An absent mother, a badly burned daughter, and a bond forged in a Germantown house fire

What Tanisha Carter is today has much, if not everything, to do with her mother. The resolute independence, and the guts to go it alone. The determination to achieve the improbable. And yes, the burn scars rippling across her face, bearing testimony to the "beautiful tragedy" that Carter calls her life.

Just 6 months old on Jan. 10, 1983, she has no memory of the inferno that engulfed her family's house on East Garfield Street in Germantown. But as she grew up, she pieced together the story — how her mother had stepped out and left her three children alone, long enough for the two older siblings to begin playing with matches on the living-room carpet.  One of them, a 3-year-old girl, died. Baby Tanisha was burned over 98 percent of her body.

Now 35, she endured more than 50 surgeries, including amputation of fingers, and excruciating pain she likened to a whole-body paper cut. Her years-long recovery is etched in her memory, down to the smell and taste of the operating-room anesthesia and the stinging schoolyard taunts over her disfigurement.

But none of it stopped her. She delivered a speech at her high school graduation, and earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Chestnut Hill College. She has worked as a parenting counselor, and is single-handedly raising three sons, ages 11, 5, and 4, in a modest rowhouse along a narrow Northeast Philadelphia street.

Carter decided she had a story to tell.  Her memoir, More Than a Conqueror: Confessions of a True Testimony, is to be released in August by Christian Faith Publishing.  The back cover photo shows her as a toddler in a protective mask, with surviving brother Rasheen in bandages. Both are in the arms of their mother, Eartha Rivers — the woman Carter came to see as her champion.

Because Rivers had gone missing during the fire, "she's had to wear this scarlet letter," said Carter. "But she was the one in the hospital who never left."

It was Rivers who helped Carter cope with disfigurement, who cursed people on the bus when they stared. She forced her daughter to be independent, to eat, wash, and dress herself, and warned others not to help her.

"When I began  understanding that I looked different," Carter said, "and that people were going to react this way or that way, [my mother] was the one who told me: 'You're special. You survived because God had a purpose for your life.' "

She, sister Nakisha, and Rasheen, then 4, were transported to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia.

Nakisha died there of smoke inhalation. Rasheen was burned on his arms, back, face, and hands, but not nearly as severely as the infant Tanisha. She sustained not only first-, second- and third-degree burns, but also fourth-, reaching to the bone.

Dr. Stuart J. Hulnick, the center's first director, rebuilt her face, reconstructing her nose and mouth with healthy skin from her back and the backs of her legs — the only parts of her body spared by the fire. All five fingers on her left hand were amputated at the knuckles; those on her right hand were shortened. Scarring on her arms still restricts her range of motion. One arm is shorter than the other, as is one leg.

"I realize I have limitations," Carter said, "but I always have been very conscious about how do I do the best with what I have. How do I hold my son without fear of dropping him? How do I take him out of the car seat — while being mindful that people are watching to see how I engage with my children."

When she was growing up, the fire was rarely discussed.

"It was like a lump under the rug" that the family stepped over and around for years, said a younger brother, Joshua Rivers, 31, of Greenbelt, Md. "We knew it was there, but no one addressed it."

When Carter dared to ask, the answers were incomplete and conflicting. Rivers' version was that she was checking on a neighbor and was absent only five minutes. By the time she returned, the house was ablaze. She attempted to open the door, she said, but a whoosh of fire and smoke pushed her away.

After a while, Carter settled for a skeleton of a story because she didn't want to further burden her mother, who had battled depression and drug addiction.

"Why did I leave the kids?" the 57-year-old Rivers said plaintively during an interview at her Southwest Philadelphia home. "I sat alone so many days and talked to God [about it]. Nobody but God."

In the years after the fire, tranquil periods of family togetherness were interrupted by turmoil as Rivers struggled with her demons and underwent rehab. Carter wound up in foster and group homes.

"I found myself putting other things before [my family]," said Rivers, who had survived her own troubled childhood with a mother who was intermittently hospitalized for depression.

Rivers had two more children, and when Carter was barely old enough, she stepped up to care for the entire family.

"She got jobs babysitting. She made sure we ate, the house was clean, helped me with my homework," said her sister, Erica Felder, 28.

When she left home for Chestnut Hill College, Carter finally focused on her own future. She paid her tuition with scholarships and loans, lived on campus, and made friends. She began seeing a therapist who told her that the fire wasn't the only trauma she endured. Her home life had also taken a toll.

After earning a bachelor's degree in communications and technology, she had trouble finding full-time employment. She ended up back home, but soon clashed with her mother. During an argument, Carter snapped at her, "My life is like this because you weren't home."

Carter left, stayed with friends, and then secured a subsidized apartment. She had her first son, Keyan, a year later.

On the list of challenges for severely disfigured people, finding a job and finding love are near the top, said Rosemary Worthy-Washington, founder of Healed With Scars, a Philadelphia nonprofit that advocates for burn victims. Employers worry about  how they will be accepted by coworkers, not to mention the public, she said. And romantic relationships can be precarious because "you wonder if the guy is settling, and if he thinks you should just be glad for the company,"  said Worthy-Washington, who was disfigured in a car fire and underwent 100 surgeries.

Carter spent much of her 20s and early 30s "holding on to anything that looked like love," she said.  She had two more sons, and worked as a grant program assistant at Chestnut Hill College for six years, all the while living in apartments provided by agencies that assist families unable to find affordable housing. Along the way, she earned a master's degree in clinical counseling psychology.

"Tanisha juggles and balances this amazing drive and intellect with the reality of her physical abilities," said Rachel Falkove, executive director the Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, which had helped her find housing. "She's desperate to be independent."

In 2015, she settled in her current home, assuming the mortgage of a house owned by her father, Anthony Carter, who had become a firefighter out of gratitude for his daughter's rescue.

She is currently a full-time mom to sons Keyan, 11, Caiden, 5, and Kiye, 4. She supports her family with the help of Social Security disability payments, a resource on which she has had to rely during periods when she has been unable to find employment.

With some housing stability and her youngest boys in school, she is more focused than ever on personal success.

The first step was writing the book, dictating the manuscript into her phone nightly for three months. She has volunteered as a consultant to a mentoring initiative for African American boys. On Wednesday, she will speak at her alma mater, Philadelphia's Widener Memorial School for students with physical and intellectual disabilities.

She already is planning another book.

It's time to embrace the "narrative of superhero," brother Joshua has told her — a story about self-esteem and the secret powers that lie beneath the scars.