Mom tries to start over after husband’s death
MIAMI (AP) – Life had already hit rock bottom for Yesenia Negron six years ago when she got a phone call from police informing her that her husband was killed in a car accident on Krome Avenue in Homestead.
She was 26 years old at the time, and was left with their 38-day-old daughter, Yadira, their 3-year-old son, Ricardo, and the $20 bill she had in her wallet. He worked construction, she was home caring for the kids, and they were scraping to get by. They had no savings and no insurance.
With nowhere else to turn, Negron moved into a two-bedroom home with her sister at the South Dade Center, a migrant labor camp near the Homestead Air Reserve Base. She got a part-time job working in the fields and potting plants at a nursery for $7 an hour. Little by little, she got back on her feet, her kids were thriving in school, and six years of $5 and $10 bank deposits had grown to $1,955.
But then on Oct. 14, in a bank parking lot, Negron lost it all. Tired of relying on a neighbor for rides and figuring a car could lead to a better job, Negron decided to put a down payment on a $4,000 used car. She withdrew $1,900 from the bank, leaving just enough to keep the account open. As she left the bank, she was robbed by two men who drove off in a blue mini van.
Negron wept in the parking lot, her life savings gone, her dreams squashed.
The nursery doesn’t need her as much in these tough economic times, so she works only a few days a week. She fears she won’t be able to cover her $298 rent or her electric and water bills. Her kids, both A students at Mandarin Lakes K-8 School, don’t ask for much, but the little they do ask for — tickets for Santa’s Enchanted Forest — she can’t give them.
“I feel like I’m drowning, like I’m in a dark cave I can’t climb out of,” Negron said, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I try to smile for the kids, but I can’t. I want to be strong, but I can’t. The kids need and want things, and I can’t provide for them. I’m desperate. God made me poor, and I’ve accepted that I’ll stay poor, but I want a better life for my children.
“Every night, when the kids fall asleep, I spend two hours praying to God, asking him not to abandon me, and not to abandon those two precious children.”
Ricardo, a mature boy who just turned 10 and is in the gifted program, can’t stand to see his mother cry. ‘
“No llores, Mami, no llores (don’t cry, Mami)” he says, stroking her hair and her arm. “You’ll work again, and we’ll have money, and everything will be fine.”
Sitting atop her worn kitchen table is a pill container filled with Zoloft, an anti-depressant.
“I have tried to stop using the medicine, but when I do, I can’t stop crying,” she said. “I just cry, and cry and cry.”
Negron has considered moving back to Mexico, where she has more family, but her children are adamant about staying here.