God Is Always Hiring

It was either the key to the future or a deal with the devil. I wasn’t sure which, so I wasn’t sure what to do with the document in my hand.

At 22, I had become a parasite on my parents. I had no job and no prospects of one. As an unwed mother, I couldn’t support myself or my new baby. It wasn’t fair to live rent-free with my parents forever. Plus I felt like I was wearing an invisible scarlet A. It stood for Awful. Awful daughter. Awful sister. Awful mother.

Getting help from my daughter’s father was out of the question. I wrote him off before she was born. I told him I didn’t want to marry him, so I couldn’t go to him now. What if he took her away? What if he told the courts he could give her a better life than I could?

I had dropped out of college after I got pregnant. I quit my job working as an emergency medical technician when I was four months pregnant. Back then, the local funeral homes ran the ambulance services. In addition to saving lives, I had to make death calls at hospitals, nursing homes, and residences. Picking up dead bodies wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid the bills, and, as we used to joke, no one complained. But after I got pregnant, I couldn’t afford to hurt my back or my baby lifting people who weighed more than 300 pounds. The funeral home didn’t want to pay for more than two attendants on duty, so I quit.

I didn’t know where to get my next job. How could I leave my baby all day to work? She had only one parent. If I was gone all day, it would be like she didn’t have any. Factory jobs were out. There was no flexibility. Working 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. meant she’d wake every day to spend the day with someone else. The 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift meant I’d never get to tuck her in. The 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift meant she’d never get to sleep at home.

I applied for jobs, but I had few skills. I couldn’t even type. Buying a car seemed impossible, so I borrowed my dad’s. When you’re a single parent, it’s hard to dream alone. You need money to go with dreams. Other than having a baby, my life was bankrupt. That’s how I ended up with those papers in my hand.

Officially the document was called an application for Aid to Dependent Children. But in my small town, we called it what it was: welfare. I debated what to do with the 32-page form. Going on welfare seemed so much easier than finding a job and day care that wouldn’t eat up every dollar. With welfare, I would also get medical care for me and my daughter. It seemed like the responsible thing to do.

But every time I tried to sign my name to the forms, I couldn’t. I would have to legally name her dad as the father so they could go after him for child support. I didn’t even name him on her birth certificate. In the end, the real reason I didn’t sign the form was this: I was afraid if I ever got on welfare, I’d never get off. Welfare is a tricky benefit. It starts out as a lifeline to freedom that can become a rope that keeps you in bondage. Any time you want to earn any extra money by working, you risk losing all your benefits and health care.

It’s hard to find work in a small town when you don’t have a car. There’s no bus or subway, no public transportation. Just personal transportation. You’re limited by how far your two feet can carry you to and from work. The funeral home a mile away was walkable. I didn’t want to go back to picking up bodies, but they offered me a job doing office work, so I took it.

I fell in love there. Not with the job, but with the boss. Bad idea, but desperation does funny things to you. It can make a raging alcoholic look like Prince Charming. I fell in love with everything he had: success, money, and happiness. He owned a gorgeous home. He wore suits to work. He ate out at restaurants. So he drank a little. Okay, a lot. Blackouts, driving drunk, missing work.

In the months we dated, I made it my job to save him. If I could save him, I could have my happily-ever-after. I would make him want me so much he wouldn’t want to drink. We spent hours in deep conversations that he never remembered. We made plans to meet at 8 p.m. and he would call at 10 p.m. from a bar saying he was on his way. When the bars closed at 2 a.m. he would finally show up too drunk to stand and then pass out on the couch.

Finally, my friends who knew about Al-Anon told me I needed to detach with love, to stop counting the number of drinks he had, and to stop counting on him to change. There was no future with him, but there was no future without him. I loved his home. It had a breakfast nook and a big porch and bedrooms for all the imaginary kids I fantasized we would one day have. Before I could leave la-la land, though, he left me.

By then my daughter was a toddler. She was growing up even if I wasn’t. I finally saved enough money to move out of my parents’ house and into an apartment two blocks away from them. It was scary to depend on that meager paycheck for the $210 rent and the utilities. Plus, it was my first time on my own. I had never gone away to college, never lived in a dorm, never had to manage my own life.

All the pieces of my life that had shattered when I became pregnant were starting to fall into place. Every six months I moved to a better-paying job. I found new female friends, including a woman who took me on a retreat to help me get my life on track. There a priest advised me to change the pattern I had with men. I never got around to it. Two weeks later, I was in love.

David was six foot something, drove a Mazda RX-7, wore designer clothes, and didn’t drink. He was a teenager emotionally, but so was I. One day he showed up with a souped-up Corvette and I drove 130 mph down the highway. We took off for weekends on a whim, with my mom stuck watching my daughter.

David sent me flowers, bought me clothes, and took me on vacations. He had money to blow all the time. When he blew it on me it was fine; when he blew it elsewhere, I got angry. I didn’t know that it wasn’t his money; it was his parents’. After one vacation, the credit card company sent someone to his house to cut up the credit cards.

David was going to college for free on government aid. He was skipping classes to play poker and ride his motorcycle. I worked long hours at jobs that paid little. He drove a fancy car while I drove a used bright orange Ford Fiesta I bought for $2,300, every single dollar of which I had saved. It was held together with the duct tape and gutter seal my dad put around the windows.

My future? David was it. I wanted to finish my degree, own a house, have a family. Marriage to him would make all that possible. When we got engaged, the diamond was as big as my fantasy. I had it all.

I lost it two months later. While I was out trying on wedding dresses, he was sleeping with other women. The only thing worse than finding out he was cheating on me was finding out at a bowling alley. He had been acting strangely for days, so I bluntly asked, half joking, “What, are you cheating on me?” When he didn’t answer, I stormed away. Then I decided, No, I’m not going home to boo-hoo all alone. I went back to him, yelled at him, even grabbed him by the collar and ripped his designer shirt. I didn’t like him, but worse, I didn’t like the person I had become.

It was over. I gave him back the ring and told him to give it to me when he wanted me and me alone. I never got that ring back. I got something better.

I got angry. Angry at him. Angry at me. Angry enough to get my own act together.

I was 26. It was time to grow up. When I broke up with him, I broke up with the person I no longer wanted to be. It was time to take charge of me and my life.

Without David, the future was blank. It was up to me to write something on it. It was time to own my life. First, I returned everything he left in my house—including the Playboy magazines he had hidden in my dresser. I exchanged the sexy miniskirt and slinky black dress he bought me for sensible skirts and slacks I could wear to a career job. Then I got a college catalog and opened it. I had no idea what I wanted to be or do, but I did know this: I wanted to be happy.

That’s when the world opened up. Everything in my life changed when I decided to change me. I didn’t need to find the right person. I needed to become the right person.