by KA, Sacramento
My name is KA. I am seventeen years old and I have five brothers and no sisters. Growing up I didn’t have what you call an easy life. I was born in Kaiser Hospital in South Sacramento, CA. I don’t know exactly where I went after I was born but I know when I was real young my mom was having trouble financially and that led to my mom, brother, and I being homeless for a while.
We were sleeping basically anywhere we could. Sometimes we would try to sleep at relatives’ houses, cars and basically anywhere else we could find. For a long period of time we were going from hotel to motel. We were living in hotels so much, at one of the hotels we stayed at on multiple occasions, they ended up hiring my mom to work there so we could stay there longer.
As a kid, I didn’t really see anything wrong with our living conditions until I got older and realized the struggle we was going through. I actually got used to sleeping in cars, living in hotels and all the empty stomachs. Seeing your mom steady crying and shedding tears because she can’t provide for her kids can really change your outlook on life and how you think mentally. While we were living in one of the hotels, all of a sudden my auntie pulls up and we go to her house. We ended up living with her for a little while but that wasn’t the end of our hardships.
After living with my auntie, we moved in with my mom’s cousin/close friend and her son, one of my cousins. Everything seemed good. We stayed over there for a while. Me and my cousin started to get close and do everything together. As a kid, I didn’t see anything wrong or out of order. Then one day me and my mom was sitting in the living room and she was helping me on my homework. It was me and my mom in there at the time. Then out of nowhere my mom’s cousin came storming through the door, I guess intoxicated, and started yelling and screaming at my mom. I never really found out the full story behind why she came in tripping. I think it’s over some bills or something but I didn’t know for sure. They were going back and forth for a while as I just sat there watching. Then all of a sudden she started yelling, “Get out, get out of my house!” She went to the back rooms and started grabbing and collecting all of our clothes and throwing them outside. What just added to it was that it was raining and at night. In just a couple of minutes, all of our belongings was sitting out in the rain. My mom thought that her dad lived across the street in some other apartments, so we grabbed as many stuff as we could and walked over there.
The main problem when we got over there was my mom forgot the exact apartment he lived in so we were going from door to door praying that my grandpa was the one behind the door. At around midnight, my mom used someone else’s phone to call for someone to come get us. Turns out, that not only did my grandpa move in with his wife, but he also had cancer. We ended up moving in with him and his wife so my mom could help take care of him also because we had nowhere else to go. It was kind of weird seeing my grandpa just lay on the couch all day. He couldn’t really do anything for himself. He needed help going to the bathroom, eating, getting up and a lot of other things.
(I remember) He made sure he never missed a 49ers football game though. He’s the reason why I’m a 49ers fan to this day. Besides baseball, football was the main thing he talked about with me.
One day me and my mom walked to the store or something and when we came back there was nobody in the house. It was weird because it’s not like my grandpa can just get up and leave real quick. My mom instantly started panicking and getting worried. She called my grandpa’s wife and she told my mom that my grandpa had a stroke and they were at the hospital.
My brother, my mom and I rushed to the hospital as soon as she told my mom. It seemed like even though my grandpa was in the condition he was in, he still kept a smile on his face and made light out of the situation. It wasn’t easy seeing my grandpa laid up in the hospital, but as a kid I didn’t know the seriousness of a stroke and I thought he was going to be good and bounce back. My grandpa died in that hospital bed because of all the things that was wrong with his body. Him dying didn’t even hit me until I seen them lowering his casket into the ground.
The death of my grandpa kind of changed my family up a bit. My family kind of divided up a bit. My grandpa was the one that pretty much brought the family in closer, especially between my mom and her brother and sister. So it kind of made everybody separate. We still talked to relatives but it just wasn’t the same.
Soon after, my mom, older brother, and I moved to Louisiana were my youngest brother was born. Louisiana was real different than Sacramento. It was a different environment, dress code, and speech pattern. When we first got there we were living in a trailer park right next to the school.
I never knew the teachers out there were allowed to hit their students until it happened to me. It’s not like it was hard or something, it was just shocking. The first time was in the middle of class when I sat down and accidently hit a girl that was next to my leg. I apologized but she didn’t want to hear it. She told the teacher and the teacher called me in front of the whole class. I walked to the front of the class and the teacher instantly pulled out her ruler. She told me to hold out my hand and she started hitting it with the ruler repeatedly. The was the first but not the last. It actually happened plenty of times all through the school year. I ended up getting held back that year (my kindergarten year). It wasn’t really the teacher but on the last report card the teacher told my mom that she thought there was a lot of stuff I didn’t know and moms made me do the grade over again. We ended up leaving Louisiana during the summer and I started over in Sacramento.
The natural disaster was another thing that was different in Sacramento. I remember one time in Louisiana at school there was heavy rains but I didn’t think too much of it. It wasn’t until after school when we had to walk home, we noticed it was a flood. Walking home the water was practically up to my waist and it kept rising so my brother sort of picked me up a little and hurried up and got us home. My little brother was born out there and soon after, we went right back to Sac. A couple weeks after we moved back to Sacramento there was a hurricane or tornado out there. I can’t remember which one for sure but one of my mom’s friends that lived out there told us that the house we used to live in was destroyed by the natural disaster.
Once we got back to Sacramento it was no better than before we left, still struggling. The only difference was that instead of going from hotel to hotel, we were going from apartment to apartment. Moms was doing everything she could think of to provide for her children. I remember one time we were living in a little apartment complex when there was a knock on the door. My being a kid, I just went to open the door without seeing who it was or anything. It’s not like I was able to see through the peep hole or anything. When I opened the door it was the police. They said they were looking for my mom. My mom came out the back room not knowing who was at the door, but when she seen who it was, she was stuck. The police took her and she had to do some time in jail. That wasn’t her first or last time having to do some time. Me and my older brother had to go live with my grandma while my mom was doing her bid in the county jail and ranch.
So this time around back in Sacramento from Louisiana we had a new member in the family (my little brother) so moms knew she couldn’t go back to doing what she was doing. The only difference was instead of going from hotel to hotel, we were going from apartment to apartment. We were still financially unstable, big time. We were moving around so much all over Sac., but as a kid, I really didn’t mind because I was meeting new people in each apartment we moved to. Sometimes we’d be in an apartment for a couple weeks to a month when we moved again. Around this time though I started seeing things for what they really are. I started realizing how much we were really struggling, seeing how bad we had it. This made me start to think differently. I had to grow up faster, mature quicker than most people and I was only in about the first grade. I’d gotten used to having nothing to eat and struggling when I was a baby in mom’s eyes, but at around first grade I gained a different mindset.
To be continued…