Jamie Schoonover is on her way to dinner. As she strolls through Fells Point toward Bertha's, men and women stare audaciously.

"I'm just a poor Goth," says Jamie, all dressed in a wardrobe straight from "The Addams Family." Jamie, a 15-year-old with marbled blue eyes, black fingernail polish and a head shaved clean on the right side, takes the stares in stride.

"Oh, I'm used to people being scared of me for the way I look," says Jamie, a freshman at Southwestern High School in Baltimore.

Days before, another ninth-grader at Southwestern certainly seemed scared of her. Head down, voice barely audible, her neck ringed with a silver cross, Jennifer Rassen was saying she couldn't get her voice out of her head -- the witch's voice. The witch being Jamie Schoonover.

Jamie, as the newspaper and TV stations headlined, had been suspended for one day after the school had accused her of "casting a spell" on Jennifer. But after meeting with both girls' parents, school officials had downgraded the incident to a simple misunderstanding. Jamie admitted being a witch, but denied any spell-casting. A school transfer was discussed.

"Mostly, it was matter of the fear of the unknown," explained Jamie's mother, Colleen Harper, also a practicing witch.

These days at Southwestern, the subject of witchcraft seems closed. Because of her parents' wishes, Jamie still attends Southwestern. "Everything is going very smoothly. We haven't had any more incidents," says Earl Lee, principal of the Alpha Academy, which constitutes Southwestern's ninth grade.

Really, the whole hex mess was just a sideshow, the story du jour. What remains is a 15-year-old high school freshman who reluctantly found herself the center of attention, who finds herself still dealing with issues beyond a frightful misunderstanding at school. Jamie Schoonover struggles with school work because of dyslexia. She lives in a home missing such bare necessities as a shower and bed. And she lives with her divorced father, a person undergoing a change not many adults can fully understand.

"Someday, I'm going to publish my life story," Jamie says. "It will be unbelievable."

But it wouldn't be a story about a good witch or a bad witch. No, Jamie's life story is about something much scarier. It's about being a teen-ager.

"I have a daughter," says Colleen Harper, "who doesn't clean up."

On a lousy-gray afternoon in late October, Jamie's mother answers the door to her unmarked rowhouse on South Mount Street. Her handshake is firm. The house is full with up-ended boxes of clothes. Tabletops are jammed with electricians' tools, pliers and such. Sheets of drywall are leaned near a broken-down bathroom.

For the discounted rent of $250 a month, it's Harper's job is to repair this place. As of this month, it's her only job. Colleen Noel Harper is 46 and unemployed. She and her daughter live on food stamps and disability checks. They bathe at a friend's house. And until June this year, Harper was legally known as Richard Edwin Schoonover. Harper, who has undergone hormone treatment, is a transsexual.

Until last year, Harper was the husband of Jamie's biological mother, Ellen Montgomery of Baltimore. Jamie Rene Schoonover, their second of three daughters, lives with Harper, who was granted custody in the couple's divorce. Together, Harper and Jamie try to patch together a house and home.

"I give Jamie a lot of freedom," Harper says. "She is being the young lady she wants to be."

In the family room, a fat teddy bear loafs near an altar of sorts fashioned atop the radiator. Here Jamie has lit incense and oil lamp and meditated, says Harper, as the family kitten, Vampire, claws up her shoulder. Marilyn Manson and Christian Death CDs are loose on the floor.

Harper confesses admiration for another scary musician -- James Taylor.

The shrine, Harper says, is part of practicing Wicca. A recognized religion in this country, it reportedly has as many as 300,000 believers.

But the meditating ("casting a circle on hallowed ground and raising power internally"), a kitty named Vampire and Marilyn Manson songs are as sinister as life gets around here, Harper says.

"My daughter," she says, "is not a Satanist."

No, Jamie is more into the Goth scene. Goth as in Gothic: teen-agers dressing up in the medieval, moody spirit of Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles." Dark is it. Night is magic. Goth Night at the Orpheus club on Pratt Street and hanging out at Towson Commons or on the square at Fells Point -- one of Jamie's haunts.

"Listen, I was a hippie in the '60s. Goth is the same kind of thing," says friend Karen Hudnet. "It's about trying all different kinds of things. It's about finding yourself."

For a poor Goth, Jamie Schoonover travels in eclectic circles. Hudnet and Jamie met five years ago at the Baltimore Ethical Society, a small, "liberal religious fellowship" that meets Sunday mornings. "Intellectual idealists who believe in the worth of the individual," says Hudnet, the Ethical Society's youth group adviser. Jamie initially came for the Sunday school.

Hudnet knew Jamie when -- before the black fingernail polish days. Don't be alarmed or put off by the Goth pose, Hudnet says. This girl is becoming one smart young woman.

"Jamie has grown into herself. She's more self-assured and assertive," Hudnet says. "She's a survivor."

Calm takes up residence

Back at home, Harper plays the theme to "Masterpiece Theatre" on a child's recorder. In her other life, in the late 1980s, she was Richard Schoonover and a member of the Baltimore Colts Marching Band. Friends nicknamed him "Jesus" for his flowing hair. Colleen Harper keeps the band memories close. "They liked me."

Jamie is still at school today; it's her first full day back after her suspension. There have been no calls from the school, no classmates in hysterics. And only one reporter today -- so far (though "Inside Edition" called a day earlier).

Harper and Jamie don't live alone. "Savage" walks through the front door, dragging his 10-speed bike. From Harper, we learn Savage is 21, unemployed, and has been living with she and her daughter for about three weeks. "He ended up falling for my daughter," Harper says. "They are dating." This makes Harper happy, she says.

