By Lori Goldson
As a child in Plainfield, New Jersey, university alumna Arienne Gomes spent Friday and Sunday nights at her grandmother’s house for dinner with her family. The kids ran around until the porch lights came on, playing “ghost in the graveyard” around the house.
Adults indulged in laughter as everyone ate until they couldn’t eat anymore. Occasionally partaking into a “crack session” of teasing each other, the family sat on the steps of Emerson Avenue house until the wee hours of the night, with neighborhood kids and parents throughout Plainfield joining the festivities.
Arienne recalls some of her best memories as just sitting and laughing with her family, which has always been close, as her grandparents welcomed everyone who knew them with open arms.
At the age of seven, Arienne’s family’s tradition changed. No longer would there be the fun-filled gatherings at her grandparents’ house. Her grandmother was hospitalized with breast cancer that became terminal after spreading to her colon.
“I thought I was a bad grandchild,” Arienne says. “My grandmother didn’t eat pork. No ham or anything. I was hungry so my mother took me to the vending machine to get something to eat. We went up to my grandmother’s room. I was eating and my grandmother asked me what I was eating and I said a ham sandwich. We said our goodbyes and the next morning when my mom sat me down and told me she died, I thought me eating that ham sandwich had killed her.”
Arienne’s loss of her grandmother struck her down to her bones. Instead of becoming feeble, Arienne used the experience to her benefit.
“From then on, I promised myself I would excel at whatever I did,” she says. “So I excelled at school.”
After her grandmother’s death, Arienne began to take a liking to the white-collar working world. Her playtime consisted of playing a teacher, judge, or doctor as she fantasized of a more glamorous life not just to make grandma proud, but to avoid her mother’s consistent struggles.
“My mother’s been working two jobs since I was 13,” she says. “I’m not saying she doesn’t work hard, but she works too hard for minimal rewards.”
Arienne’s mother was forced to work to care for her and her younger siblings, Ariel and Aaron Davis. Unfortunately, none of their fathers were around, leaving Arienne and her siblings financially and emotionally devastated.
Without her father, Arienne’s self confidence never congealed. She lacks the sense of self that most people would assume she has.
“I don’t have the confidence and esteem that I should,” she says. “I was always afraid to be fearless. While the other kids skated in the street, here comes little Ari with a helmet and some Playskool skates on.”
Although Arienne has been estranged from her drug-addicted for many years, she never allowed his absence or his drug problem to distract her from her goals.
In every attempt to go above the influence, Arienne rebelled against attending the teen pregnancy and violence-infested Plainfield High School, opting for Union County Magnet High School instead.
“I had heard bad things about Plainfield High and how it was hard for seniors to get into college,” she says. “I knew it would be important if I wanted to go to college.”
While Arienne excelled academically and won enrollment to the university as a medical technology major, she continued to resent her father and felt guilty about her grandmother’s death. These negative feelings took their toll on her interactions with those around her.
University alumna Nicole Barkley says living with Arienne their sophomore year was a better idea than actual reality.
“She would have her moods and would go days without saying anything to me, she says.
For her junior and senior years, Arienne opted to be a resident assistant for Pencader and George Read Halls. The experience gave her a new insight on handling people and being more patient, a virtue that would prove essential in the medical field.
Independence Complex coordinator Zakia Reaves says as an RA, Arienne cared deeply for the well-being of the other students, and strongly impacted the residential and Delaware community with her commitment to responsibility.
“She was actively involved in organizations that served the people and worked hard within her field of med tech, which is ultimately a service for the people,” Zakia says. “Arienne has a genuine soul and heart and upheld her responsibility to her colleagues and residents.”
Keeping with her self promise to always prosper, Arienne now works as a medical technologist at Summit Medical Group in New Jersey. Planning to attend graduate school within the next few years, Arienne is seeking enrollment in the osteopathic program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
“Medicine is something I love,” she says. “I love being able to tell someone what’s wrong with their body or what’s going well with their body. It’s like, ‘Here are some solutions. Let’s work together and make you feel better.’ Patients always come first.”
