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One night in the neighborhood of Raleigh in Memphis, when I was 7 years old, my mom and her boyfriend started to argue about something I was too young to understand. My mom knew that the arguing usually led to a physical altercation so she sent my two sisters, my brother and me to the next door neighbor’s house where we slept on the pull-out bed in the living room. In the middle of the night, I woke up confused to my stepdad picking up my little brother Blade. I asked him where he was going, and he said he’d come back for me in the morning. After a little reassuring, I finally went back to sleep.
The next morning I woke up to my great aunt and uncle knocking on the door. The neighbor, whose name I can no longer …show more content…
We had no neighbors, just a field on each side of the house and a cotton gin across the street. The house was old and not very big, with three bedrooms and one bathroom, but they were using the attic as a fourth room. My aunt was already caring for her mother who was in her last years, and her daughter Stephanie had moved back in after going through a divorce. When we walked in, Granny and Steph welcomed us, and they all tried to make us feel comfortable. My sisters and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to keep ourselves entertained. We played behind the large sectional couch with the few toys we had. We ate dinner at the table like a real family would do. Chelsea, Casey and I had a lot of questions concerning our mom and how long we would be staying there. No one had any concrete answers for us at the time. All they knew was that my mom called saying she was in trouble and her girls needed a place to stay. Aunt Billie and Uncle Wayne thought we had had a rough day, so they sent us to bed a little early that night. As the three of us laid together on the queen-size bed in the guest room, I felt a small sense of relief. I loved and missed my mom, but it felt so good to not be crowded on that twin-size mattress on the floor