks, and raise gigantic sums. Couldn’t women do that too?
With the support of a small group of feisty determined volunteers, we launched The Circle of Women event in the spring of 1996. The strategy was to ask women to bring their friends to a luncheon without a ticket price, and then inspire them to make contributions through the testimonials of women who benefited by the YW’s programs. No other local women-focused nonprofit had done that before. More than one of our corporate supporters cautioned that we wouldn’t be successful without the support of male leadership and that women would never write checks for as much as $100 without permission from their husbands.
We did it anyway.
Brenda was one of three courageous women who told their stories to the audience of more than 500 women at the packed Bradley Center that day. She talked about how her cleaning business was growing through the YW’s support and her pride in being able to provide a living for 20 employees. She talked about the difference her success was making in her family. She and her husband, a Milwaukee County bus driver, purchased a home and were saving for their sons’ college education.
There were tears, a standing ovation, and donations that surpassed our wildest dreams. We raised over $100,000. The Kresge Foundation awarded us the grant. The YWCA realized it’s ambition and Circle of Women was established as one of the premiere annual fundraising events in Milwaukee.
A few years after that first event, Brenda was ready to turn the cleaning business over to others and look for a new challenge. With support from a YWCA board member, she secured a spot in a bank training program and quickly rose through the ranks to become a branch manager recognized for her dedication to customer service.
I eventually left the YWCA in pursuit of my own next challenge and Brenda and I lost touch for a while. But in 2003, when my husband and I refinanced our house, she was the closer at the title loan company. She had advanced her career yet again.
Through no fault of Brenda’s, a scandal embroiled the title mortgage company and it closed. Brenda let me know when she landed a position with Select Milwaukee, a nonprofit dedicated to helping first time home buyers achieve and maintain home ownership. When my son was ready to buy his first house in 2005, Brenda helped him work around his nonexistent credit score to secure a loan to re-roof the dilapidated fixer-upper. The home deal would not have gone through without her.
In 2011, Brenda invited me to lunch at her family’s new home in the Walnut Crossing Development. She told me that she felt it was her duty to invest—to reclaim what had become a high crime, dangerous place. She gave me a tour of the beautifully constructed home making sure to point out special features like easy to clean counters and a built in vacuum system, a real point of pride for a former cleaning lady. Brenda served an elegant chicken salad luncheon on china paired with crystal goblets of sparkling water. We talked about our next career steps and reminisced about our days at the YWCA. We agreed that we would be table captains for the upcoming Circle of Women event together. And we’ve been doing that ever since.
Until this year.
After our conversation in 2011, Brenda had taken another job in banking but banking and the home financing industry had changed drastically in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis and Brenda lost her job seven months ago. Not a comfortable place for this hard working woman who didn’t expect to be in this position in her mid 50s.
At the coffee shop, I hold Brenda’s hand as she tearfully recounted the last several months of crushing disappointment. Within the last three weeks, she had been offered two consecutive jobs at banks which were both rescinded because of her credit score which apparently is important in the financial industry regardless of the position. She and her husband were doing their best to keep up, but bills weren’t always getting paid on time. Recognizing that not having a college degree was catching up with her, she had enrolled at a local university last year but now she wondered if it would be worth it. Would she ever be able to repay the student loans? The breaking point, what led her to call me today, was an interview with a local property developer. The opening looked promising until she learned that it would pay only $10 an hour. The indignity of it was crushing her spirit. “I might as well be a felon,” she cried. I noticed that the gold star on her tooth was gone. Maybe it had been removed a long time ago.
Feeling powerless, I fumble around giving her ideas of people to call who might be in a position to help her and of companies outside of the banking industry who might be hiring. Of course I want to help if I can. But the injustice of it all is setting my hair aflame. How can this be happening?
I had planned to write a glowing story about the 20th anniversary of the YWCA’s Circle of Women, about all that women had accomplished by supporting one another and how the gifts we give come back to us. The friendship between Brenda and me is indeed proof. But instead, I’m writing about injustice. Brenda, who has always lived within her means and invested in our city, faces a decline in economic status as she approaches what for most of us are peak earning years contributing to the retirement nest egg. An honest ethical professional, she is denied a job at a bank because she’s a little behind paying bills while Wall Street pays multi million dollar salaries to people who are responsible for the collapse of the economy. Brenda’s lack of a college education is restricting her opportunities regardless of decades of experience while the Governor of Wisconsin, who also doesn’t have a college degree, is mounting a run for the presidency.
I realize that the story isn’t finished. I must believe that Brenda will rise again. And that somehow, women will circle to work for social change that will make a difference for Brenda, for me, for our collective daughters and sons. But damn it, we shouldn’t have to.
Stories from my breezeway 