CONTENT WARNING: This chapter contains some graphic topics and descriptions that may be triggering to some readers.
"Finally summer!" I yelled happily as I through my backpack to the ground in my living room. "Mom! Guess what, guess what?!" I yelled excitedly, not even looking to see if she was in the same room.
Mom walked out of the kitchen with a dish rag, drying her hands. "□□□□□, I told you not to yell in the house. What do you want?" My mom's scolding was half hearted, as she had a small grin on her face. Her auburn hair pulled back into a greasy bun.
"Third grade is all done! I mean third grade is all done." I whispered the second sentence, as I had only just been told not to yell.
"I know, sounds like you are almost a grown-up now." My mother said, this time her smile grew from a slight smirk, to one that reached her eyes.
"I am a grown-up. I know everything in the whole world." I said proudly to my mom.
"So are you big enough now to do the dishes?" She asked joking.
"Uhh... no I am an adult, but in my head. I am too small to do dishes. See how tiny my hands are." I said, holding both palms out.
"Well they look like the perfect size for drying a glass without getting your hand stuck. Come on, help me in the kitchen." She said as she walked back through the door that attached the kitchen to the living room.
"You know summer is supposed to be for playing." I whined as I followed her.
I was tall for my age, but still used the stool beside the sink to give me some extra height in the kitchen. I grabbed the raggedy yellow dish towel from beside the sink, and began drying the clean wet dishes as my mom handed them to me. Like any kid though, silence wasn't my strongest suit.
"Mom did you know that when a crocodiles teeth fall out, they always get a new one, and the new one is like way bigger than the old one." I told my mom, totally unprompted.
"Is that so?" My mom said in a rather lackluster tone. She had grown used to my "fun facts", and did her best to tone them out. So I got a lot of: "Is that so"s, "uh-huh"s, and "wow"s. She wasn't actually listening, but that never stopped me.
"And also Jimmy from class has a real alligator tooth, he brought it for show and tell. He said he plucked it from an alligator by himself." I said, very excitedly.
PSSST CLANK!
The near constantly broken oven made a noise, as if trying to shut me up. My mom sighed and once again called the landlord. As always she got sent to voicemail.
"Listen Vern, the oven is still broken. It makes that noise everytime the AC goes on. I don't know how they are connected, but hurry up and get someone over here."
I could tell she was frusterated, but she never let on.
"So tell me, how did Jimmy get that alligator tooth?" she asked, distracting me enough to jump back to my own one-sided conversation.
"He said him and his brother found one by the lake at their house, and they punched it until a tooth fell out." I told her excitedly
"Well I can promise you one thing □□□□□, that Jimmy boy was fibbing." my mom told me.
"No he didn't because he had the tooth. That is proof right?" I argued my point. As if there was no other way to get a tooth.
"Honey, I gaurantee he got that at a giftshop somewhere. An alligator would eat him up." She told me, as she pretended to be an alligator chomping his teeth.
"No way. You told me gift shops were lame, and everything was too expensive to buy. Alligator teeth aren't lame, so they couldn't be at a gift shop." I explained with all of the confidence an eight year old could muster.
"Okay honey believe what you want; but I never ever want you to try and do that yourself, with any kind of animal. Do I make myself clear?" Her words sounded like a question, but I knew it wasn't.
"Yes mom" I said with a little pout.
We lived in California, and there was no way I was actually going to run into an alligator, but I didn't know that. I don't think Jimmy was aware either.
I few hours went by and it was time for bed. My mom wrangled me down and got me in bed, despite my very valid excuse of not being tired.
PSSST CLANK! I heard the oven's noises through the walls.
"See mom, even the oven wants me to stay awake." I told her, hoping that this last pathetic excuse would work.
"Hmm... really. Because I am fairly certain that is the oven telling you to go to sleep." She said as she pulled the covers over us. Our apartment was small, but just big enough for the two of us. We had to share a bed, but we were happy.
"How about one story and we go to sleep?" She asked trying to bargain. She had worked all day and was more than ready for sleep, but consideration isn't an eight year olds strong suit. Especially when it comes to adult matters.
