A story of survival - Afro-American woman's life of adversity

Jill Bullock is stepping high these days, and as she walks jauntily into the lobby of the office building where she works, several brothers turn their heads to check out this fine sister. What they see--a tall, cinammon-brown, conservatively dressed, pretty woman with a "brick" body and an unmistakable aura of self-confidence--they obviously like. The 29-year-old single mother of three smiles at their enthusiasm, but inside she's a little uneasy. "In the last year I've lost 50 pounds by following a very strict died and by training with weights. I saw losing weight as a way of getting control of my life, and now I've started polishing my nails and getting my hair done too. I take better care of myself. The attention from men feels funny; it's a little scary," says Bullock, with a laugh that translates as "Sometimes scary can be nice."

African-American single mothers often have bleak prospects for enjoying the bounty that appears accessible to so many other Americans, but Bullock is one sister who's determined to have her turn at grabbing the brass ring. She's thrilled that after 11 years of attending school part-time, last May she graduated from La Salle University in Philadelphia with a degree in communications. Like most single mothers, she doesn't have a lot of money, but there is more of it than she's ever had before. I've learned to be a better manager," she says. She's gratified that her sons, Clinton, 13, and Andre, 8, and her daughter, Floricia, 4, are healthy, emotionally stable and bright. "If I'm going to be late from work, I call home and tell my eldest son to cook," she says proudly. "I've raised my kids to be independent and to have goals. They know that even if I have to scrub floors, they will get to become what they want to be."

Bullock has her own dream that she's actively pursing. "I've started my own film-production company," she says with assurance, adding tha she minored in film while at La Salle. "I've already gotten my stationery and my tax ID, and I've been meeting with producers to try to bring my story to the screen." And she has another objective, one she speaks of in a shy whisper. "I want to fall in love," she confesses. "I've never been in love before. In the past, everytime I've even gotten close to falling in love I've broken off the relationship. Now I'm emotionally ready to handle love."

Her manner poised, her speech articulate, Bullock appears to be the kind of woman who never knew or expected anything other than success. And yet most of her life has in fact been filled with poverty, violence and anguish. Bullock was going nowhere in a downward spiral so fast she seemed destined to crash. How she finally reversed her direction and save herself wasn't about a smooth U-turn on a superhighway. Her journey was about struggle--about creating her own green lights, stop signs and road maps, about learning how to accept directions, but ultimately about taking control of her life and her destiny. Faith has been her guidepost.

For as long as Bullock could remember, there had always been violence in her small row house in a working-clas neighborhood in West Philadelphia. As a child she witnessed horrible fights between her mother and her father, an unemployed alcoholic, and says she was beaten "with everything from a shoe to a broomstick, a pan and an extension cord."

After Bullock's parents separated, her father didn't visit or send money to the family, and she remembers missing him and crying for him. Her mother, restricted by a limited education and hard-pressed to support her family, worked long hours at low-paying jobs and was often on welfare. "Sometimes there was no food, or we ate oatmeal three times a day," Bullock recalls, "but my mother always made sure we looked nice, and she sent us to church."

By the time she was in elementary school, Bullock didn't like herself very much. She says, "I was fat and children teased me a lot." Still, she excelled in school, particularly writing, and won several poetry contests, though no one seemed to notice or encourage her. "I beame a loner," she says. She spent her time dreaming of the wonderful career she'd have one day. In the midst of her reverie, a nightmare ripped through her life like a bullet destined to kill her innocence.

When she was 11 years old, Bullock used to spend weekends with her cousins. Her heavy, developed figure made her appear much older than she was, and a 16-year-old friend of the family began escorting her to the movies. "We called ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend, but we didn't even kiss. We just held hands for three months," recalls Bullock.

One weekend when she and the boy were alone in her cousin's house watching television in the basement, the innocent romance turned ugly. "He told me that he was tired of holding hands," she says. Pushing her down on the bed, the boy shoved his fist over her mouth, then twisted her arm behind her back so that she couldn't move. Bullock tried to scream, but no sound came out. Mute with terror, she watched the boy unzip his pants and yank down her shorts and panties. "I knew what he was trying to do," says Bullock, "I just didn't know it was called rape." Please God, make him stop, she prayed. The burning between her legs subsided after a few moments, but her feelings of loss of the last vestigers of her girlhood haunted her for years. She says sadly, "All I knew was that he was taking something I didn't want to give."

After her attacker lef, Bullock cleaned herself up. "I was too afraid to tell anyone. I thought it was my fault. I was praying that I wasn't pregnant. I wanted the nightmare to end."

