How Does She Do It?

Kanti Mani: Finding Her Path to and out of Homelessness

What does the face of the homeless look like?

Does it look like this?

There are many paths to homelessness, and in her lifetime, Kanti Mani has seen many of them -- her own path as well as those of the numerous women who end up at the shelter Kanti once called home.

Her path began half a world away in India, growing up in a solid middle class family. Family in Kanti’s culture extends far beyond the parents and siblings who share a house. It includes cousins and cousins of cousins and friends of cousins and onward. It is a universe that extends around the globe but is as close as a phone that whispers the goings-on of each member of its extended community. It is a place where love and dedication to parents means doing nothing that would cause them shame. It means marrying the man they have chosen for you even if he lives a world away.

Kanti never really thought twice about her arranged marriage. After all, it had worked out well for her sister, and the man her parents had chosen for Kanti was the cousin of her sister’s arranged husband -- family.

Without even the benefit of a current photo beforehand, Kanti celebrated her engagement with her future husband when he came to meet her in India. Her extended family was there to witness the engagement and to send Kanti off to the new world for a new life there.

Kanti (right) at her engagement party with father, mother, sister (behind) and other family

The actual marriage happened within days of her arrival in North Carolina. Kanti had no use for the dress she had carried from India for the occasion. They got married in a courthouse, with her husband’s father and their cab driver for witnesses.

The abuse started that night.

Often it was just emotional, the constant criticisms of her dress, of her cooking, of the way she spoke. But then it became physical, often escalating after her husband had been drinking, which was frequent. So frequent, in fact, that the good job he had presented for himself to Kanti’s parents was gone within weeks of her arrival. “He had a Master’s in computer science. He looked like a pretty stable person with a good job. But a week and a half after I got here his company gave him notice that he had to finish rehab if he wanted to keep his job, and he did not comply with that.”

And then he lost his driver’s license after a DUI conviction. Though she had held a professional position with LG Electronics in India, in her new country with no paperwork to get a job of her own Kanti spent many of her days driving him around and many of her nights in fear.

At first, she suffered the abuse in silence. “I knew that it was not normal, but I didn’t know how to react to it. Being the kind of independent woman I’ve tried to be I didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I wanted to fix it myself.”

But then slowly, carefully, she began to share her situation with family. “My mom and dad were very supportive of my position. My father told me to stay away from him a little bit, but he did not want me to get a divorce. Maybe my husband would find that he would miss me and want to do something to make our life better, but that never happened.” As the situation worsened at home, Kanti became more convinced that this was not something that could be cured with a light dose of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ medicine.

“He was physically abusive. He’d throw stuff at me, push me against a wall. There were so many nights we slept in different rooms and I would have to lock myself in the other bedroom. One time he had a knife in his hand, chasing me.”

She told her cousins and word spread. “There was lots of opposition in my family to leaving him. Divorce is not very common in India. Everyone talks about everyone and there was a lot of pressure on me. So I was worried I would be coerced to get back with him even though that was not what I wanted to do.”

She knew she had to go. Kanti contacted her cousin in Seattle who offered her a place to stay for two weeks. After she bought the airplane ticket she had had just $100 left.

“I had planned on running away but I didn’t know what would happen to him, if he would try to get in the car and go looking for me and get in more trouble. I decided it was best to tell him I’m going to my cousin’s house on the west coast.”

He wouldn’t let her take a suitcase, so she shoved what she could in a garbage bag, the wedding gown brought from India left behind. On the way to the airport she stopped by the Goodwill and spent six of her precious dollars on an old suitcase and emptied the contents of the garbage bag into it.

“When I left he got really mad and his parents were really mad because everyone found out about it and it reflected badly on them. It showed that they had hidden a lot of things they shouldn’t have. At first I was thinking I should support my husband and not share his weaknesses with other people. And then I thought, this is an arranged marriage that everyone was supposed to know about beforehand.”

As Kanti tells me this story I’m struck by the dispassionate recitation of her past, similar to the way one might describe one’s employment history to a recruiter at a job fair. And it occurs to me that this is a story that has been told many times. Undoubtedly recited to the many agencies and care workers she came across once her flight had started.

