Beggar

Beggar

For all those people who had a rough start in life and never, Gave up!!!

The wind is colder today, makes me wish I had something warmer than the thin hoody I nipped off some kid two years back. I shiver in the small space between the bins hearing the raucous coming from the building I'm leaning on.

A year ago, it was just a rundown 3-storey dump. From today, it'll be known as a club called, Lazers.

The people scream and cheer. Their loud laughs echo in my dead soul.

I've never known a day of being normal or having a hot plate of food to eat. I don’t even know what it feels like to have a bath. The streets of Washington have been my home since the day I was born.

I think I stayed in the hospital a few times but I'm not sure, I was too young to remember.

It's safe to say my mother loved me a little too much, because she wouldn't give me up. She rather I be born without a blanket to keep me warm than abort me or give me up for adoption.

Many times, she explained things to me, she’d say that I was a love child, and my daddy would one day find us and take us to his home. But he never came, and my mother didn't seem too beat up about it either. As the years went on by, I learnt to survive on these streets, I even learnt to smile.

Somehow by sheer luck my mother managed to get me in a school when I turned seven.

I was the dirty kid.

The one with lice in her hair.

The pity child who was always taking the lunch or scraps other kids left on the back wall during break.

By the end of the first year they called me Street girl. No one played with me, but I never let their words or actions bother me.

I kept my eyes on my school work.

My mother told me that if I focused on my grades and finished school, I'd be able to get a job when I got older. I remember just thinking that, we wouldn't have to stay on these streets.

Shelters weren't an option; they were the worst place we could go. We once ended up in the one on 16th Street.

We both had nothing to eat for two days. We were starving and I was getting weak. There was no other choice.

My mother tried everything to get a buck but no one was feeling generous,

not even for some scraps to eat. It was during my summer break.

While most kids ate their bellies full in those weeks, I was lucky if I got one meal a day. I never had a full belly then, didn't even imagine what it could feel like, but I didn't complain. I was alive, had all my fingers and toes.

Whenever I did complain about hunger pangs or frozen fingers my mother said I could've been unluckier. I could've been born without my arms or legs.

My mother's sanity had been questionable from time to time but she never let me beg, even when I asked. She always stashed me in some corner behind a bin or in an alley. Sometimes on weekends I'd sit on the pavement watching the cars go by.

But the day we went to the shelter was a bad day. I’ll never forget that day. The nip in the air sent chills in my body. My small feet tripping over itself trying to keep up with my mother's hurried steps.

Her grip on my hand was so tight, it pained.

We got there just as they were finishing up, and she rushed us straight to the queue for the free sandwiches. I think I was around eight.

A group of the people who ran the shelter saw me that day. They tried taking me away from my mother by locking me in some storage room. I was screaming and crying.

I remember how I bit the lady that pulled me away. I think I scratched her too, I'm not sure, it was a while ago.

Somehow my mother managed to get me out of there and we kicked down, and didn't stop until we were at the river. We sat in silence and ate a slice of the tuna sandwich she had with her.

She stole three sandwiches that day. I was old enough to know they always gave one per person. I wasn't sure how she managed that, but grateful, it kept us fed for three days.

It was the first and last time we ever sort out a shelter.

That was also the first time she warned me about the system. I remember her words,

“You listen to me kid. Those houses they’ll put you in are far worse than living on the street. You can never get caught; you hear me.”

I stared at her crazy green eyes, and knotted black hair, then I nodded. My mother’s face was hollow, and her wrist so fragile, sometimes I feared she might just break and shatter into thousands of pieces. But she was tough and kept me safe.

She said bad things happened to the kids in the system. Many people thought she was crazy. Mad. But I believed her.

After that my mother always spoke to me about her life when she was younger, and the dangers she faced after entering a foster home.

At the ripe age of ten, I knew the horrors I’d face if I was taken away from her.

The rape and the abuse were what I dreaded the most. But I was born unlucky, because my mother got sick.

She was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer and didn't last two months after we found out.

I was just twelve when she died.

There were no parting touchy words she passed on to me.

No tears.

She just looked at me from the hospital bed.

And carried on looking even after the monitors blared through the room, even after the nurse lifted me up off the ground and carried a struggling me out of the room.

I could've maybe told myself that she smiled a little but I couldn't bring it to the forefront of my mind to have such foolish thoughts.

It was the same day, November 8th, that the system swallowed me in. I had no choice. Forced into it and for 2 weeks like any other 12-year-old faced with shit luck I stuck it out for a peanut butter sandwich in the morning and stale crackers at night.

But when your foster dad rapes you, you get the fuck out of dodge.

I did. But only after I took a tin opener to his throat.

I left the other kids in that shit hole and took my chances alone on the streets. I was bleeding and violated. My private places ached, but I didn't seek a hospital or anyone's help.

Instead I made my way to the train station that night and cleaned myself up in the public bathroom that smelled like shit and puke. But to me, it was just another day of surviving; just another day in this fucked up-ness we call life.

The tissue paper I used to wipe the evidence away as the tear leaked silently down my cheek, was the one thing I made sure of, to never let happen again.

9 years have passed since then. Not much has changed in my life. No magical happenings or great jobs.

I didn't even finish school.

I’m still living on Washington streets. Still begging for scraps, because no one wants to hire a homeless 21-year-old with no I.D. I tried, many, many times.

I even tried stripping; apparently, you need a ‘P H D’ to do that too.

Only now the cold is making it fucking hard to even breathe. But nothing is making me come out of my spot in-between the dumpsters. This is like a fucking luxury hotel in my world. I could get a good 3 or 4 hours sleep here.

The owner of Lazers saw me around a few times, he said he wanted to talk to me tonight when the place closed. I only agreed because he offered me a hot meal, something I’ve never had before. And I'm sure I can take him if he tries anything. I haven't lived this long being nice.