Barbie I

See Barbara at the Metropolitan Museum of Art telling her story. Barbara is twenty years old, and has two children. Her son is about to turn two years old, her daughter will be four in the fall. Barbara lives with her mother, and cannot receive food stamps on her own because she lives with her mother who gets the food stamps in her name for the whole family. Her mother does not do the shopping. Rather, she spends all day, according to Barbara, sleeping upstairs in her room. Her mother is so depressed that she cannot function, and she treats Barbara terribly. For instance, last week Barbara showed up with pictures of the bruises on her arms that she said happened when her mother attacked her. She is thinking of moving into a women’s shelter with her two children.

The father of Barbara’s children spent several months in prison for attacking her brother over an argument about how Barbara’s mother turned off the gas in the house. Her mother could not afford to pay the bills. Because they were living without heat this winter, Barbara said her children were sick all the time. She explained, “We practically lived in the emergency room.”