life story

first grade (mom)

My mom had came back from jail or where she was and got a house infront of the school we go to so we would walk there and back. I was in first grade now. I remember Uncle S setting up a bunk bed for me and my brother in our new room. There wasn't anything special about it, it was just a normal room for kids. Next to our room was my moms room. She had a queen size bed so we would all usually sleep in her bed together. She had a old tv in her room that had no color and played VCR tapes and that how we watched movies. It also didn't have any sound, but she had connected a speaker or something to a cord and it worked, we could hear. Infront of her room was the bathroom it has a special story of its own later. We lived with my great grandmother since she had to have a roommate. Although she couldn't walk she was stuck in a wheel chair and sat in that same place for a year because she didn't have a room. She wasn't able to roll herself around either because she was a little in the heavy side. She was also surrounded my boxes of her stuff so it was hard to get in and out. I think about it now, her life must have been so boring sitting and sleeping in that same spot for a year. The only time she would move was when my mom had to changer her diaper. She was in a Wheel chair because her foot got stuck in a escalator and had fell while her foot was stuck. Anyways when we first moved in we had a welfare with the same social worker that had took us away. She was apart of my life for years her name was Mrs L. We also did family counseling with her but it didn't help at all. We always made up lies and stuff so we wouldn't get in trouble because our mom was right beside us. As they did there welfare checks the cps workers would come take us to the bathroom while the police would look around. They would tell us to undress and they would take pictures of our body to see if there was any bruising. It was awkward at first but i had gotten used to it. Like i said as we were living here my mom was a heavy drunk but she wasn't supposed to be drinking cause she was on probation for 5 years after the car accident. I would have to say first grade was one of the worst years of my life. We didn't have a car so we would have to walk everywhere or ride a bike at this house we walked everywhere. High Springs was wear we lived it was a little small city in Gainesville and everything was all smashed together. I knew where everything was. Infront of our house was the school, if you were to walk out my front door and take a right all the way down take a left and keep going down you would come across a CVS and a Hardee's, or if you were to take a right out my front door and go up to the main street and take a left keep going forward passing a car maintenance store there was a ice cream place we always ate at called Krazy Kow and if u were to turn right there was a barber shop right next to it. If you were to turn left at the ice cream store there was a post office. You get the point. Cvs pharmacy was our life. We always went there it was like where we got our food, toys, drinks, my moms drink. i always dreaded going there though because i knew what my mom was getting. Vodka. and not just those little skull bottles, oh no it was the gallons in the biggest bottles there were. On the way back from the store she would always pass out in the middle of the street luckily they weren't busy because they were dirt roads but it took some time to get her up. sometimes a car would come by and ask if we needed a ride, she always said no and i wondered why because we were definitely in need. She would hide her bottles under the kitchen sink or sometimes in the freezer since alcohol doesn't freeze. She would also hide her vodka in her water bottles or drinks and it became really bad to wear i would get a water bottle and take a sip and i would taste it instantly. I can still remember that gross hand sanitizer taste. It had gotten pretty bad so we would have to smell everything before we drank it. After we would go to the store she would walk us down to the park she was pass out eventually and we would be there for hours playing with other little kids. She would also sometimes take us to this strange soccer field but it had a swing set and a track thing that we would always ride out bikes on. Over the fence next to it you could see a BMX park. My brother had gotten into that for free lucky because we didn't have much money at this time especially because my mom wasted it on alcohol and when she was all out of money she would run to us and use our birthday or christmas money and say she would pay us back but never did. Sometimes if me and my brother found her bottles we would dump it out and fill it up with water. When she would find out, which wasn't long after she would get furious. Eventually she had met this man named M. I'm not sure if she had knew him earlier because all i remember was he came to fix our sink and then he started coming over more and more often. We started going places with him such as the springs. Blue springs was a really pretty place with crystal clear cold blue water. We went here often, but i will never forget when we were here. Me and my brother were playing in the water and look over and see M and my mom talking. Next thing i know they leaned over and kissed. I was about to cry, i was so upset and angry, but sad. I hated him. He was always drunk with my mom and she didn't need to drink more than she already did. She would drink the second she woke up till the second she passes out to where she wouldn't be able to pick us up from school in time. Her drinking made us have to do a after school program and we would usually be the last ones to be picked up. One time we weren't even picked up it was getting late and my mom still didn't come so a councilor had to drive us home. Later our landlord came over and as she entered the house we started hearing a squeal in my great grandmas car. It was a kitten but we wernt aloud to have a pet. So when we found it she told us we could keep it in our utility room which wasn't located in the house. After the landlord left of course we brought it inside. Soon after that another cat came up to our glass sliding door and started scratching on it. We didn't do anything about it though. It kept coming for days until eventually we started feeding it. We didn't let him in the house though. We were thinking of a name to call it i had said ginger even though the cat was black and gray. My mom names it sphinx, the other kitten we named silky. We had later found out the should was declawed to he must have been owned but we still took care of him. I remember my mom had left for work and my brother had silky and i grabbed sphinx from outside and brought him in. My grandma couldn't see because we were behind her so she couldn't see what we were doing. Later we had let him back outside because my mom was coming home from work and we didn't want to make her mad. The first cat we found, Silky started learning our routine and walking with us to school, even the traffic guard had said he'd never seen such a thing like that because as we went to school she would sit at our playground which was by the road that we had to cross to get home and wait for us for the 7 hours we were at school for and walk us back home. At recess everyone would be looking at her and i would say that's my cat she waits for me so she can cross the road with me and they never believed me. Later she had met a guy named T. He was a nice christian guy with black hair and a faded beard. We would go to his apartment often and he had seen my mom was a drunk and he was asking us how we dealt with her at only 7 and 8. We showed him what we did with her bottles and he laughed. We were lucky to have him to keep us safe even though i don't think they were dating. He would take us hunting a lot and gun training and let us shoot his rifles and stuff. One day we were at his apartment and we get a knock on the door. I thought it was going to be cps saying we weren't home and they were trying to get more pictures of our body because they came every month. My brother had looked through the peep hole and had shouted saying mysteriously "It's M" They had opened the door and started yelling at him to go away. When he had left we were questioning how he found the address. Then, T started receiving stuff from his computer. It was pictures M had took of my mom while she was passed out. I was scared but it ended soon. The landlord had came to to a check on the house so we had to lock silky in a room. Somehow she unlocked the door and opened it and the landlord was right there, silky was right by her feet. Every time the landlord would look down silky would back away behind the corner me and my brother were laughing to hard and she never seen silky. A couple months later my oldest brother came down, his name is N. He had gotten taken away as a baby because my mom had gotten drunk and was doing stuff at her moms house and when she went to go to the car she fell and passed out with him in her arms. She often went there for days at a time leaving me and my brother home alone in third grade because she wanted to get drunk. A car had drove by and seen N sitting there crying so they called the cops and he had gotten taken away and sent with his biological dad. We had different dads but me and G shared ours. We had played with a football and eventually he had to leave. When christmas came around the corner i was surprised to see presents under the tree because our lack of money. It turns out L, our social worker had gotten us presents, She even got us a ipad. We were so happy and it was such a good christmas. Second grade came sooner than i thought but during the summer we had to do summer camp. It was really fun we had a bunch of field trips and i loved it. One of my friends i had went to school with was doing it to and we became even closer.