Savage has been walking Jamie home from Southwestern each day. He's very protective of her, Harper says. "He's rather imposing, isn't he?" she asks. He is, in that I've-pierced-body-parts-bigger-than-you kind of way.

Savage, who has pledged to bring in a few bucks for the household, has his own room. Harper and her daughter share the front bedroom, sleeping in two blue sleeping bags on one bare mattress.

"I need to buy sheets," Harper says. She also needs to clean the blanket, which the cat soiled recently. But there's no washing machine. They just did get a refrigerator.

"Colleen has done wonders with the place," says her friend and landlord, Lynn Woodworth. "Really -- you should have seen it before. Think of it as a hundred times worse."

In Harper's bedroom, a framed saying sets the mood:

"I AM DEPRESSED, THEREFORE I EXIST."

Below these words, her computer (modemless, since she has no phone) is keeper of the family pictures. Harper offers an electronic tour of photos of baby Jamie tucked snug in a backpack at Yellowstone or at some equally perfect vista.

Some nights, Harper goes to sleep looking at her screen-saved photo album; these are good memories. Then, by the light of day, reality returns: unemployment, food stamps, a school suspension, a classmate scared of her daughter and a rowhouse in need of sheets, a clean blanket, a shower.

No, the home doesn't look comfortable or clean, Harper knows. "I provide what I can," she says. "And in spite our difficulties, yes, by all means, I'm a loving and compassionate parent."

A life plan

School's out. Around 4 p.m., a posse straight from a "Mad Max" movie marches toward the rowhouse on South Mount Street. Savage and two burly friends escort Jamie home. Never before has one pixie-ish, 15-year-old girl had so many bodyguards. Harper, who sometimes swaps clothes with her teen-age daughter, often tags along when Jamie and her friends come out to play.

"Jamie thinks it's so cool to introduce me as her cool, transgendered, lesbian mom," Harper says.

With her mother's permission, Jamie accepts a ride to Bertha's for dinner. Because she and her mom usually walk everywhere, the motion of the car feels strange to Jamie. Very odd to see the Aquarium pass so quickly, she says.

At Bertha's, she orders a ginger ale, a change from her usual Mountain Dew. She can't read the menu, though; Jamie is dyslexic and attends special-education classes. She also has a slight speech impediment that clips her sentences, making her sound somewhat British. With help on the menu, she orders the mussels with garlic butter.

In between draining her mussels, Jamie announces a life plan: to finish school and open a business called "Bad Dreams." It would be like the shop in the Towson Town Center called Hot Topic that sells Goth clothes, "but mine will be better because the prices will be lower."

"I want to be famous when I open my store, but not yet!" Jamie says. In other words, enough with the hex story. Hearing your voice and seeing yourself on camera -- now that's scary, she says.

Over dinner, we play a word game. Toss words out, see if they stick: VAMPIRES, LIFE & DEATH, DARKNESS ("Artificial light bothers my eyes"), NIGHT, LUNA, SOCCER ("I play once in a great, great while"), PAPERMOON DINER, WALKING (with no family car, Harper and Jamie estimate they walk 6 miles a day), BIRTHDAY PARTIES ("One thing I hardly ever had because we didn't have the money"), NEVERENDING, and FIRE.

"Fire keeps me going sometimes," Jamie says. "If I look at fire and concentrate on the fire, I will not be depressed."

She flicks a lighter she pulls from her hip pocket. The flame setting is high, and Jamie passes her hand through the wavering column of cheap fire. She calls herself a "pyro," for pyromaniac. She calls herself depressed; "yeah, something I am all the time." But, as her friend Karen Hudnet observes, have you ever seen a happy teen-ager?

"It's an oxymoron," she says.

"I think," says Lynn Woodworth, "she does feel like an outsider. But there's too many people who love her, and she knows that."

As she finishes her meal, Jamie runs her fingers through the stubble left from where a girlfriend just shaved the right side of her head. It's a look, for sure, but maybe not one that will get her the job at the mall she applied for. "I don't think they want to hire me because of my haircut."

Jamie wears a T-shirt that reads "More Human Than Human." Her eyebrows are but dashes of black paint. But even more striking is that this poor Goth doesn't have a single piercing or tattoo to her body. It seems such a contradiction, but there's a simple explanation.

"My mom won't let me get any piercings until I'm 18," Jamie says.

And you still listen to your mother?

"Yeah," she says. "I'm a good teen-ager -- somewhat."

'Party Pier'

Walk this way, Jamie says. Down cobbled Thames Street, away from the tugboats and bars, Jamie aims for the crumbling brick castle still lettered "Ruckert Terminal."

She strides ahead onto the "Party Pier."

The dilapidated spear of planks offers the novice visitor a dead-on view of the Domino Sugars sign and a chance to misstep and fall into the black shallows. Jamie, though, easily navigates to the end of the pier.

She comes here with her friends. Comes here with her mother. Sometimes, she stays until the night leaves for light.

"I think about everything here -- or nothing at all," she says.

She thinks about finishing school and opening her store. She thinks about her Goth friends back in Fells Point's square and how "they all never had a childhood. They are living their childhood now."

A long time ago, Jamie says, she had a childhood.

"I just never used it."

Jamie Schoonover thinks about this so-called life of growing up with essentially two mothers. Sounds like it's not always so cool. "It just tears me apart," she says, "to really not have a father."

She rubs a small cloud of a bruise on her upper arm. Someone threw an egg at her while she walked home from school, she says, and it somehow got through Savage's security detail. Savage threatened to find and punish the egg-thrower, Jamie says, grinning. But she calmed him down.

No need for more trouble, the teen-ager says.

Pub Date: 11/14/98