Karen, the main character in the story, is an average looking girl (line 9f) who gets pregnant at the age of 17, just like her mother. Her mother, however, who is much more religious than her daughter (line 28), is ashamed of Karen's behavior. When she slaps her, Karen slaps back as a reflex (line 38). This shows that she never plans her next step ahead but always acts out of feeling. Karen does not know her father (line 30f.), gets rejected by her mother and her boyfriend which leads to the fact that she feels alone and wants to find new friends (ll.76-77). She perceives that people neither really listen to her nor care about her presence. Through looking up to the black-haired girl (line 75f.), nearly being jealous and imagining having a life like hers shows how dissatisfied Karen is with her life. Nonetheless, by standing in the subway station and being afraid that people could hurt her unborn baby (line 43) she shows her endeavor to be a caring and protective mother. She gets aware that she can not finish her school (line 90)but needs to establish another future plan in which she also needs to involve her baby. She is an African American girl who is ashamed of the homeless and neglected man in the subway station and does not want him to dirty the image of the black community. This proves that Karen either minds and sorrows about her social background. 

To put it in a nutshell, at the beginning of the story Karen is a despaired girl who feels marginalized by everyone and gets no assistance from her own mother and the father of her baby. In the course of the story, she struggles and has an inner conflict on how to handle the situation. She knows that she needs to give up on her dreams and develop a new future plan to feed her baby.