by Lauren Salem
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There was a time in my life when my mom and I lived like modern nomads on the open road. After I shot that man when I was ten, my father and I returned home to our trailer with bags full of treasures. When my mom found out what he did, she was furious, and my parents got into the most gruesome fight I ever saw. They yelled at each other for forty minutes and threw dishes and chairs, all while I was watching a rerun of Looney Tunes.
Eventually, Mom pulled me away from the television and said, “Pack up, we’re leaving,” but I didn’t know what she meant at the time.
She packed up our suitcases, and on our way out to the car, my dad pleaded, “Come on, baby, don’t do this.”
With a firm grip on my hand, she walked right past him, dragging me along to the car. I looked back at my crying father, never knowing that this would be the last time I’d see him before he died.
My mom and I drove off into the night and were forced to become modern nomads because we had nowhere else to go, and the police were looking for me. After driving for a little while, she pulled over to the side of the road, and we slept in the car. The next morning, we drove into town in search of food. Mom’s money ran out fast, so we eventually went from eating fast food to eating out of the trash. Every morning Mom would drive into a town so we could eat, but at night she drove back to the outskirts so we could park the car and sleep. We never went into the same town twice because in the towns, it was more likely that the police would find us. If we were in the country areas when it rained, we put our paper cups on the roof to collect drinking water while we stood outside naked, letting the rain wash off our bodies.
I lived this way for about a month until the police found us. Mom was arrested for child abuse, and she spent a few years in jail. Sometimes I got to visit her in prison when my adopted family allowed it. I was fortunate enough to get adopted by the first foster family I was placed with, and we lived together for two years. They were pretty nice, and for the first time, I had a lot of brothers and sisters. In the summer my adopted parents would break the kids up into two teams of five to play football in their giant yard. I still remember those beautiful, hot summer days when my adopted mother made her famous homemade lemonade with tiny triangle sandwiches. We drank and ate during half time while the two teams talked about their game plan. I loved it there and almost never wanted to leave because it felt like a never-ending sleepover, but, at the same time, I missed my mother.
At some point, all good things have to come to an end. When I was twelve, my adopted parents adopted this new teenager who was severely troubled. The kid constantly framed me for injuries he inflicted on himself. He was really good at making it look like I did it, and I hated him for that. Eventually, my adopted parents believed his stories and thought I was aggressive, so they enrolled me in Sonoran Correctional High School, where I lived and went to school for six years.
