Glamour USA - September 2016

Homeless Together Evans, with
her cat, Kiki, in the car they used to
sleep in, near the University of
Wisconsin campus in Madison
HAIR AND MAKEUP: KASHA RODIG AT THE ROCK AGENCY
still remember being pulled aside in kindergarten and told
I’d gotten into the gifted program and thinking, Oh my God,
no matter how fat and poor or ‘white trash’ I am, I will always
be smart—I might be able to get out of here,” she says. “If
college is only for people who can afford it, then we’re only
reproducing the same inequalities we’re supposed to be
equalizing by getting an education.”
“I wasn’t welcome back home”
Evans’ mother (who asked Glamour not to use her name) is
the first to admit she hasn’t been there for her daughter all
the time. She struggled with drinking until Evans was about
12. “I had the disease of alcoholism,” she says, “and it was all
about me. Brooke was in my way. I constantly looked at my
watch as she talked; I didn’t want to hear her. I wasn’t interested
in her or her ideas.” Evans says her father left when she
was six (“the best thing that ever happened”), which meant
she and her two older brothers often ate fried hamburger
buns with sugar for dinner, “to make it seem fancy,” while
their mom worked in a foundry, making just $61 a month
above the federal poverty level. Evans, who by age 13 had
started working after school to help make ends meet, always
assumed she’d go to college. So at 18, when the University of
Wisconsin in La Crosse accepted her, she drove 200 miles
from Waukesha only to discover that, even at an affordable
state school, she’d need at least $13,500 a year to cover tuition
and room and board. “I never thought about how I was
going to pay for it,” she says. “It was such a small world where
I came from. I didn’t know to apply for financial aid or scholarships,
and ended up taking out loans.”
In La Crosse she got jobs—at a home-improvement
chain, a food co-op, a disability center—to cover her car
costs, phone service, and health insurance. But when the
dorms closed at Thanksgiving, she had nowhere to go.
Too ashamed to tell friends, she got through that break by
staying with acquaintances from church, but when school
ended for the summer, it was even tougher. “My mom had
made it clear I wasn’t welcome back home,” says Evans.
One night she drove to a homeless shelter but parked in
the far corner of the lot. “I couldn’t make myself go inside,”
she says. So she climbed in the backseat of her 2000 Chrysler
Sebring and finally fell asleep—something she would
get very used to. “I remember washing under my arms in
the public library once when a mother with her little girl
walked in and looked at me,” she says. “I wanted to explain
myself, but I couldn’t speak. I realized I was the epitome of
everything she didn’t want for her daughter.” Looking back,
Evans’ mother says, “I probably knew Brooke was going to
live in her car. I worried about her safety. But I didn’t know
how to talk to her. I have a lot of regrets about that.”
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