The first time I was homeless

I remember I was in the 4th grade. It was close to Christmas, actually it was around Thanksgiving. I came home from school and my mom told me and my sis to start packing our things. There were 4 children at that time--3 girls and the baby was my oldest brother. He wasn't quite 1 yet.

We packed and by dark, we were in the car of the local sheriff--he was an elder at our church. He took us to a women's shelter in the next city. We went from living in a two bedroom apartment--it could have been three bedrooms because we had a den that could have been converted--to living in one room. We were cramped and we had to leave most of our stuff at the apartment. We had to be transferred to a school where I didn't know anywhere. It was not a good time for us. We had Thanksgiving there, but I don't remember it well. Not long after that we left to move in with a Minister at my church. We only stayed there for a few weeks and then we moved into the basement of a woman at our church. We lived there until I was in the 9th grade. It was a horrible place to live. There were 3 rooms--two bedrooms and a makeshift kitchen. The plumbing didn't work and there was no toilet in the bathroom. We had to use the bathroom in a whole in the floor and when we washed dishes we had to empty the water down the hole in the bathroom. It was a horrible time for our family. My dad was in and out of our life and the babies kept coming. By the time we moved our family had grown from 4 children to 6 children.