I also see Kanti, a world away from what is familiar, from the parents and sister who had always been her pillars of support, making choices for herself that she knew would provoke a torrent of criticism and rebuke from the outer circle of family. Having the wisdom to know what she needed to do and the strength and independence to do it.

Where did that come from, I ask. Who were the people in your life who showed you this way? “My mom is pretty strong but I won’t call her independent. She works as a clerk for a public agency, but even for the smallest things she would have to ask my father.  Now that he has gone she has become stronger.”

Whatever its source, this young woman sitting before me exudes poise and self-confidence. She owns her own past without apology and refuses to pass blame to anyone else.

“I figured it was a decision I had made to move out of the relationship. If that meant that I had to live on the streets for a week or two weeks I knew I would do it. I didn’t have the money to go back to India. I couldn’t ask my cousins for the money. It was a choice I had made and I knew I had to face the consequences.”

When I point out that her husband was not her choice, she remains consistent.

“If I wanted not to be married I could have told my parents, and they would have felt bad about it. It could have happened, but I guess that was my choice to follow my parents’ decision.” Looking back it seems like a risky choice to make, but not for Kanti then. After seeing her own sister’s husband chosen by her parents, she had been expecting the same for her.

(young Kanti with father, right)

Plus, there was the promise of America. Kanti’s father was ill and she knew it would be up to her to support her parents and help pay the medical bills. “I anticipated that I would move from a middle-class family in India to a better off family in the United States.  That would allow me to send money that I earn to my family, which would be considered a shame to the girls' family in India."

But things didn’t work out the way she anticipated.

Finally away from her abusive husband, Kanti now became hostage to the deadlines that dictate the lives of the homeless.

Before the clock ran out on her Seattle cousin’s hospitality, Kanti found New Beginnings Shelter. By now, her irate husband had crossed the country and tracked her down. When he began stalking her, counselors helped get a protection order. “The protection order kept me safe. I was able to call the police.”

New Beginnings provided a room for her first 45 days. Before that clock struck, she had to find another shelter or face living on the streets. Fortunately, she found Elizabeth Gregory Home.

When one looks at the process of transitioning to a bright path, it is like undoing an intricate lock, one tumbler at a time. For Kanti, leaving her husband was the first. New Beginnings the second, and Elizabeth Gregory seems to have a bearing on every tumbler thereafter, including the one the brought her to me.

I had the privilege of meeting Kanti as a result of my previous story about Joyce Israel (finding unconditional love for her special needs son). After our interview, Joyce and I arranged to get together for dinner with our husbands, and it was Rick Israel who suggested I meet Kanti. A successful businessman, Rick had been looking for a community charity for his company to adopt. He wanted to do more than write some checks, he wanted to really make a difference. After reading this story in the Seattle Times about a shelter for homeless women that had lost its funding and was on the verge of closing, he found his target. (Several other donors responded similarly. Read this inspiring follow-up story in the Times). Rick now serves on the Board of Elizabeth Gregory Home (EGH) where he met Kanti.

Today, after having been a resident there for ten months, Kanti Mani works at Elizabeth Gregory Home. “I started out being an overnight resident manager. Then I got promoted to being an operations manager, and I’m the program director now.” She does some accounting, the field in which she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in India, as well as some fundraising and general operations work, because the shelter doesn’t have the money to hire a development director. As program director, “I pretty much sure the program runs smoothly; enforce the rules; and ensure that everything is going fine for the resdients and the agency.  Due to lack of funding we have downsized our staff from 10 - 3, which means a lot of multi-tasking for everyone.”

“My job at EGH has been the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had. Because I’ve gotten so much out of EGH, I feel that I should give back.”

In July, Kanti will start work on what she hopes will eventually be a PhD in either clinical psychology or social work. She’ll be enrolled in evening and on-line courses in that pursuit.

