Single mom often must choose between family time and paying bills
Stacie Ayers wakes up at 5 a.m. She lies in bed in the dark. The four-bedroom house north of town is quiet. Everyone else is asleep. She doesn’t have to start her day for another hour, but she can never sleep through the night. She worries about unpaid bills, how she will make up the hours missed at work because of the Thanksgiving holiday and whether her oldest daughter will go to school today. She lets the minutes pass while she decides whether to get up and do laundry or stay in bed until it’s time to wake the kids at 6 a.m. Most days she stays in bed. It’s the only quiet time she’ll have all day.
Stacie is one of an estimated 14,500 people in Boone County, according the U.S. Census Bureau, who are living below the poverty level. She works three jobs to provide for her three children and she sometimes jokes about working one job for each child. The pressure of being a single mother and sole provider sometimes overwhelms her. She would often like to pull the covers over her head and stay in bed, but her love for her children motivates her each morning to go through the same routine.
Alexis is 9 and in the fourth grade at Parkade Elementary. Chris just turned 14. He’s an eighth-grader at Jefferson Junior High. Samantha is a senior at Hickman High School, but Stacie doesn’t know if she’s going to school today. Always testing her independence and her mother’s patience, Samantha has been in and out of the house since September, when she turned 18.
After making sure Alexis and Chris have had breakfast and the ingredients for dinner are ready, Stacie drives the kids to school in their minivan with four new tires. She was planning to buy the tires one by one, but she spent the money she had saved for Christmas presents on tires when the mechanic told her they weren’t safe to drive on.
They live too close to the schools to qualify for bus service, but they live too far for Stacie to allow them to walk.
Hard work, no benefits
Stacie tries as hard as she can to schedule her life around her children. Chris has to be at school at 7:45. Alexis’ class doesn’t start until 8:50. Stacie’s first job starts at 8:30, so she drops Alexis at a before-school program called Adventure Club.
Stacie works at the Bread Basket Café in downtown Columbia. She prepares the restaurant to open by cutting vegetables, slicing bread, making soups and doing any of a dozen other jobs. When the other employees arrive at 10 a.m., some have just rolled out of bed. They find Stacie with coffee brewed and a smile on her face. Her short, black hair is pulled into a frizzy ponytail and tucked under her tan visor, a part of the work uniform.
She is the Energizer bunny. She can’t stand still. She works fast and puts sandwiches together before a customer has time to finish ordering. When there is no work to be done, she finds some. Dishes can always be washed. Floors can always be swept. Mayonnaise containers can always be refilled.
Stacie is 5 feet 3 inches tall and thin, but her presence in a room is powerful. She laughs loudly and makes jokes. There is one thing Stacie does not tolerate: laziness. She can’t understand why anyone else would want to stand around rather than work. A co-worker has been testing her patience all day. He takes an order then stands and waits for no one.
“You could go through the dining room,” she says, not trying to disguise the motherly ire in her voice.
He reluctantly takes a rag from a soapy bucket of water and goes to wash tables.
Stacie shakes her head and adds lettuce to the sandwich she’s making.
She works at the Bread Basket until 3:45. She works less than 40 hours a week, so she has no benefits. Because her other jobs are part time, she receives no benefits from them either. She has no health insurance. The kids all have Medicaid, which pays for health, vision and dental care. Medicaid pays some of Stacie’s medical expenses, but it doesn’t pay for her dental visits. She hasn’t been to the dentist in a year. The recent Medicaid cuts that took effect in July have Stacie worried that she might soon lose all of her medical care.
The kids get out of school before she finishes work. Alexis either goes home with a friend or stays at Adventure Club. Chris does the same or sometimes walks home.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday Stacie has to be at her second job at a hospital by 4:30 p.m. After making sure someone will be watching Alexis, and Chris knows what to fix for dinner, she drives to the hospital where she delivers trays to patients’ rooms until 7:30 p.m.
Bills pile up
For two months after getting the job at the Bread Basket, she worked both jobs five days a week. The extra money was great, but she didn’t have enough time with her kids. As much as she hated to give up any of the money, she had to cut back on hours. The hospital pays almost $2 more per hour, but she couldn’t get more than three hours per day, so now she works three days a week at the hospital.
“The most important thing is the money. Get the bills paid, the kids taken care of, and get them what they need. I don’t feel I ever stop, not even when I sleep.”
