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Sparkle (6)
I never thought I'd find myself out here.
April of 2004 will stay in my memory forever as that was the day I turned in the keys to our apartment and began living out of our car. I tried to get help before this but found out that there's no such thing as rental assistance here because Section 8 is closed to applications and for those who have been on the waiting list, it's awarded like the lottery. Shelters are turning away folks because they were never set up to handle large amounts of people, especially families. I learned how to appear normal during the day and where to find safe places to sleep at night. When I got my income tax return, I bought a used Minnie Winnebago and it became our home for six years.
My plan when I first got the r.v. was to save money while living out of it but soon discovered when the gas prices shot up, I couldn't save anything to get out of our situation. I found a job working for a newspaper printer at nights and could see the r.v. from the window to make sure no one discovered that my kids were sleeping in it. During they day I worked an office job from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm but I made sure to park the r.v. as far away from the building as possible so that others wouldn't know how I was living. Every day I dreaded someone finding out and for my eldest daughter, it was a nightmare. She didn't want me picking her up from the babysitter's in the Winnebago and begged me to park down the street so her friends wouldn't see it.
Even though I worked two jobs, most of what I made paid for childcare, gas and maintenance on the r.v. I didn't qualify for foodstamps and child support never came through. I never thought I'd see the day my girls cried themselves to sleep at night because they were hungry.
My youngest was a year and a half old when we moved into the small motor home. For years she didn't know any better and thought what we were doing was perfectly normal. Whenever school was out, we hung out at local parks then drove to a campground, rest stop or quiet parking lot at night. I met other single mothers living as I did and one of them became a mentor of sorts. "M" had raised two sons out of her motorhome and to this day she still works. Quite a few older men showed me where to park when winter came and also cautioned me about unsafe places where homeless folks were preyed upon. The trick, they said, was to keep moving and don't stay anywhere too long or you'll attract the attention of the police. I soon found out from watching others who didn't get that just how quickly the police would show up to move them along.
It always amused me when I ran into people who didn't know what to say once they found out we were homeless and living out of our vehicle. To this day it still surprises me when complete strangers came by and bought happy meals for my girls or dropped off a bag of apples whenever they saw us at a park. By the same token, it never surprises me to see others pretend we don't exist or shoo their kids away from mine as though homelessness is a communicable disease.
I never thought I would be avoided by my own relatives even though my own mother had the ability to help but chose not to. The week before we left our apartment, I told her that all I needed was $400.00 to cover my rent and I would pay it back. Two weeks later I discovered that she had chosen to buy a $1,500.00 computer, a video recorder and a new car instead. To add insult to injury, my eldest daughter noticed that she was being treated differently than her cousin. My mother promised my daughter that she would take her to Florida to visit with family that summer and found out by "accident" through her cousin who was packing a suitcase, that grandma was taking her instead. My mother then promised to take my daughter to Hawaii the next month and once again, it was my niece who went, not my daughter. There is no medicine I can give my daughter to heal the pain that homelessness has brought her.
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