When the filming was done, I had made a bit more than $30,000 before taxes. I think. Coupled with the income I’d made as a phone sex operator for the bulk of the year, I had earned more than $50K. My mother and I got our taxes done at the same office, and our tax guy announced to us both that I was now the “head of household.” I had made more than double what my mom had. Head of household was not a term I’d heard before. I didn’t like it. My mom was still a subway singer, and I was now the star of a movie who’d had a steady job in addition for most of the year. I should’ve seen it coming, but I was faced with the same feeling I had when I was told that the light bill was in my name. Too much responsibility! What’s more, I felt guilty for having outearned my mother, an official adult in my eyes. I was just some dumb phone-hoe child who had tripped and fallen into a starring film role. Later that year, while still waiting for Precious to be released, I was bored and broke enough to want to get a job. After shooting, I didn’t go back to phone sex—while I was away filming, the company had gone out of business. Also, yeah, right! Like I’m going to go from shooting a movie back to pretending to slap myself in the face while some guy pretends he’s ejaculating on double D tits. I was officially too fancy for that. (You are, too, by the way. But if they’re your tits and you’re into it, do your thang, boo.) My mom said that I could go back to school or just hang out while waiting for the release. She said she’d take care of the bills for me; I think she thought that once I was rich and famous I would pay her back in spades. But I handled my bills and portion of the rent with that $50K. It was going fast. Though I had made $50K, I really had only about $10K in my bank account.
Months after Precious premiered at the Sundance Film Festival but months before it would premiere to the world, I was experiencing fame without being rich. That’s got to be the worst thing ever! I started to get invited to premieres and parties, but I had no fancy clothes to wear, no hair or makeup artist to help, no cute clutch purses for the red carpets. And no limo—I was taking a train or bus to every event. None of that was going to stop me from going, though. The first big Hollywood premiere I was officially invited to was Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail. Fancy! Tyler Perry had just signed on as executive producer of Precious, which meant I’d be meeting Tyler Perry and Oprah! The premiere was at the Loews Theater at Lincoln Center, which had been on my bus route between home and school. Plenty of times I’d pressed my nose up against the window to see if I could see any stars. Now I was going to be a part of the party!
The morning of the premiere I woke up to a commotion in the living room. My mother opened my bedroom door in tears. There were two men in our apartment, the front door was wide open, and they were attaching some sort of notice to it. We were being evicted! Ahmed was looking over some court document, and my mom was crying hysterically and telling the men it was a mistake and begging them to not do this to us and begging me to do something. Me. Everything was moving slowly but very fast at the same time. Me?
My mom doesn’t cry much. She’s generally collected, levelheaded. I’ve been the crier in the family. I was always too sensitive. Easily hurt and always afraid of everything. A catastrophic thinker. Sometimes my mom would quote a children’s song to me: “It’s all right to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you.” But mostly she would encourage me to stop, to get over my feelings. In this moment she was panic-stricken and looking to me to be the adult. I wasn’t crying, but I was far from being the rational parent my mother suddenly needed me to be. “Gabourey, call Lee! Call Sarah!” She wanted me to call my rich friends. These were the last people I’d call. But for some reason she was looking for me to call them so that they could provide . . . advice? Money? A better apartment to be evicted from, maybe? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted her to stop crying. I wanted these men to stop evicting us. I felt terrible for not yet being the kind of rich and famous actress who could afford to buy my family a mansion we wouldn’t be evicted from. With my mom in hysterics, her face wet with tears, begging me to call my rich friends, I just did what she asked. I was head of household, after all.
Sarah and her husband, Gary, both producers of Precious, lived in Denver. While I was waiting around for the film release, Sarah would often fly me out to Denver to spend time with her and her family, and spoil me with gifts. She never wrote me a check and I never asked her to, but she and Gary were very sweet to me. I was also the lead actor in their film. I was a business expense and an investment. Precious would eventually make millions of dollars for the producers. Our relationship was personal and it was business. I wasn’t na?ve about that. Even as I dialed, I still didn’t know what the use of calling was except to embarrass the shit out of me. I couldn’t ask Sarah to pay my family’s rent. I never would. Accepting a laptop from her as a birthday gift was one thing, but asking her to support my grown-ass family was out of the question. On top of that, not paying the rent wasn’t even what was having us evicted. It turned out to be a clerical error; a check wouldn’t have fixed that. But my mom was still crying, and I had a premiere to go to that night. I was going to meet Tyler Perry and Oprah.
I left a message. Maybe I was crying by then. I don’t know. I packed my dress for the premiere in a bag along with shoes and a brush for my hair. I was going to go get my hair done with my friend Crystal that day, so I called and asked her if I could spend the night at her house after the premiere that she was not invited to.
In a few minutes Sarah called me back. Our conversation was short and quiet. I wasn’t crying.
“Gabby . . . what’s going on over there?”
“Um . . . something happened. We’re being evicted.”
“Why? How much is your rent?”
“I . . . no. It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“. . .”
“Did you tell Lee?”
“No . . . I don’t know why I called you . . . We’re going to that premiere later.”
“Gabby. You have to tell Lee.”
“. . . ”
“Gabby. What do you need from me?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. My mom just won’t stop crying. She asked me to call you. I don’t know what you can do! It’s not even money! I don’t know what’s happening!”
“Gabby. You have to get out of there!”
“I know! The man said an hour!”
“Do you need a hotel?”
“No. I’m going to my friend’s house. I have to go.”
I hung up. A few minutes later as we were all about to leave the house, Lee called. Talking to Sarah was one thing; she was my friend. Lee still felt like the Wizard of Oz except I couldn’t ask him for anything. I wouldn’t even know what to ask. I didn’t want him to know that my family was being evicted, but he knew. I was ashamed. Our conversation was shorter and even quieter than the one with Sarah.
“Gabby?”
“. . .”
“Gabby.”
“. . . Yeah?” (Now I was crying.)
“What’s happening?”
“Um . . . we’re kinda being evicted?”
“Precious . . . What happened to all of your money?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t know why I called Sarah. My mom! She has to go to court. I don’t know.”
Neither of these conversations accomplished whatever my mother thought they should have, if she even knew what that was herself. I was disappointed and angry at her for letting this happen to us. Maybe the clerical error wasn’t her fault, but it was her fault that . . . rationally speaking, I wasn’t sure why I was mad at her, what to blame her for. So I turned the anger on myself. Here was my chance to save my family from poverty, and I wasn’t ready to be the hero. I was twenty-four years old, and I’d made more money than my mom that year, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand up with my family standing on my shoulders. I wasn’t ready for head of household.