‘God, I’m trying.’ A single mom struggles to cope in the middle of the coronavirus

There’s a little cinnamon sprig tacked up by Devonne Moise’s front door, a gift that a customer tucked into her hand one day as Moise worked the checkout line at Lidl.

“She said it brings prosperity and blessings,” Moise said, “and I’m like, ‘God, we need it.’ ”

That was a few months ago, when the single mom was under so much stress from trying to move her family out of a hotel and into a rental home that she’d cry in private so her five kids wouldn’t hear her.

Moise was finally able to rent a house in West Charlotte in January. She left her job at Lidl and enrolled in a Goodwill training program to get computer skills. It was paying off. She had a conditional offer for a customer service job with a healthcare company.

And then — coronavirus.

Across the Charlotte region and around the country, people like Moise, already struggling mightily to care for her family, are confronting an ever-worsening situation because of the pandemic. Within the span of a week, schools closed, jobs dried up and money became a lot scarcer.

Within the last week, two of Moise’s older kids’ jobs shut down — jobs that she relied on to help pay the bills. A temporary position that Goodwill had offered Moise at one of its retail boutiques while she waited for the healthcare company to hire her was put on hold.

To make matters worse, her landlord said that to extend her short, three-month lease, her rent would rise by $200 a month.

It could be 90 days before Moise’s first day of work in her permanent healthcare job, and she doesn’t know if that will even happen, given the circumstances.

Trouble connecting

On Tuesday, Moise spent the day at the Goodwill Opportunity Campus finishing her final projects before they shuttered. Then she raced to Loaves & Fishes to pick up donated food and hustled to Renaissance STEAM Academy to get a Chromebook, a WiFi hotspot and folders of classwork for her two elementary schoolers, 7-year-old Daniel and Deon’tae, 11.

She got home, and realized all the work she’d picked up for first-grader Daniel was in Spanish, not English, so she ran back to school.

Deon’tae tried to hook up the Chromebook to the WiFi but it wouldn’t connect. Moise’s 18-year-old daughter D’erra, a high school senior, realized she lacked a charger for her school-issued Chromebook and its battery had ran out.

On Wednesday, Moise resumed wrestling with the WiFi, her blood pressure rising with every ding on her cellphone’s Remind app from Deon’tae’s fifth-grade teachers, alerting her to the work he should be doing.

Day three of school being out, and he was already behind.

“I just feel like, God, I’m trying,” she said, standing on the front porch of her three-bedroom ranch home on Wednesday afternoon. Her three youngest kids were sitting on the other side of the wall in the living room that doubles as a bedroom for Daniel and Deon’tae.

“My kids say, ‘Mom, as long as you stay positive, we’ll know it’s OK.’ So I don’t let them see me frustrated,” she said. “But I’m just so tired.”

‘No other option’

Deon’tae is tired too.

With no TV and few toys, social distancing took its toll on Tuesday while mom was finishing up her work at Goodwill.

On Wednesday, he and his mom tried again to connect to the WiFi and had no luck.

He’s a sweet kid with a warm smile. But even he couldn’t contain his frustration as he knelt down at the family’s “humble work station,” as his mom calls it: a panda bear pillow that doubles as a chair, an end table used as a desk. He laid his head down and let out a long sigh.

“If this is not working, then this is it for him, because he doesn’t have anything that’s on paper so all of his assignments have to come through this,” Moise said, pointing to the Chromebook.

“We can’t get to the library because they’re shutting that down. The Goodwill campus is closed, too,” she said. “If you can’t get it in this house, you don’t have another option.”

Hard to stay positive

Right now, so many options seem limited.

Devonne Moise has another phone interview for the job at the healthcare company on Friday, and she’s praying her landlord gives them more time to stay.

Her oldest son Dre’gan, 20, will be looking for temporary work to replace his income from the YMCA, and her oldest daughter, D’Asia, 23, is hanging onto her job at a fitness center, where her bosses told her they’re taking it day by day.

For D’erra, the high school senior and a talented painter, not having her YMCA childcare job means there’s no extra money to buy canvases and paint to get her through this rocky stretch.

“I know that me being able to go to work helps my mom take care of stuff here at home,” D’erra says. “If I can’t work, I can’t help her.”

Saturday is Deon’tae’s 12th birthday, and he lights up when he talks about it. The family is still not sure how they’ll celebrate.

His mom looks up at the cinnamon sprig by the front door, and rubs it as if for good luck. “Prosperity and blessings,” she says.

“It’s so hard to stay positive, to just say, ‘This will get better.’ ”

And on this warm afternoon, they close up the Chromebook, open that front door, and Devonne Moise and her three youngest children walk down the front steps of their house headed to a nearby park, out together for a breath of fresh air.

This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 10:17 AM.