But the nightmare continued. The next day she was doubly traumatized when she learned that her rapist had shot himself in the head. She felt relieved that the boy couldn't hurt her again, but his death only intensified Bullock's emotional burden. Like the needle of broken speedometer, her life began to veer crazily out of control. "I cried all the time. My grades went down. I began smoking and drinking and planning my suicide, because I thought I was pregnant and I was afraid of my mother." Fortunately, her period came on before she could swallow the bottle of sleeping pills she had purchased. Determined that no man would ever overpower her again, Bullock began to study karate and attempted to put the rape out of her mind.

Bullock fantasized about a world where she was safe and protected, where she could be a little girl again, but where she lived, childhood wasn't allowed. Bullocks was 14 when her mother's lover moved in. This man, whom her mother later married, was by far the most abusive in a string of violent men her mother chose. Bullock, a minor, couldn't escape his abuse, and she soon learned that her mother's lover's mistreatment wasn't limited to physical abuse.

"One day when we were alone in the house, he grabbed me and kissed me. I pushed him away and said "I'll tell my mother.' He told me, 'She won't believe you.'"

She didn't. That night Bullock packed her bag and lef. "I had a friend from my martial-arts school, and he said I could stay with him," she says. She thought of 27-year-old John (this and the following names are pseudonyms) as a platonic friend, but she soon became caught in a sexual relationship that she never sought. To make matters worse, Bullock skipped two months of school during her tenth-grade year. John introduced her to marijuana and speed.

When she found him with another woman, a dismayed Bullock returned home and was shocked to find her mother visibly pregnant. She returned to school and spent her time at home reading and writing poetry, trying to ignore the chaos around her. After a few months, her baby sister's cries were added to the din of her dysfunctional household.

Her mother and stepfather moved to Florida, and Bullock remained in Philadelphia with an aunt. "I was angry at the world and hated everybody because of the way my life had been. I broke curfew, did poorly in school. I was into reefer, speed and drinking heavily in bars."

Her aunt, tired of the drugs and drinking, kicked her out, and Bullock went to her family in Florida. Because the discipline of karate had given her some sense of control over her life, she looked for another karate school, enrolled and tried to make the best of a bad situation. But her home life proved chaotic, and she ended up running away again.

For two harrowing weeks, Bullock lived on the streets of Orlando, begging for food and money. She considered robbing people. Hungry and dirty, she thought she had hit rock bottom. But she still had a long fall ahead of her. Before she could embark on a life of crime, Robert, a man she knew from karate school, told her she could live with him and his aunt. "I knew from my last experience that a man wasn't going to take care of me without getting something in return, so I was prepared for a sexual relationship." She wasn't prepared for the consequences.

Within two months she was pregnant. "Robert was very happy and asked me to marry him." But first he told Bullock that he had to leave the city to make some money. Before he left, he took her to stay with his cousins in rural DeLand, Florida. "This was the most poverty-stricken place I'd ever seen. His cousins lived in a shack that had only cold running water. I had to sleep on the floor with rats, and they could only afford to feed me once a day."

When several months had passed, Robert's female cousin demanded money from Bullock for her keep. "I started picking watermelons for 12 hours a day for five dollars a week," she remembers. Weakened by her advancing pregnancy and by malnutrition. Bullock became ill and passed out in the fields. That night she swalloed a bottle of aspirin and prayed for death. Instead she fell asleep and woke up vomiting. One of Robert's cousins took her to a local hospital, where her stomach was pumped.

A desperate Bullock called her mother and learned that she had left her stepfather and returned to Philadelphia. Heartened by that news, Bullock headed north.

"My mother cried when she saw me because I'd lost so much weight. At five months pregnant, I had my first prenatal care," says Bullock. Her son was born nearly two months prematurely and was placed on a respirator. Doctors told her that he wouldn't live, but instead of dying, the infant got stronger and his weight increased. "I called him my miracle baby," Bullock says simply. "He became my reason for living."

Bullock encountered an old friend who urged her to give up drugs and alcohol, return to school and make a better life for her child. Inspired, Bullock fervently prayed that her life would take a new turn. Now a welfare recipient, Bullock put her 9-month-old son in day care and returned to high school, determined to finish eleventh and twelfth grade in one year. Eliminating speed and reefer was relatively easy, but when she gave up alcohol she was sick with withdrawal symptoms for nearly a month. In the meantime her stepfather returned, and so did the violence. Studying was difficult because of the constant tumult in the house, but Bullock discovered she had a granite will. "I used to put on earphones and play Barry Manilow so I wouldn't hear my mother and stepfather fighting. I rocked my son to sleep while I studied." Her diligence paid off. That June she graduated with honors.

