Advice? Car mart and Credit

Honestly I don’t know much at all about credit. I wish I did.

Back in 2016, I got a car from carmart. I made my payments on time for two months, even made early payments because I wanted to hurry and pay it off, and had worked at my job for half a year. Everything was going great.

Unfortunately, I got really sick, and ended up having to quit my job, which means I also had to return my car to the dealership.

Now I’m on disability due to my illness, and since I have income coming in, I wanted to start building my credit.

The bank told me I could get a secured credit card after three months of opening my account and I was super excited the other day, because it had been three months so I went to the bank and told them I wanted to get the secured card.

Well, they said I couldn’t because carmart says I owe $1000. Carmart didn’t inform me of this, I never got any bills in the mail, and they have my address. They also have my phone number. The bank checking this also caused a drop on my credit score more.

On credit karma it says the account with carmart is closed. So I’m confused.

I tried calling carmart and the person that answered redirected me to a different dealership and they sent me to voicemail, and I never heard back.

I just want to figure out what I need to do to get my credit up so I can get my own place soon. Even if that means taking my stimulus and paying off whatever they are saying I owe them (even though I hardly drove the car that I no longer have when I had it.)

I don’t know what to do.