There are different degrees of homelessness from couch surfing to living under a bridge or, in my case, behind a gas station with all my belongings in a laundry basket.
Funny, I didn't think the word homeless at that time. It was more than 10 years later when i defined that period as being Homeless.
It started when my father died. Mom moved us all to a much less expensive home, from the Sagemont area to the Beverly Hills area of Houston. It was still a nice, safe area to grow up.
Mom and my oldest brother Mike had always had issues and not long after the move she threw him out of the home. This was extremely painful and frightening for my brother Herbert and me. We now knew we were expendable.
Maybe we already knew that. Not long after the move Mom came into Herbert's room where the three of us were gathered with Dad's gun pointed at us. She said she was there to shoot all of us and then herself. I just froze. Herbert started talking to her softly, I have No Memory what he said, but while he talked Mike maneuvered behind Mom and grabbed the gun. Later he climbed to the little attic door in the garage and threw the gun into a dark corner. It's probably still there.
I was 10 and the boys were 13 and 16 when Daddy died. Obviously our mother was severely depressed but she had other things besides just being widowed. She had severe PTSD from WWII. My father met and married her during The Occupation and brought her to the US. After Daddy died her first instinct was to take us and go back to Japan. We said NOOO and begged her not to do that. Looking back, I don't know why she didn't. Was our protest the only reason she didn't?? One of a thousand questions I wish I would have asked her. It would have been a cultural shock to us kids as we feared but would it have been better for all of us? Plan B, to kill all of us, was definitely worse. And then 2 years later Plan C happened.
Mom decided to remarry but thought her chances were better without the baggage of teenagers. The 2 years after our father died she kept food in the house and provided clothing but she mostly stayed locked in her bedroom. She wasn't totally heartless, especially to me. She let me get a kitten right after Daddy died. He didn't allow pets and she did it to help me. She also used some of his death benefits to buy me a piano, something I had dreamed of for years. I had been taking lessons for 2 years before Daddy died and was quite good but I only had a 22 key organ at home to practice on. I drew piano keys on strips of paper and put them along the edge of the kitchen table to practice songs that needed more than 22 keys. The new problem was that she stopped my lessons. I did try to go on at it alone but was soon discouraged. To this day I Love playing a piano but feel deep regret I didn't have instruction and incentive to reach my potential.
We weren't easy kids to raise. Being keenly aware you are unwanted is hard to deal with! and we were teenagers in the 70's with no parental guidance. Herb started partying, smoking marijuana, having a lot of people over on weekends and when Mom started dating on the weekends Mike would often come, too.
In many ways we were terrible. We didn't keep the house clean and there was often a terrible mess after a party that Mom came home to. We would clean those up and, except for the kitchen, the house was decent most of the time. Mom bought Joy dish soap which we were allergic to, out hands and feet swelled and itched horrifically after washing dishes. I'm not saying we would have kept a spotless kitchen if she would change dish soap but it sure would have helped.
Mom had Rages at times. She would keep it all bottled up and then explode. During a Big explosion she took my cat and said she was getting rid of him because I was Bad. Mike was there, he jumped on the hood of her car begging her through the windshield not to do it. She took off and took the first turn so fast that Mike flew at least 25 feet. The next day I came home and my piano was gone.
Mike had already experienced being homeless. Fortunately a family of friends, Brian and Mark Sweeny, pretty much took him in as one of their own. I don't know his life before or after that. He tried to help us but he was just a kid, too.
When Mom finally found her next husband she was done with us. He had been a lifelong bachelor, I don't think he really wanted to marry at all. But, one night he was at the house and I was about to go to a place called The Eighth Day where Mike's band was playing. David Holman offered me a ride. On the way there he pulled over and tries to rape me. I fought and made sure I left deep scratches on him to prove the attack. I got out and ran. That night I told my mother. She showed no reaction so I went to my room, next to hers, where I could hear through the wall between us. She called him, and threatened to turn him in if he didn't marry her.
When she finally spoke to me about it she explained that it was my fault. I loved to dance, was very good at dance, and I had been dancing around the living room when DH had come over that night. My dancing was inappropriate and misleading to an older man. He couldn't help himself.
I also had a couple of families who took me in when I needed shelter. Primarily the Brady family who lived across the street there on Foredale Street. They had moved out of town before Mom got engaged but would still play a large part in the rest of my life.
We had some small hope that Mom might leave us the house on Foredale. The house payments were only around a hundred a month, which we later found we could have easily paid with the Social Security she would still receive for Herbert and me, but we didn't yet understand that and she did not.
Mike came and the three of us discussed how to survive and stay together.
The man who lived next door, west of us, I don't remember his name any more, Jack Something, was a Bad Man. He had once lured me to his home and molested me and then that New Years Eve he had invited Mom for a cocktail. He brought her home several hours later, carried her really, because she was throwing up drunk and in total disarray. Knowing the man I felt sure my mother had likely been raped by him but we Never discussed that night. I never mentioned it to anyone until just now. But I did tell Mike about what the man had done to me.
Jack was a real estate salesman who did quite well and Mike believed he could blackmail him into helping us threatening to turn him in for molesting me. Back then I likely wouldn't have been believed and little would have been done if I was but it would still stain his reputation. Mike paid him a visit and came home with the keys to a house! It was a modest 3 bedroom about 3 miles away.
We were about 14, 17 and 20 years old and didn't have the maturity for the responsibility of being on our own.
All our lives we would refer to this place as The House. It was never Home to any of us. It became what I've heard called a Flop House.