"Okay." I agreed. I cuddled up to her as she began telling me my favorite story. We didn't have a book to go along with her made up story, but she had told me this story nearly every night for as long as I could remember. Though tonight I didn't even manage to hear the ending before I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
PSSST CLANG!
The oven woke me up in the middle of the night like it had countless times. Usually I just fell back asleep, but today I decided to get up. I walked to the kitchen and inspected the oven. Maybe I could fix the oven before mom woke up, after all it seemed Mr.Vern had no plans to. My mom repeatedly told me not to leave the lights on at night, because it wasted electricity, and our power bill was high enough as it was. So I decided to light a candle for light, my mom had told me not to play with matches, but not nearly as often as the electricity bill. Though lighting that candle was the biggest mistake I would ever make, and could never take back. As soon as the match lit up; the whole kitchen burst into flames. The first thing to burn was my right hand that was holding the match. I had never learned that we had a gas stove, or that there was flamable gas in the air, or that the "psst" noise the oven always made was gass leaking out of the burners. I however learned all of those things in a single moment. I fell to the ground screaming. I was burning, and everything in our cheap apartment seemed to be flamable. I could hear my mom yelling as she ran out of bed trying to get to me. It had only been seconds, but the fire was already spreading to the living room. She pushed through the flames and grabbed me slapping the fire off of of my burning hair and clothes. We were both panicking, but my mom had adrenaline rushing through her veins, and her only thought was to save me.
She turned to run out the kitchen door so we could flee, but the fire was blocking our way. The smoke was burning my eyes, and filling my lungs with each breath. She made the split decision to jump out the window with me. We were on the second floor, and immediately below was an asphalt alleyway, but broken bones were better than being burned alive. With me in her arms, she climbed up the counter, and jumped out the window. As soon as we hit the ground I fell unconscious, the pain of the burns and the pain of the fall were too much for my little body.
When I woke up I was in a strange white room. The lights were so bright they hurt my eyes, which were still hurting from the smoke. Everything smelt like disinfectant, except my body, which still smelt of the smoke that I had been breathing in, seemingly moments ago. I tried to sit up, but immediatly fell back down and cried. My chest hurt. I could tell that something had hit it, but I couldn't remember what. I started to panic. Where was I? Why can't I move? Why am I hurt? Where is my mom?
Suddenly a moniter next to me, that I hadn't noticed, started beeping loudly. Two nurses ran through the door.
"It's okay sweetheart you're safe you're safe." The blond nurse said, trying to calm me.
"Do you remember what happened?" the tall redheaded nurse asked.
The blond shot her a look. Her eyes saying 'I can't believe you asked that!', but she didn't say anything. Instead she sat in the chair beside my bed and rubbed my shoulder. One of the few spots that didn't hurt.
"I don't know where I am. Why does everything hurt?" I asked, my voice shaking, and my eyes glassing over with tears that had yet to be shed.
"There was a fire at your house, and you got pretty hurt." The blond nurse said in a calm voice. Very obviously trying not to scare me further.
That was when everything came back to me. The oven, the candle explosion, me burning, and my mom jumping out the window with me.
"Where's my mom?!" I yelled. I was panicking, my tears finally streaming down my face. She was the only one who was going to be able to calm me down.
The nurses looked at eachother, seemingly having a silent conversation.
The blond nurse spoke once again, even softer this time, "Sweetheart I am sorry to say this... but your mother passed away."
"No No You're Lying! She was with me!" I yelled the tears rolling down my face were being soaked up by the bandages covering my burns. I tried to sit up again, but fell back once more.
"Sweety don't move so much you have a few broken ribs. Those are gonna hurt for a while." The blond nurse said softly.
"Not to mention that needle in your arm, don't want to pull that out." The redhead said. Once again earning an angry glare from the blond nurse.
I looked down at my arm, seeing the needle for the first time. I began wailing. My mother wasn't here to comfort me, I hurt all over, these nurses are lying to me about mom, I have bandages all over. At that point in my panic the fan in the room kicked on and I felt the air blowing on my scalp. I shouldn't be able to feel that. I tapped my head with my bandaged hands, and experianced horrible pain that was both sticky and burning. Almost all of my hair was gone. Now on top of everything I was ugly. I began thrashing trying to get out of the bed. The pain wasn't going to stop me this time. The blond nurse held me down before I could get out of bed though.