Stacie makes between $1,100 and $1,200 a month. That’s not always enough to pay the bills. Her ex-husband was ordered to pay $600 each month in child support when they divorced. The payments, which were always sporadic, stopped coming altogether in February. First, she stopped paying the cable bill. Next, she couldn’t pay the phone bill. Then, the cell phone was shut off. She knows that when a bill can’t be paid, there’s little she can do. When the collection agencies call, she sets up payment plans.
When she can’t find ways to cut spending to pay the bills, she works extra hours. The 10-hour days she worked when she was working both jobs helped pay to have the phone service restored. There’s still no long distance. She went to the Department of Social Services for help with utility bills. They helped pay part so she wouldn’t have her gas turned off. It also helped so she could pay the other bills that month. Another government agency pays part of her rent, so she can afford the house so the kids can have their own bedrooms.
Making time to be mom
Even with all of the bills piling up, she wants to make sure the kids are happy. For Chris’ birthday last month, she bought him a new bike. She charged the bike to her credit card. The excitement on his face when she gave it to him was enough to make her forget about the cost.
Most of the time, though, Stacie finds ways to have fun with the kids without spending a lot of money. They take trips to the mall not to buy but to look and get out of the house. In the summer they go to the park together. Sometimes they attend free Saturday matinees. The most important thing is to just spend time together.
Quality time with Alexis includes weekly homework time. She is assigned a packet of homework every Monday. Because Stacie gets home early on Tuesdays, that is homework day. A single mom has to learn some tricks of parenting by convenience. Alexis gets a snack and sits down at the kitchen table. They both might be tired. They both might be cranky, but the entire packet is done Tuesday night.
Dating by convenience
Stacie has learned the art of dating by convenience as well. She doesn’t have time to go out. Her social life is mostly limited to time with the kids. She met her boyfriend Michael almost three years ago while buying Sunday breakfast for her kids before she went to her third job at the First Christian Church day care. Breakfast that Sunday was doughnuts at a discount store. Michael, who works at the store, was just finishing his shift. He spotted Stacie and was immediately attracted to her smile. Knowing he might not have another chance, he followed her to the parking lot. She was just getting into her car so he followed her in his. He flashed his light so she would pull over in the parking lot.
They talked from their cars for half an hour before he gave her his number. She called a week later, and they’ve been dating ever since. Both are single parents. Part of the attraction is that they both understand that family has to come first. Stacie married young and isn’t in a hurry to do it again even if it might make her life more convenient. At 18 and just out of high school, she made what she calls the biggest mistake of her life. She married a man 10 years her senior. They’ve been divorced five years and no longer speak.
Leaving the nest
Even before the divorce, the kids helped with the housework a lot, especially Samantha. After the divorce, the burden of running the household often fell on her when Stacie was at work. When she tired of cleaning and cooking and curfews, she partially moved in with her boyfriend. She admits that she and her mom fought because they are so much alike, both strong willed, both independent.
She stops by the house about once a week. Though she’s relieved to be free of responsibility, she misses mom’s Saturday morning breakfasts of biscuits, potatoes, rice, chocolate-chip pancakes, ham, sausage and bacon, a tradition Stacie borrowed from her father. She misses having her mom pay her bills. Mostly, though, she just misses her family.
The walls in the living room are covered with years of family portraits. Stacie looks the same from photo to photo, while the children grow and multiply. At 34, her face is still as smooth as an 18-year-old’s. In fact, strangers regularly mistake her for Samantha’s sister.
“I don’t do nothing. I don’t wear no makeup. God just blessed me.”
Outside, Chris tests his new bike. Alexis is at the Armory with a friend because her homework is done. Samantha curls under a blanket on the overstuffed couch and watches Oprah.
“What would you say if I was engaged?” she asks Stacie.
Stacie laughs. “I’d ask why you wanna do that?”
“Cause I’m ready.”
Another laugh. “If you say so.”
“Cause Jauvon asked me on Halloween.”
There’s no anger on Stacie’s face, just the befuddled smile of a mother watching her daughter become her.
“I think it’s a huge mistake, but if that’s the mistake you want to make, you have to learn from your own mistakes.”
They are almost the same words her own mother said to her when she got engaged, just before she made her wedding dress for her. Now Samantha wants Stacie to look at wedding dresses with her.
“Who’s gonna pay for this? I’m not paying for this. We still have school things to pay for. Senior pictures, graduation stuff.”
The calculations are visible on Stacie’s face. She had thought about quitting one job. The day care is only one day a week, only four hours. It would be nice to have Sundays off, but a job is a bill that gets paid, and for now, the bills keep coming.