417

When I turn to look at the clock, I read "4:17" damned near every day. That's AM. That's also the last address from which we were evicted - 417 15 1/2 Avenue, Rock Island, Illinois.

It was the second time I became homeless, and in each occurrence I was powerless.

I had just turned 17, and had been working. When I came home, Mom was standing outside of our apartment. She told me she was going to live with her sister in California. I was to go see if I could rent something from her brother. I got a cot in a corner of his basement work shop. He pointedly said that he would not be a guardian or responsible for me in any way.

It was such a strange feeling to see all of our stuff sitting on the curb, and the neighbors picking through it without acknowledging us. I guessed that the first thing to go was a new vacuum cleaner that I had bought a couple of weeks earlier.

But, just standing there watching that turned me more numb than I had been in the previous nine years since Mom and Dad divorced.

So, how do we deal with abandonment and rejection? In my case, not very well. I still feel it; I still cry.