"Calm down honey, you are going to hurt yourself!" She yelled trying to be heard over my screaming. I had no intention of stopping, I needed to escape.
"No! Mom help! Help! Hel..." before I even noticed she was there, the red headed nurse had a needle, and was putting something into my IV line. All I knew was that I got very tired very fast. Once again I was unconcious.
It was morning by the time I woke up, this time remembering the events, and not panicking the last thing I needed was for those nurses to come back. I had tears streaming down my face, but I wasn't going to set off any alarms. The IV in my arm had been taken out at some point, and a cooling cream was in its place. Outside my door I could hear a woman in a suit talking to the red headed nurse from yesterday.
"With the mother gone she will need to be put in foster care." The red head said.
"And you are sure there is no father or other relatives in the picture?" The woman in the suit asked.
"The fire department got in touch with the neighbors and they called the girl's school. No other relatives." The red head answered, sounding completely unbothered, like my life hadn't just been completely ruined. The woman in the suit wrote some things down on a small notepad that she had pulled from her pocket, then walked into my room.
"Hello □□□□□, I am Abby an agent from the CPS department. Do you know what that means?" Abby asked
I had heard about CPS from kids in my class. Teacher said it meant Children's Protective Services, but I didn't hear good things about it. All I knew is what a boy in my class, Michael, told me.
CPS took Michael away from his sister and his parents. They made him put all of his things in a garbage bag. They put him in a house with fake parents that didn't treat him well.
I gave a small nod, trying not to hurt myself.
"Okay well I am going to ask you a few questions, and tell you some things. Ask as many questions as you want." Abby said softly, but with a worried face. I could tell by her tone that she had done this a hundred times, but her eyes said that she was terrified of my burnt face.
I didn't listen to her, I didn't need answers. I had no plans on going with her. My mom and teacher had drilled into my head that you shouldn't go anywhere with strangers. I knew this lady was no exception to this rule, after all Michael trusted her, and look where that got him. I just nodded, pretending to listen.
"Okay that is all □□□□□ I will come back tomorrow, hopefully with good news." Abby said, not looking particularly hopeful.
After she left I knew that I would have to be gone before she came back tomorrow. Just thinking about everything that had happened made me cry. I started out wailing, which alerted the nurses, but after so long they gave up and just let me cry. My wails stopped when my throat began to hurt, fading to silent tears and sniffles. I eventually fell asleep, my crying had stolen every bit of energy I had.
When I woke up it was the middle of the night. I got out of my bed, every nerve in my body telling me to lay back down; just to stop the pain, but I couldn't do that. I plucked off every wire that had been attached to my body, and began my escape. I snuck into the hallway. There was a single nurse at the desk, and he had nodded off sitting up. I quietly crept down the hallways, following every exit sign. I hid everytime I could hear someone walk by. I wouldn't let myself be taken by the CPS lady. I rode in elevators, I walked down long hallways, and crept past empty gournies near the doors. Finally I was outside.
The warm night air felt amazing, unlike the the hospital with its bright lights and chemical smells. Slowly but surely I wandered off. This started my life as a homeless person
For the first few weeks I hid from every adult I saw, but soon learned that no one was actually looking for me. No one cared that I had disappeared; that was both calming and unbearably saddening. Still life goes on, and somehow I made things work.
7 YEARS LATER
I slept in the abandoned house that I had spent the better part of the last three days in. I had my lumpy moldy sleeping bag, which was the only bed I had known for almost a year. Other than the few nights I managed to get a bed at the shelter, though those nights were rare. I was far from the only person squating in this house though. Several scraggly men and two other girls were there. One girl a few years older than me, and another who's age was not discernable. Drugs tend to age you faster, and she used all kinds, she could be anywhere from twenty to fifty. The other girl did drugs as well, always having a crack pipe somewhere on her, but she seemed to be new to the addiction. You could find either of them on any given day outside finding some sort of high in back alleys. That was the night I learned that being a woman and being homeless was a dangerous combo. One day an unfamiliar group of men came into our little crumbling home, and took the two women by force. Though there wasn't much force needed, as both were completely intoxicated. They came up to me, but as soon as they saw my face they backed away.