After leaving EGH, she moved to permanent housing through the Seattle Housing Authority, and now happily lives in the U District with roommates her own age. She has no plans to return to India, though she dearly misses her mother, sister and niece. Her father passed away recently.

She likes living in Seattle, where “the people are friendly and the houses are closer together” (than in North Carolina). “People have big hearts here. One thing I appreciate about this country, especially, is that people, if they believe in something, they give money or they help in one way or another. That’s different definitely from India.

(Kanti with Seattle roommate)

“I do want to get married some day, but I don’t think I’m ready. Thinking about my last marriage, I would have been in a lot better situation if I had been financially stable. If the marriage did not work and I had money I could have gone back to India, but that did not happen. Instead, I had to buy the $6 Goodwill suitcase.”

About being homeless, Kanti would have us all remember, “people don’t always become homeless because it’s their choice.” There are many paths to take, and Kanti’s is one.

If you would like to help others like Kanti find their way out of homelessness, she would be happy to take your contribution to Elizabeth Gregory Home. Your gift can make the difference to a woman like Kanti, to set them on their own path towards a life off the streets.

- Janet Pelz

Kanti Mani’s Not-So-Secrets for How She Does It

• “It has a lot to do with my self confidence and my love for my parents. Every decision I’ve made I’ve thought, how does this reflect on my parents? When I left the marriage I knew people were going to talk about them but I thought eventually I would get a job and I would be able to support my family, and keep my father alive. I was sending money to them from the little government support I got. I feel a responsibility to my parents.  I miss my mom very much and I would like to bring her here to stay with me a few months.”
• “I think people need to believe in themselves. That a tiny bit of confidence in themselves goes a long way.”

What books has Kanti read recently?

• Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars, by John Gray “It’s helped me understood a lot of things about the opposite sex and I learned a lot about myself.”

Whom does Kanti want me to interview next?

• Many women at Elizabeth Gregory Home have amazing stories to tell.

Lacey Evans: At the Top of her Roller Derby Game

Lacey Evans is a pioneer.

Not the gingham-bonnet-covered-wagon kind. She’s the kind that rolls on the flat track.

Lacey Evans, a.k.a. Carmen Getsome, is a pioneer in the resurgence of women’s roller derby. She’s a leader in the Rat City Roller Girls, where the women push and shove without apology, the fans scream, and the men cheerlead – in multi-colored tutus.

This is the real deal. None of the action you’ll see is scripted or pre-planned; this is a real sport, and we play for keeps. ratcityrollergirls.com source of text and image above

A former soccer player – the one who liked to stand right in front of the penalty kick daring her opponent – Lacey watched her first bout in 2006. She went there expecting “something hokey like WWF Wrestling,” but instead saw something that amazed her. She was hooked immediately. “I went with a bunch of co-workers and they all thought it looked nuts, so I decided to try out.”

Despite not having been on skates since circa fourth grade (I forgot to ask if she still needed a key to tighten her skates back then, and has anyone yet discovered where all those lost keys went?), Lacey earned one of four open spots on the team. It was sort of a training spot. They made her skate on the outside of the pack for the first three months until she got her chops and could stay upright while her teammates bumped their way past her.

But just as the jammer angles her way past the other team’s blockers, (how’s that for derby talk?) Lacey skated her way up the team ladder to where she sits – or skates – now, as Captain of both her Grave Danger team and of the traveling all-star squad from the Rat City Roller Girls.

Lacey Evans a.k.a. Carmen Getsome leading her team Grave Danger (photo credit Joe Schwartz)

I met Lacey Evans at her team’s Saturday morning practice inside a hidden warehouse in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. She and 15 or so of her teammates were skating infinite ovals, their wheels clacking against the plastic tiles laid over cement floor which make their practice rink. Coach Quadzilla, watched the action atop his own set of skates, occasionally barking out commands and issuing blasts from his whistle which would provoke some reaction that my untrained eye was unable to discern. The whistles echoed in the immense space, the open beamed ceilings rising a good forty feet above, and nothing within to absorb the sound, the extent of décor being a few fold-out camp chairs and one overstuffed floral sofa.

