The Date That Froze Time

"I'm a GS-3," she says, and the pride in her voice is unmistakable.

And: "I don't want people to feel sorry for me. Of course, my mom's death makes me cry, but I deal with it. Every day."

She's sitting in the living room of a brick house in District Heights, in Prince George's County just over the District line, where she and her father, Fred, lived with her mother, Angelene, until Sept. 11. On a wall opposite the sofa hangs an oil painting of Angelene, a petite woman with a heart-shaped face who worked as a civilian accountant for the Army.

Before Sept. 11, Carter hoped to go to Frostburg State University in Western Maryland to study music. Instead, she enrolled in Prince George's Community College, where she has accumulated more than 50 credit hours.

It's just Freddye and her dad now, and their shih tzu, Mikey. Her father, an Army staff sergeant, retired in July 2002. She calls him on his cellphone several times a day to check up on him.

He stays on her case, too. About a year after her mother was killed in the Pentagon, Freddye started dating a young man she knew from Suitland High School. Her father tried to steer her away from him, saying he was only after vast sums of money that he, like so many people, assumed she had been given after Sept. 11. They dated on and off for three years, going out to dinner and to the movies. He never paid a dime, she says. She finally realized he was taking advantage of her and dropped him.

Why did she stay with him so long? Because she could talk to him, she said.

"My mom was my best friend. I was trying to fill a void. I didn't like talking to my dad because he would cry and I would cry."

Those were hard times. Sometimes the reminders came out of the blue, like when she was in a department store in May and a salesperson asked her, "What are you and your mother doing for Mother's Day?" She stopped watching TV news and scanning magazines in the grocery stores because it seemed she'd always see another story about Sept. 11.

She knows that if Angelene were around, she would be telling her daughter to put the past behind her and get on with her life. That is what she has done.

Since she was 12, Freddye has been taking voice lessons in opera. Last fall she applied to the music conservatory at Oberlin College. She was put on the waiting list and plans to reapply in August. If she isn't accepted this time, she may seek admission to the school of music at the University of Maryland. Or she may look for a higher-level job in the federal government.

Her bedroom is small, and cluttered with bluejeans, pink and purple tops, stuffed animals and CDs. Here, she is allowed to still be a girl, if a girl with purpose.