"Don't touch that one. She's got leprosy or some shit." The man closest to me said.
I could hear the screaming of the two women through the walls of the house, and pleasurable moans from the strange men. I had never been so terrified, and greatful for my disfigured face. I was disabled and weak. There was nothing I could do to help those women, at least that is what I made myself believe. I also knew homeless people went missing everyday, but rarely did anyone look for them. I didn't want to be one of those people, forgotten by the world; though in all honesty I already was, the only difference was that I was still breathing. I grabbed my sleeping bag and my few belongings and left that house, never to return. It might have been safe from the elements, but there was no way I was going to be able to sleep there ever again. I walked through the night stopping to scavenge the dumpsters of restaurants nearby. The best time to look for food was right after closing, or first thing in the morning. That was when the days leftovers were thrown out.
I found a half eaten hot dog and grabbed that, it was mostly clean. That would be my meal. I wasn't hungry in the least after hearing those screams earlier, but I needed to distract myself. I went to the fountain that was in the town square to fill up my water bottle. I had found it forgotten at a playground a week before, and it had quickly become one of my favorite things. I had been living this way since I was little, and I had gotten good at keeping myself alive. I had seen a lot of illegal things in my days on the streets, but today's events would forever haunt my mind.
I walked down the freeway until I found an overpass, as comfy as squatting and the shelter were, most of my nights were spent under overpasses. They were loud, the ground was hard, and often enough you would hear people in cars yelling at you telling you to "get a job". However it was dry, and it kept you out of the California sun. I laid down in my sleeping bag again, and began to eat my dumpster hot dog. I knew it was pointless to try and fall asleep. There was no way I would be able to forget what I had seen and heard tonight. Those screams would be in my head for the rest of my life.
I looked at my hands, the skin on my right side was so tight and tender from the burns not healing correctly, that it was hardly usable. My fingertips were usually numb in both hands, my left hand was burnt, but not to the extent of my right. I knew that my face and scalp looked like my right hand. Something I had screamed and cried about the first time I had seen my reflection. However the memory of my screams still wouldn't cover up the screams I had heard hours earlier. This could have happened to me if I looked less like a monster, never before had I been happy for my disfigured appearance until today.
FIVE YEARS LATER
"Today's my twenty-second birthday." I told Hakim, a man I shared a tent with. He didn't speak English, and certainly didn't know what I was saying, but I thought I should tell someone. Hakim was a strange man. In all honesty I wasn't sure if he was a man. When he did speak it was in a tone low enough to be a man, but also high enough to be a woman with a deeper voice. He kept his head shaved, likely to avoid getting the same lice that I was plagued with. He only ever wore baggy sweatpants, and a novelty band T-shirt, from some musician I had never heard of. I believe Hakim is commonly a man's name, so that is the gender I went with.
Despite all the time we spent living together we knew almost nothing about eachother. He didn't know why I was covered in burns, and I didn't know how a foreigner from across the ocean ended up homeless in California. However since we were able to pool our money and get a tent we didn't care. The only thing we knew for sure, was that we were both homeless. Occasionally one of us would bring food back for the other one, but that was the height of our friendship. Just two bodies in the same place frequently.
Sometimes I would come back to our tent, which we set up in the forest right off the side of a highway, and I would have to wait outside. Because unlike me, Hakim had a sex life, though I don't believe he was too choosey with partners, another reason as to why I wasn'tsure on his gender.
Never was I happy when I came back to that, but at least in a tent the risk of walking in on someone was easy to avoid.
I always wished I had the ability to clean our tent, but cleaning supplies aren't free, and I wouldn't have anywhere to store them.
Still I was content. Me, Hakim, and our tent. Until one night Hakim didn't come back. I waited, night after night the tent stayed in the same place. Eventually someone complained about our camping spot, and I had to pack up and leave without him. As I was setting up my tent in the parking lot of an old building, I overheard two men talking, and quickly figured out where Hakim had been.
