While my parents often spoke of not letting anyone get in the way of keeping our family together, I was growing increasingly exhausted, trying to take care and feed my brother while managing them as their high wore off, usually by the following day.
My brother and I would have already been up and playing, sometimes having walked to the nearest McDonald’s with my grandma so she could get her coffee. Our parents would lie in bed looking like death and complaining that they couldn’t feel their arms.
We were made to shake their arms to help relieve numbness. Whether it helped, I doubt, because we were often yelled at for not doing it right, not doing it hard enough; God forbid our little arms became tired. That wasn’t an option.
As much as I loved them, I was also growing cold towards them. I began wondering what would happen if the people they feared so much who wanted to take us would really be as bad as they said it would be.
I started to wonder if the unknown could possibly be better than watching my mother desperately steal money from my grandmother every month. My brother and I had to devise plans to intercept the mail to ensure my mom didn’t get ahold of my Grams check first.
But even if she didn’t, she knew it would come and would ask for money. If my gram didn’t oblige, she would rip her purse out of her hands and rummage through it until she found what she wanted.
I’d witnessed my mom damn near attacking my grandmother so she could get the means to get high. I felt protective over my grandmother, feeling as though she was the only real mother I had in my life at the time. Seeing my mom treat her this way drove more of a wedge between the two of us.
Our life just seemed to keep getting worse.
With our parents gone often and using any money they came across to feed their addiction, it got to the point where we had no consumable food in the fridge and no electricity.
My brother’s father was able to finagle some electricity from a neighbor by running an extension cord from their apartment to ours. At night, the only light coming in was from the small TV in the living room corner that could only play the local channel.
Bathing became scarce, and on the off chance we were bathed, there was no soap, and we were putting dirty clothes back on. The water was cold unless someone would heat it for us.
Everything was shut off probably in part because bills went unpaid but also because we were living in a building that had been condemned and had been instructed to move out, but we never did.
The property was no longer fit for human habitation; for whatever reason, it had been deemed unsafe. It was so dangerous that at some point in the future, it ended up being demolished. Yet this condemned building was the last place I called home with my biological family.
Eventually, my parents would bring us to Main Street, usually where the busiest corners were, and they coerced us into asking strangers for money. Not ask, they would tell us. Beg. Look sad, look hungry, make them feel bad, we were told.
I hated this even more than I hated shaking their arms. Why did I have to beg a stranger for money to feed me when that was their responsibility?
I didn’t have to look hungry; I was hungry. But because I was so hungry, I had no choice but to oblige so my brother and I could get fed.
It often worked. But we spent hours walking those streets begging for people’s loose change. Other times, we would just steal from the corner store next to our apartment.
It was becoming harder for my parents to avoid DCF, whose visits were increasing. We were instructed never to open the door for anyone, regardless of who they said they were, even if they were family.
When knocks did come at the door, and they were home, we had to hide. It, too, became a game of trying to find the most creative hiding spots.
The best one was under the sinks in the bathroom or the kitchen because no social worker would start opening cabinets. Other times, our neighbor would allow us to hide in their apartment for a little while.
This was my normal. While other kids were learning and being loved, we were learning how to survive.