I WAS TALKING TO THIS GUY I know about how he grew up in a poor family. I didn’t know him that well and he was also really handsome, so I immediately turned the conversation into a competition. This is how I deal with handsome men I’d like to bone. I become aggressively weird and freak them out. That’s my move. Anyway, he said, “My family was really poor. Really poor!” I, having played the “my family’s so poor we can’t afford to pay attention” game many times in my life, countered with “Oh, yeah? Your family ever wait in line for government cheese?” Then I smiled as though that memory were a shiny trophy. He made a noise like duh! and rolled his eyes. “Of course, man! We were severely poor.” He rolled his eyes at me and called me “man”? Clearly, he was into me, but I also realized that I was losing this poor-off. My parents were poor, but I don’t think I would’ve categorized us as “severely poor.” My only choice was to become even more aggressive. “Oh, God. What? Did your family have to live in a fucking car or something?” With his face showing the appropriate amount of distaste for what I’d so flippantly asked, he answered, “Actually, we stayed in a shelter.” That’s it. I was officially beat. My family has never stayed in a shelter. I thought about bringing up the BCW and foster-home business, but that wouldn’t have lent anything to the argument. I thought about bringing up having to use food stamps, but shelter beats food stamps. I didn’t know what to say because I’d asked a terrible question and forced a terribly personal and sad answer out of someone I barely knew. So I doubled down on my invasiveness. “Whoa! What was that like?” Why won’t I stop asking questions? He told me about how for Christmas college kids would come to the shelter and hand out toys and candy and stuff. That it was the best day ever. He said that he decided as a kid that when he was an adult and had money he would do the same as those college kids. He’d buy toys and give them out at homeless shelters. I asked if he’d kept his word. He said that he did and still does. I was slain. He won at being poorer than I had been and he won at being a better person than I was. Game over.
My family was poor when I was growing up. Just not shelter poor. But I spent the bulk of my childhood in fear that neither of my parents could afford to raise me.
As an adult, I know I fucked up my childhood. I see I didn’t have to worry about not having enough money. I wish I could have learned from Biggie. He said, “Mo money, mo problems.” And I had none when I was a kid. That means no problems, right?
For Precious, I didn’t yet have a manager. Because it was my first acting job, I made scale, about $2,500 a week. A month after we started shooting, I still hadn’t received a check. Other people were getting their paychecks on set, and I asked where mine was. The production manager said it was at the office and wanted to know if I could wait for it until the following week. My bank account had a negative balance of more than a hundred dollars. I asked the production manager to send someone to get the check for me immediately. A part of me was afraid that I’d be called a bitch. Another part of me was proud for having demanded to be paid on time for all of the work I’d been doing. Sixteen-hour days for weeks and I was broke! I was in the hair-and-makeup trailer when the check arrived. Lee Daniels and the film’s producer, Sarah Siegel-Magness, came in and said, “Gabby, we have something for you.” Sarah was recording us on her iPhone. Lee handed me my first film check, and Sarah screamed, “You’re rich now, baby!” I opened the envelope, and said, “Oh, cool. Thanks.” The check was for $2,500. I most certainly was NOT rich now, and it surprised me that they thought I would be super excited to have worked that hard for so little money. Was it the largest check I’d ever seen with my name on it? YES! But I’d made $1,600 on my best week down at the phone sexery, which was a steady job. I wasn’t able to see that film check as being part of a bigger picture. All I could think about was how the shoot would be over soon and that more than likely I wouldn’t be able to get another acting job until the film came out in a year or so. What was I supposed to do until then? Hoard and worry. The starry-eyed girl I was supposed to be when I opened my first film check that day in the trailer was already dead.