"Did ya hear about that Arab guy?" The shorter man said.
"The dude with the tent? Yeah I heard he got plowed down by some racist prick." The taller muscular man said.
"Yeah I was there. The guy with the car yelled out his window, told the Arab dude that he should have died in 9/11, then just mowed him over with his car. Poor dude didn't speak English, didn't even see what was coming. The guy even backed over him then forward again. The city pretty much had to shovel him up." The shorter man told the story, not seeming to have any sympathy. He was telling this story like you would talk about any juicy piece of gossip.
"Nah, that's too bad, guy was always a good time." The taller man said, seeming more disappointed than sad.
I stopped listening, I had cried too much in my life, sure I was sad at the loss of my roommate, but I couldn't let it get to me. This was life here. I was homeless in a bad area. Some people died, some people disappeared, no one would be shocked that it happened to them.
I often thought back to that day in the hospital. If I had just waited and been put in a foster home, my life would have been worlds better, no matter how crappy my potential family could have been. I wished I was brave enough to admit it when I was young. I still had a chance at seventeen when I saw those women carried off against their will. I was still a minor, just admiting defeat would have changed my life, but it was too late now. Now I get to have nightmares every night, with every year passing I would make new bad memories, and add more fuel to the fire. This year's nightmare? It will be about Hakim being shoveled from the street.
THREE YEARS LATER
I came staggering down the road. I had had more than my fair share of cheap whisky. I swore to myself I would never be one of those homeless drunks that everybody looked down on, but today I needed it. Today was the anniversary of when my whole life went to crap. The day I was burned, the day I lost my home, and most of all the day I lost my mom. My week had been horrible as it was, but today pushed me over. I traded my shoelaces for this bottle of burning liquor, a decision I was sure to regret, but I didn't care right now.
"Why did all of this happen? Did I do something bad?" I asked out loud to no one in particular. "No it wasn't me, I was a baby kind of. So why does my life suck? Tell me!" I yelled. I saw pedestrians crossing the road to avoid being near me. "I am not a monster don't be scared!" I yelled entirely too loud. Though it was obvious that my appearance wasn't why they didn't want to be near me.
I stumbled farther and farther down the street until I got to the newest spot that my tent had been set up, an underpass downtown. The tent was looking worse for ware, as it had been a full time residence for some time. I struggled with the zipper, seeming to have forgotten how a zipper works, before I plopped inside.
Inside the tent was hot and sweaty, the alcohol only seemed to make that worse, but at this point the world was spinning, and there was no way I could stand.
"Mom you wouldn't be proud. I didn't go to school ever again. I didn't get a job. I didn't settle down. I don't have a home. I ignore people who need help. I am ugly." I was going to go on in my list but the tears started. I sobbed quietly as I laid on my back on the floor of my tent. One more thought went through my head before I passed out Why Bother.
I woke up the next morning with a horrible headache and no recollection of the day before. I sat up causing the room to spin. As quickly as I possibly could I rushed outside the tent to puke. A hangover is nature's way of calling you an idiot I am sure, and mother nature was screaming at me today. Still this was the first hangover I had ever had.
I couldn't just sit around all day. There was one thing that had never changed the entire time I had been homeless and that was the nightmares. The only nights I slept well, were the ones that I didn't dream at all.
I started my day, I felt like crap, but I needed to do something. I grabbed my carboard sign "Homeless Every Penny Helps", I had started pan handling, it filled up most of my days, gave me a break from my seemingly endless scavenging.
I was cursed at for the most part, or people assumed I did drugs and wouldn't give me anything. However the sign didn't lie, even pennies helped. I could spend ten hours on the side of the road, and be happy with the ten dollars I managed to get at the end of the day. Today in particular though I was extremely lucky
"Thirty dollars in six hours, that has to be a record." I said to myself "what should I buy with this? Maybe some soap or socks." I began walking back to my tent excited at the prospects of tomorrow's shopping trip
Then I blinked, and nothing was ever the same