One drill had the skaters packed tightly together in rows. At Quadzilla’s command, the trio of skaters in the rear attempted to break through the front ranks, delicately rising to their toes or sending their bodies sideways through the small gaps in the pack ahead. Once to the front, two of the three skaters attempted to block out the third with hip bumps, sliding to close a gap, or splitting their legs wide to grab as much space as possible. Occasionally, any of these actions might send a skater sprawling. The others in the dense pack reacted seamlessly, parting around the fallen while skating onward.

Derby is a full-contact sport and skaters will use all legal means at their disposal to get the job done, including hitting the opposing team with their shoulders and hips, pushing and pulling on members of their own team, and doing a cool slingshot-like maneuver called a whip to speed their jammer through the pack.

- ratcityrollergirls.com 

Practice ended and most of the team headed to the chairs or the sofa to undo their many items of padding and change into street shoes. Some put in a bit more time on the track but Lacey and the coach had team business to attend to. Along with the captain’s title comes the uncomfortable job of informing a couple skaters that they won’t be carried on the roster for the championship bout next weekend. With great talent comes great responsibility.

Afterwards, Lacey and I hook up in the storage room off the track and settle in for our conversation. I find myself facing an athlete like any I might spin with at the gym or play softball with in the evening. A composed and focused young woman, absent any extraneous body piercing or tropical tattoos. She appears to have all her teeth and speaks articulately, her passion for the sport exploding forth in everything she says.

Carmen Getsome rose to her title of Captain with a combination of hard work, aggressiveness, and, as one of her teammates offers on their web site, “she not only is a leader and positive force on the track, but works her butt off getting the league training program up and running. She’s always ready and willing to do what it takes to get everyone motivated. She’s an outstanding member of our league!”

(Carmen in her all-star uniform, photo credit Joe Schwartz)

Working hard means four practices a week, each of which is 2 – 3 hours long. It’s a 50 minute drive each way from her home. In addition to captaining two teams, she’s head of the training committee and pulls extra shifts, as do all the skaters, helping with marketing, p.r., production, and anything else that needs to be done in this all-volunteer operation. She’s one of the reasons for the league’s astronomic growth in its few years.

When Lacey started skating, the bouts were held inside an old airplane hangar in Magnuson Park where the indoor event could be rained out because the roof leaked like a sieve. Nonetheless, the 2,500 tickets for each bout sold out within hours, and Carmen and her teammates always skated before throngs of cheering fans, packed into the temporary bleachers. Rat City Roller Girls lost their permit to skate in the hangar at about the same time Seattle’s NBA team, the Sonics, picked up and moved to Oklahoma, leaving lots of empty dates at KeyArena. So now these women are skating in the premiere athletic venue in the region, where they recently set the national derby sales record of 5,700 tickets for one match.

“I thought when I started that this would just be a fad. I didn’t expect it to be picked up and become mainstream, but it has. We’ve been lucky and we’ve worked really hard. But without the people loving roller derby here we wouldn’t be successful.”

If you haven’t yet checked out Rat City, you’ve got one more chance this season. The championship bout is being held at KeyArena Saturday June 5 at 5:30. You can buy your $14 general admission seats in person at Fast Girls Skates in Wallingford and Bird on a Wire Espresso in West Seattle, or get them on-line at Ticketmaster. Find more information at ratcityrollergirls.com

What should you expect if you go?

“As long as you’re open to anything, you’ll have a great time,” said Carmen. “We are PG 13. Some of the leagues I’ve played against are ‘R’ rated, with girls wearing racier clothing. But I appreciate that we are so family friendly. And everybody’s really friendly.” In the audience Lacey sees an eclectic group that includes “lots of die-hard sports fans that stumbled into roller derby and they love it. My parents are always there. We get a lot of support from the Gay/Lesbian world; people go on a date to watch roller derby. We’ve got biker chicks, moms with their families – it’s just awesome”!

