By Tammi McElroy

One can't help but notice Dietrick Parrish. Wearing a brown and beige skirt set and a long patterned scarf draped over her head and across one shoulder, she walks slowly but purposely through the library passing several available chairs to take a seat at the head of a long unoccupied table. She places her bag, heavy with today's notes, books and writing materials on the floor by her feet. As she leans forward, resting her arms on the table's surface, she resembles a corporate lawyer about to advise a board of directors.

But Parrish is not a corporate adviser; she is a welfare mother of two. And she is a full-time student, struggling to set a positive example for her daughters about the value of a college education.

She is also an advocate for low income mothers and would like to set the record straight about welfare mothers in general and herself in particular.

``People think I eat bonbons and have two televisions so that I can watch two soaps at the same time," she says. This perception of herself does not anger her, she says in her deep, throaty voice. ``That just shows their ignorance.''

Parrish blames the media for bringing this image to the public and for using black families as a backdrop for welfare issues.

``They show my face,'' she says. ``They show my children.''

Parrish was born in the Bronx. Her parents moved to Jamaica, Queens where she was reared along with her three brothers. Her father worked as a supervisor for the Automatic Fire Alarm Company. Her mother had her own Daily News distribution franchise and the entire family helped to run the business. By the time she was 11, Parrish was responsible for the business's bookkeeping.

``That's why math is my second language," says Parrish. Her job often demanded she stay up late into the night and she often would be late for school. By the time she was 16 and a Hillcrest High School student, gym was the only class she was passing.

"Gym was the only place where I could have fun and not have to think," says Parrish. That summer, Parrish turned to her father--who had been an enthusiastic and inspirational force for her. "I want better for you," he always told her. She persuaded him to send her to live with her grandmother to finish her last three years of high school in Detroit.

Her grandmother encouraged her as well, urging her to stay in school and to attend college. She would also lecture her about the negative aspects of friendships.

"You play with dirt and it will get in your eye," her grandmother warned her.

She heeded her grandmother's advice and in 1982 enrolled in Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, majoring in chemical engineering. But her grandmother's warnings did not shield her from trouble.

In May 1984 Parrish became pregnant and returned home to Queens at the urging of her mother. Parrish went on public assistance and for the next 10 years put her educational aspirations on hold. She went through a period of severe depression after her daughter, Danielle, was born. She and her mother were not getting along and Danielle's father abandoned her to attend graduate school in theology.

"I felt so alone. I had no one to help me.''

In 1989, when Danielle turned 4, Parrish began seeking ways of earning a paycheck. She enrolled in a data entry program at MTI business school. She soon found that there were not many employment opportunities in that field.

Disappointed, she found work as a security guard until she enrolled in Allen Business School for Nurse's Aids.

"I was searching for something I could relate to, something that was me," says Parrish. She began working as a health aid.

That same year, her second serious relationship produced another daughter. Charmane's father was loving, but unable to support a family. Parrish went back on welfare, living in a $75-a-month room with her two children, just blocks from where she grew up. Her depression grew more severe, she says, in part because the owner of the rooming house continually propositioned her.

Her daughters' fathers were unable to help her. They remain unavailable today. Danielle's father, a Baptist minister, currently lives in Charlotte, N.C., and Charmane's father is incarcerated. Neither has paid child support consistently.

Looking for a way out, she enrolled in LaGuardia College. She stayed on the Dean's List every semester with a 3.7 grade point average. In 1997, she graduated with an associate's degree. She transferred her credits to Hunter to pursue a bachelor's degree. But adversity struck when her father died in July 1998.

"When I went back to school I did not do well the first semester because I was devastated." Her grades plummeted to a 2.0 during the fall 1998 term. However, Parrish's grades have improved this semester as her father has now become a spiritual source of encouragement for her.

In addition to the five classes she's currently taking, Parrish does 20 hours of work study and attends 11 additional classes where she works as a note taker for disabled students. Parrish is also an intern with the campus Welfare Rights Initiative. The initiative has been instrumental in encouraging Parrish to learn how to defend herself at welfare department hearings.

"WRI trains you to be your own legal advocate," says Parrish. "Anybody can quote law and anybody can manipulate it, but it's how well you learn to use the law in your favor that makes you powerful. I'm powerful because I know my rights."

Knowing her rights has helped Parrish avoid having to participate in welfare reform's Work Experience Program. Every few months, Parrish receives a letter telling her that she must do Workfare or her welfare check will be cut in half. But Parrish knows that welfare recipients are entitled to a fair hearing to explain why their schedule would not permit them to participate in the program.

So far, she has attended three fair hearings. At each hearing the representative from the city has had no documentation concerning her case. Therefore, the hearing officer ruled, each time, that Parrish should continue to receive her full welfare benefits.

Occasionally Parrish has become tired of the hassles and lack of money and found paid employment rather than attend school. During the spring of 1998, Parrish had a job as an assistant case manager for St. Joseph's Services for Children where she was paid at the rate of $20,500 per year.

"I had to be an assistant because I didn't have a B.A., so I got the b---s---," she laughs. "No one else wanted to work overtime so they made me do it. There were times when I didn't get home until midnight. My baby-sitter got one-third of my check. They gave me enough knocks and bumps for me to realize I had to go back to school."

Recently, Parrish's baby-sitter moved to Florida. Finding suitable child care has become a major issue with a monthly income of $343.90. (Parrish's rent is paid through federal housing subsidies.)

"I need someone to come into my home from five to nine," she explains. The Human Resources Administration, the formal name for the welfare department, is phasing out paying for child care expenses--$87 to $150 per week--for 13-year olds, she says. Yet it is illegal to leave children below age 16 home alone. Since Danielle is 14, Parrish has had to break the law.

"How would we survive if I have to pay child care," she says with exasperation. With the support of her two daughters, Danielle, now 14 and Charmaine, 9, Parrish is determined now to stay in school. In June, 2000, she will graduate with a degree in sociology and psychology. She intends to go on to law school. But it's not going to get any easier. The federal and local governments seem focused on reducing the welfare rolls by coming down on the mothers.

"They've been made to feel so numb," says Parrish. "They think we'll get pregnant, or injure one of our children. They think we're trying to dodge working by staying in school. They think we lie, cheat and want nothing out of life."

Parrish knows what she wants out of life and a good education for herself and her children heads the list. Charmane loves school and is a whiz at math. Danielle, like her mother, says she would also like to someday be a lawyer. "There are a lot of things that I want to do and I won't be able to do them unless I get my education," she says.

And there is one more thing on that list. She wants to be able to use all that she has learned, from books and from poverty, to inspire others to want better for themselves. She believes that the life she has led might make it easier for her to reach others.

"A lot of people go to school and come out with a degree in book learning," says Parrish. "I want my degree to be in life learning."