times.”
Being one of “the bus kids,” as the other students called them, Oprah was noticed. “She stood out from the crowd,” said Irene Hoe, one of five Asian students at Nicolet and a senior when Oprah was a freshman. “She did not live in the predominantly affluent, mostly white suburban neighborhoods of Milwaukee, which fed their children to our high school….Back in those politically incorrect days…it might have been said that she did not ‘belong.’ ”
No one recognized that displacement more acutely than Oprah, who suddenly saw how poor she was next to wealthy girls who wore different sweater sets every day of the week and had allowances for pizza, records, and milkshakes after school. “For the first time I understood that there was another side,” she said. “All of a sudden the ghetto didn’t look so good anymore.
“In 1968 it was real hip to know a black person, so I was very popular. The kids would all bring me back to their houses, pull out theirPearl Bailey albums, bring out their maid from the back and say, ‘Oprah, do you know Mabel?’ They figured all blacks knew each other. It was real strange and real tough.”
Mothers encouraged their daughters to invite “Opie” home after school. “Like I was a toy,” she said. “They’d all sit around talking about Sammy Davis, Jr., like I knew him.”
Oprah wanted to have money like the other kids, but her mother, working two jobs at the time, had none to spare. So Oprah began stealing from Vernita. “I started having some real problems,” she said later. “I guess you could call me troubled—to put it mildly.”
Her sister, Patricia, remembered Oprah stealing $200 from their mother, which was an entire week’s pay. Another time she stole one of her mother’s rings and pawned it. “Oprah said she’d taken the ring to have it cleaned. But Mom found the pawn ticket in a pillowcase and made Oprah get the ring back.”
Her relatives recall Oprah as an out-of-control teenager who would do anything for money. At one point she wanted to get rid of her “ugly butterfly bifocals.” She asked her mother to buy her a new pair of octagonal glasses like the kids at Nicolet wore. Vernita said she could not afford the expense. Oprah was determined to get the new glasses.
“I staged a robbery, broke my glasses and pretended I was unconscious and feigned amnesia. I stayed home from school one day and stomped the glasses on the floor into a million pieces. I pulled down the curtains, knocked over the lamps, and cut my left cheek enough to draw blood. I called the police, laid myself down on the floor, and waited for them to arrive.”
Then, exactly as she had seen on an episode of
Marcus Welby, M.D.,
she feigned amnesia. She showed the police a bump on her head but said she did not remember what had happened. The police called her mother, but Oprah pretended not to recognize Vernita, who was shaken until the police mentioned that the only thing broken during the robbery was a pair of glasses.
“Oprah was always a big actress,” said her sister. “She had a wild imagination.”
After becoming sexually promiscuous, Oprah devised another way to make money. “She invited men over during the day while my motherwas working,” said Patricia. “Her boyfriends were all much older than her, about 19 or in their early 20s. Whenever a guy arrived at our door, Oprah would give Popsicles to me and our younger brother Jeffrey and say, ‘You two go out on the porch and play now.’ Oprah then would go inside with her boyfriend….I didn’t find out what Oprah was doing until I was older and she showed me how she did ‘The Horse’—which is what she called the sex act.”
It took Patricia many years to realize that Oprah was selling “The Horse”—trading sexual favors for money. Patricia’s awareness of this information and willingness to turn it over to the media eventually led to a rift between the two sisters that would never fully
Being one of “the bus kids,” as the other students called them, Oprah was noticed. “She stood out from the crowd,” said Irene Hoe, one of five Asian students at Nicolet and a senior when Oprah was a freshman. “She did not live in the predominantly affluent, mostly white suburban neighborhoods of Milwaukee, which fed their children to our high school….Back in those politically incorrect days…it might have been said that she did not ‘belong.’ ”
No one recognized that displacement more acutely than Oprah, who suddenly saw how poor she was next to wealthy girls who wore different sweater sets every day of the week and had allowances for pizza, records, and milkshakes after school. “For the first time I understood that there was another side,” she said. “All of a sudden the ghetto didn’t look so good anymore.
“In 1968 it was real hip to know a black person, so I was very popular. The kids would all bring me back to their houses, pull out theirPearl Bailey albums, bring out their maid from the back and say, ‘Oprah, do you know Mabel?’ They figured all blacks knew each other. It was real strange and real tough.”
Mothers encouraged their daughters to invite “Opie” home after school. “Like I was a toy,” she said. “They’d all sit around talking about Sammy Davis, Jr., like I knew him.”
Oprah wanted to have money like the other kids, but her mother, working two jobs at the time, had none to spare. So Oprah began stealing from Vernita. “I started having some real problems,” she said later. “I guess you could call me troubled—to put it mildly.”
Her sister, Patricia, remembered Oprah stealing $200 from their mother, which was an entire week’s pay. Another time she stole one of her mother’s rings and pawned it. “Oprah said she’d taken the ring to have it cleaned. But Mom found the pawn ticket in a pillowcase and made Oprah get the ring back.”
Her relatives recall Oprah as an out-of-control teenager who would do anything for money. At one point she wanted to get rid of her “ugly butterfly bifocals.” She asked her mother to buy her a new pair of octagonal glasses like the kids at Nicolet wore. Vernita said she could not afford the expense. Oprah was determined to get the new glasses.
“I staged a robbery, broke my glasses and pretended I was unconscious and feigned amnesia. I stayed home from school one day and stomped the glasses on the floor into a million pieces. I pulled down the curtains, knocked over the lamps, and cut my left cheek enough to draw blood. I called the police, laid myself down on the floor, and waited for them to arrive.”
Then, exactly as she had seen on an episode of
Marcus Welby, M.D.,
she feigned amnesia. She showed the police a bump on her head but said she did not remember what had happened. The police called her mother, but Oprah pretended not to recognize Vernita, who was shaken until the police mentioned that the only thing broken during the robbery was a pair of glasses.
“Oprah was always a big actress,” said her sister. “She had a wild imagination.”
After becoming sexually promiscuous, Oprah devised another way to make money. “She invited men over during the day while my motherwas working,” said Patricia. “Her boyfriends were all much older than her, about 19 or in their early 20s. Whenever a guy arrived at our door, Oprah would give Popsicles to me and our younger brother Jeffrey and say, ‘You two go out on the porch and play now.’ Oprah then would go inside with her boyfriend….I didn’t find out what Oprah was doing until I was older and she showed me how she did ‘The Horse’—which is what she called the sex act.”
It took Patricia many years to realize that Oprah was selling “The Horse”—trading sexual favors for money. Patricia’s awareness of this information and willingness to turn it over to the media eventually led to a rift between the two sisters that would never fully
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