Homelessness Through the Eyes of a Child, The Sister’s Story

By Rachel Roland

It’s the same old re-rerun story – crackhead father, too doped up to care.

It’s the third of the month, and in my house, that’s when everything is calm. We arrive with my father and my brother at my aunt’s house, we’ve been staying with her, when boom - she hits us with this:

“You guys need to leave by Saturday.”

But wait, today is Friday. Imagine that, right?

It’s my freshman year in high school and I have to deal with this? So, my first thought was “hell no, this shit can’t be happening, second thought – curse her out cuz I can’t stand her ass anyway, final thought – skip first and second thoughts, let God handle it, and just pray.”

So, we went to our dingy room with no beds, we grabbed our stuff, and we booked it. First place, homeless shelter. Why? Because he (that being Dad) burned EVERY bridge with everybody else and that’s all we have left. When we arrive there, we sit, heads held up high, trying to keep hope when everything is falling apart with not a lot of money and a gas-drinking Lincoln.

What’s funny is that today is the third of the month – the day we got paid. But all the money went on unpaid debts of crack and more crack. And now, we’re in the shelter with things going as well as can be expected.

He had been clean for 25 days. On the 30th day, the shelter finds you a place. But, on the 26th day, he couldn’t hack it. He was itching for a hit. Man! There goes the 30th day apartment finding. But, is this a surprise to this 15-year old girl? No, not at all. It is expected.

She thinks she has to get away from this all soon, and very soon she is cold, heartless, and unaffected by this lifestyle on the outside – but, on the inside there is this small fragile girl locked in a cage with steel vaults and chains to keep her from coming out with a do not feed sign on the outside. That little girl is shaking from this lifestyle. She just wants someone to tell her that it will be alright, to embrace her insecurities, to tell her that there will be no more suffering. But, she refuses to feed that little girl.