From what I saw, she’s got the eclectic label nailed. When I went last month, my friend Leslie and I sat behind a row of silver haired fans dressed in Ralph Lauren country club. Next to us were two moms with their 13 year-old daughters, (who spent as much time cruising the merchandise table as watching the bout, and who could blame them with cool items for sale such as these) and across the aisle was a group of army fatigues and brightly died Mohawks. We made for one big happy family.

I think some of the crowd could actually follow the rink action, but Leslie and I had a blast just taking in the audience and the half-time show, which featured three cheerleaders dancing expertly to Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’. The overhead center court scoreboard showed repeated close-ups of the long hairy legs on the center dancer, a 6’3” mustached man in a pleated skirt. Much hooting and hollering accompanied the music. (right: Derby cheerleaders in the Sockit Wenches team colors orange and blue)

Like all the ladies, Lacey brings her skater name and alter ego to the track. When she first started skating, her Carmen Getsome personality provided a toughness she didn’t yet have on wheels. “I just focused on being Carmen, a bad-ass girl who thinks she’s tough and can do anything she puts her mind to. Now, I’m pretty outgoing, but at the time I was kind of quiet and a little bit on the nerdy side of life. So I created this Carmen character who was stronger and able to overcome everything and never let anything bother her. I mean, it’s hard to be the slowest person on the track, but that doesn’t bother Carmen.”

Make no mistake, skate names are a major part of the show. Names like

• Georgia O’Grief
• Ida Slapter
• And Lacey’s and my favorite, Sara Problem?

Skate names are so important, in fact, that they must be entered on a national registry. Before you can create your own, you’re responsible to make sure there is no one else by that name or anything close. “If there is, you have to get the permission of that skater. Like, there is a skater named Drew Blood and another woman wanted the name Nancy Drew Blood, so the two came to an agreement they could each use those names, but if anyone else asked to be anything close they would both have to say no.”

Lacey will be adding a new name to her persona on August 21 when she gets married, though she won’t know until the kickball game that day what her new last name will be. Lacey and her fiancé, who is “incredibly supportive, probably the most supportive derby widower there is” are each mounting a team of wedding guests to spar for the right to choose the couple’s new last name. If he wins the two hour kickball match, she’ll be Lacey Ramon. If she wins, her name will be Lacey Roxx.

Whatever the outcome, they’ll take their vows later that day after a shower and a change of clothes.

Best wishes from us all, Lacey Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Becomes. May your marriage be as successful as your career on the flat track.

Carmen Getsome blocking a jammer from Derby Liberation Front(photo credit, Joe Schwartz)

- Janet Pelz

Lacey’s not-so secrets for How She Does It:

• A lot of time management. If I’m scheduled to take a rest, I’m going to take a rest. If I don’t plan on taking a rest I won’t do it.

• I have to use every minute and be committed. It always boils down to commitment. What are you more committed to, going out and having a margarita or going to practice? My team always comes first over those other activities. If I ever feel like I wanted to do XYZ and then I get to practice, within minutes I know yeah, this is where I need to be.

• Measuring and balancing the important things in life.

What books has Lacey read recently?

I’m a multi-book reader, one book that makes my mind work and one that’s completely relaxing. I have to keep one of each to stay interested.

• Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence, by Gary Mack and David Casstevens – a mental training/emotional mastery book (order by clicking the Amazon ad to the right and support this blog when you do!)

• Anything by Harlan Coben, mystery writer. They’re my comfort read.

Whom does Lacey want me to interview next?

• Val Tron 3000 (Valerie Morris), we call her Dr Tron. While skating she finished her doctorate. She’s a research person at Fred Hutch. She’s really smart and one of the most caring people I know.

• My mom is wonderful – she’s changing the world one child at a time at the elementary school where she works.

After the bout

• If you go to the bout June 5, or anytime you’re at Seattle Center, don’t forget you can support Melissa Erickson’s foundation (read her story here ) by buying a drink in her name at Jabu’s Pub, 174 Roy Street (between 2nd Ave N & N Warren Ave). Jabu’s is also a sponsor of Derby Liberation Front, one of four teams which make up Rat City Roller Girls