North Carolina: They're Home for Christmas

By MICHAEL RILEY CHARLOTTE

Brandon and Nicole Harden drew a poster together at school that captures the rough journey they have taken together this year. On one side is a picture of a skull with knives stabbing through it. "This is bad," they wrote, "so never have a bad holiday or a bad birthday or other bad days." On the flip side is a heart, a promise of better days.

A lot of good hearts have helped give the Harden children a real Christmas this year. But six months ago, when their mother Tamey left them in Poplar Bluff, Mo., to search for work elsewhere, the children wondered if the holidays would ever come again. When they joined her in Charlotte, N.C., Tamey had still not found a home. At first the clan lived in cramped motel rooms, then in a homeless shelter for families. But now Tamey, her boyfriend Bobby Warren and the children, 7 and 10, have an apartment, a tree ringed with presents, and a vision of their lives that hard work and good luck delivered just in time for Christmas.

When Tamey and Bobby set out last spring for the prosperous Sunbelt city, they hoped they could make a new life for their family. Though Bobby found a job at a local cafeteria, they lost their place to live and soon were out on the street. For a while they slept in a parking lot in their 1978 Buick LeSabre, until the police shooed them away. Then they spent some nights in Park Road Park, sneaking in about midnight after the park ranger left and departing by dawn before he returned. They hid blankets and pillows in the bushes and slept on a picnic table under a streetlight, where the mosquitoes weren't so bad. They took showers with a five-gallon water jug and washed up in the bathrooms, one standing guard for the other. Bobby shaved using the car's broken rearview mirror, and they washed clothes in the sink. "There's no reason you can't be clean if you can find a bathroom," notes Tamey. But they could improvise for only so long, and on the Fourth of July they finally hit bottom. For two days they had not eaten: after the picnickers left, they scavenged through the garbage cans for food, angry that one large group had taken their trash with them.

"You can get down," says Bobby, "but you don't have to stay there." The next day Tamey found a job running a cash register at Hardee's. Soon they had enough money to move into some cheap motels on a seedy avenue of used-car dealerships, pawn-shops and nightclubs. Within weeks they sent for the kids, who showed up the day before Nicole's 10th birthday. As she stepped out of the car at 5 a.m., Nicole took one look at the decrepit motel and asked, "Where are we going to live, Mom?" Tamey's response: "Here." Her daughter shrugged her shoulders, thinking they would move to a house the next day. "But we didn't," Nicole recalls, "because we didn't have one."

Motel life might have soured their souls. The children watched television all day, and slept on the floor or shared a single bed. They ate lunch meat from a cooler, or cooked fried chicken on some electric skillets and a hot plate they bought from a street person. Brandon once tripped over a shoe and burned his hand on hot oil in the skillet. He sobbed for an hour, but Tamey did not think the burn was bad enough to justify calling an ambulance. She was worried about the cost.

Finally the family, unable to save enough money for a deposit on an apartment, moved into Plaza Place, emergency transitional housing for families in Charlotte. "A lot of things run through your mind when you don't have a place to live," says Tamey. "You wonder how did you get this way? How did this happen?" The kids felt the pain too. Brandon, a bright child with a sharp mind, hungered for attention and grew angry at times. Without any peers, Nicole, a pretty girl with a sweet smile and a quick wit, was adrift and alone. They had no friends, no neighborhood, no grandmother and little reason for hope.

Then the year brought its first gift: Tamey learned about A Child's Place, an innovative transitional school in downtown Charlotte that offers homeless children stability and security as well as a place to learn. The Hardens impressed executive director Debbie McKone. "I'm amazed at the elasticity of their existence," she says, "and how well they get by on what they have to get by on."

^ Then their good fortune multiplied. Last month an anonymous donation from a local church gave the clan enough money to rent a furnished apartment on Charlotte's southside. Nicole and Brandon still share a bed, but this time it's a double. They have enrolled at Montclaire Elementary, where Nicole is turning into a math whiz. Brandon, who has befriended every kid in class, is proud of his creative writing. But he is proudest of his new home. "I have my own room, a dresser where I keep my clothes," says he. "I got blinds and a teddy bear."

The children's original Christmas tree, a dying cedar sapling adorned with construction paper ornaments, sits on the dining table. But there is a new tree in the room, an artificial one that cost a hefty $13.99 and stands as the centerpiece of the tiny living room. Bobby's rich tenor voice bounces off the beige walls, bare except for a few Christmas decorations, in a jazzy version of White Christmas. "We'll have Christmas anyway. It'll be better next year," he says. The family is still only a paycheck away from homelessness, but they have acquired some valuable lessons. "I used to look at homeless people on the street and think, 'Man, what a drunk bum,' " says Bobby. "But shoot, man, you never know." It's made Nicole want to stay in school. "I should have a job," she says, "so I can grow up and be what I want to be and have a house to live in."

The Hardens, of course, are the rare exceptions to a hard rule. They are safe and together, in a place of their own. Most homeless children will spend this holiday watching TV in a shelter or a rundown motel -- if they are even that lucky. When Christmas is over, there will still be no end of work to be done, and a crying need for miracles.