Autumn

It`s 4 am, and I`m awake in my bed listening to my parents. They were screaming at each other in some sort of foreign language. My father was extremely drunk, he flipped out on my mother and all i could hear was a sudden sound of shattering glass. Mother helplessly yelped and i began to weep. Then I heard my father scream Ð"' you fucking bitch leave me alone, and tell that baby of yours to shut the fuck up!Ð"" My mother was just about to say something back to him but before she dared to hesitate towards one word, he slammed the door in her face. My mom was miserable that night. She cried for atleast 3 hours. I couldn`t stop thinking about what happened and I didn`t get any sleep. I don`t think mother did either. After that night mother and I thought that daddy would come back, we stayed up late together by the door with the room lit with just a candle hoping he`d calm down after a few days and enter the house thinking we were fast asleep, but he didn`t, he never came back.

When daddy left we were helpless. Mommy didn`t have a job, and with out a job there was no money.There was never any food or oil. For days, even weeks we would starve. The apartment was always cold because we couldn`t afford oil. The only heat source was a lighter, sticks and some stones. Rags were the only clothing material we could afford.We had no electricity so if anything bad ever happened like a robbery or something similar to that, we`d have no way to contact anyone. But it`s not like anything bad would happen since we have hardly anything anyone would value. I was so little that none of this even occurred to me, and I didn`t notice we had nothing, the only thing I cared about was having enough to survive, even if it was barley enough.

We started living under Welfare conditions, and with the luck we`ve had we were fortunate enough to still have them around to help us out. Mommy was always stressed out with the living conditions and I just made it worse because I was always all over the place getting yelled at by her. One day Welfare called mother into a private meeting. She couldn`t find anyone to baby sit me so I went with her. I over heard them talking and they told her that they would no longer support us and we had to hurry and find a new place to live because we would be evicted in 3 weeks.

Three weeks passed by and there was no luck at finding a place to live. We were forced to live out on the streets. Days went by of nothing but walking dark allies with trash all over the place and spending hours fighting with other homeless people over a new box to live in or scrap food. It was like a war on the streets. Especially at night, because you never knew if you would wake up beaten, raped, or even dead. I always saw hurt people, mostly the young or elderly.It was alot for only two weeks, but then mother found us a place to live.

It wasn`t a big house for a single family or even a fancy apartment, no it was just an ordinary shelter home on the corner of 5th avenue and Mere street. It was generally a nice neighborhood. Not much criminal activity or even normal activity. The streets were practically abandoned. The shelter wasn`t very roomy since about 30 other people were living there among us. I was satisfied either way. There was food, and warmth. Way more then I ever experienced. I even had people my age to socialize with. That was new for me, but it was good.

My second birthday came, I received a vanilla cake and it had alot of frosting. It tasted really good! We had a little party and had some refreshments. I also got my first real toys. They were a ball, a doll and a Walk N` Wag Puppy. The ball bounced extremely high and my few friends and I would have competitions of who could bounce the ball highest. I usually lost because I was sort of scrawny. My doll was really pretty. She had black hair, pale skin, and coral blue eyes. She wore a little dress with x`s and o`s all over it. The Walk N` Wag Puppy was so much fun to walk. I always pretended she was a real puppy. But since she ran on batteries and I used her so much there was those weeks that I couldn`t play with her because we couldn`t afford to buy batteries.

I`d say I had a pretty good birthday. Something even better occurred though. For the first time in a while, I saw my mother seem happy. I guess it was because everything in our lives was going well, and we were making progress towards a new start on life. One that would actually benefit us. This happiness lasted for about two years. During those two years it seemed as the summers lasted forever and the heat was getting to us, and the winters seemed forever white and chilly.

The holidays came and went faster then expected. Christmas holidays got longer and longer. I think it was just because I was getting bored and tired. The only difference was that during the Christmas holidays we wrote letters to Santa, decorated everywhere, ate special meals, had more sweets the usual, got more free time, stayed up later, and got two presents each, plus whatever your family could afford to give you if they wanted to do something extra.

My fifth birthday had come. I got a few presents including this stuffed bear that I put aside as special because for some reason she was my favorite and I knew she was going to mean alot to me. She was a black bear with some white on the underside. She had a mix of blueish gray, and white eyes. On the bottom of her right-hind paw was a stone. It resembled the month of April which was my birthday month. The only name I could think of when I received her was Beauty, so that`s what I called her. As time went out I found myself to be with Beauty more then the other kids. It was almost as if I shut myself out from everything and everyone around me.

One week during July my mother came in to inform me that we were leaving. I wasn`t quite sure what she meant, but she tried telling me the best she could that the shelter got a new policy and we weren`t allowed back. Mother was disappointed in them. They didn`t even give us a chance to look for a new place. They just put us on the streets again. We were there for two months. Walking dark allies and finding a shelter to last us a night. Usually a cardboard box or two would do it. We were lucky it wasn`t the cold season or we`d surely die from hypothermia since there was no source of heat. Most days it was hell. People would kill others to get a shelter for themselves, or even to get their share of food. I said to myself alot Ð"'selfish foolsÐ"". Sometimes there were even dead children lying behind dumpsters. They were either killed by those selfish fools, or because they couldn`t survive. But mother and I were more fortunate and we were able to survive.

Things were hard on me too. September means school, and kids would walk down the allies just to tease us and make fun of us. One repeatedly came back