Armed with a high-school diploma, she enrolled in a community college. She'd always dremaed of being a writer, and now she began tentatively to inch toward that goal, loading up on English and communications courses. At the same time she married a young man who worked with her on the school paper and soon gave birth to another son. This marriage ended after a year because her husband became violent.

In 1982, refusing to let the dissolution of her marriage became a permanent setback and buoyed by her academic success, Bullock sent out letters to ten different newspapers in Philadelphia, applying for an internship. To her dismay, every one of the papers rejected her applications.

But one rejections was written personally. Frank Allen, who was then the bureau chief in the Philadelphia bureau of The Wall Street Journal, took the time to tell Bullock why she wasn't qualified. A thoughtful, modest man, Allen likes to downplay his role in Bullock's life. "I got a lot of letters asking for jobs, but in terms of grammar, Jill's was one of the worst I'd ever received," he remembers. "I knew there was a gap between her expectations and her skills. I thought she would never be suited for a position in journalism until she improved her English. I told her that if she wanted further discussion, I'd be willing to talk with her. I didn't really expect to hear from her."

When Allen met Bullock, his opinion of her didn't change. "Her grammar and also her way of presenting herself showed deficiencies. She had a lack of energy and positive force in her voice. She came across on the phone and in person as sour and downcast. She mumbled a lot and didn't project with vigor. These were all obstacles to her success."

Yet, for all the minuses, Allen detected one major plus that intrigued him. "I saw in Jill a lack of despair.

"I dug up a ninth-grade grammar and spelling book and I copied exercises and mailed them to her. She'd complete them and send them back, and I'd correct them."

Bullock is quick to say that her alliance with Allen was pivotal in her moving forward. "Frank told me that I needed more education because the public school I'd gone to hadn't done a good job of preparing me for a job in the real world. He told me to read the newspaper every day, and he recommended other books. I had to have a dictionary next to me as I read," she recalls with a laugh. She admits that she was initially suspicious; she had never known a man who merely wanted to help her and expected nothing in return. Despite her misgivings, Bullock began meeting with Allen twice a month. "He taught me how to dress and speak, and he checked things I wrote. At times I was quite despondent; sometimes I rewrote things ten times, but he told me, "I know that you're going to make it; you just need help. You have what I look for in every employee: the three D's: determination, discipline and dedication.'"

Still, her progress was too slow for Bullock. In an effort to complete college more quickly, she joined the army, but had to leave when her mother became ill and child care fell through. She was inconsolable.

In the midst of this down period, Bullock met a man. The wrong man. The marriage that resulted was a two-year disaster, replete with physical abuse. She also gave birth to a daughter.

Bullock believes that God sent her the support necessary to improve her life. Praying every step of the way, she realized that she needed practical skills, so she enrolled in a local business school and graduated in 1985 with an associate degree in business. Then she returned to a community college and finished in 1987. The summer she graduated, Frank Allen hired her as a Wall Street Journal news assistant, which enabled her to write for the paper regularly. She knew she couldn't become a full-time reporter until her writing was stronger and she had a four-year degree.

Bullock entered La Salle University, juggling courses, single-motherhood and the part-time Journal job, working her way toward full-time reporter status. "Things fell apart a lot. One time one of my sons was in the hospital with a virus. I was holding his hand and studying at the same time. My writing was still weak, but I finally got to the point where instead of ten rewrites. I only had to do one. Everybody had to do one," says Bullock with a laugh. Her ultimate triumph was when she received her diploma. She says, "My graduating from La Salle taught my kids that they have no excuse for failure."

Bullock's life is sweeter now, but there are still challenges around each bend. In 1990, after she had been at The Wall Street Journal for two years, the Philadelphia news bureau closed and she was unemployed. In the wake of two marriages with abusive partners, there is no man in her life. But she is both philosophical and pragmatic about her past and optimistic about her future. She has begun to accept motivational speaking engagements, is writing a book about her life and plans to take graduate courses in filmmaking at Temple University. She is also working to establish her production company, J. Monique Production. What she tells other sisters is what she teels herself: "No matter what your situation, believe in a higher being; faith is something to draw on."

There is a sign posted in Bullock's bedroom wall, a reminder for her and her children and for any weary traveler stranded on life's highways determined to move forward: IF IT IS TO BE, IT'S UP TO ME. Bullock swears those words move the boulders in the road.

Bebe Moore Campbell is an ESSENCE contributing writer.

COPYRIGHT 1991 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group