White Trash Heroes

We lived in five different places in San Pedro. An apartment, three houses and a travel trailer in a dirt lot. My parents never paid the bills or rent. The first house was infested with cockroaches. I would take a bath and watch the roaches crawl around the walls.

One day I asked if I could go out and play. My moms said yes but that we were leaving soon so don’t go far away. On the next block over was a construction site. I would play in a sand pile there. I took some army men and a plastic tank and went to the sand pile. An hour or so my parents drove up. They started yelling at me for being so far away and that they went to the grocery store without me because they couldn’t find me.

When we got home I was sent to my room for the rest of the day.

I lay in my bed bored out of my mind when I noticed a little hole in my wall. I put my finger in and started pulling out little pieces of plaster. I kept pulling out pieces of wall till my mom walked in and saw the now three inch hole in the wall. She grabbed my by the shoulders and slapped me across the face twice. I had to sit on the couch the rest of the day.

The second house was across the street from the first one. It was lime green and had thick turquoise blue carpet. That’s all I remember about that place.

We were evicted after about three months. We borrowed a little travel trailer and put it on a dirt lot near the harbor. Every night a bunch of men would drink beer in the lot. They would knock on the windows and stare into the trailer. We had to go to the bathroom outside.

The only thing I remember about the apartment is I would go dumpster diving. I found a few gallons of white paint. I decided that the dumpsters need painting. I found a paint brush and painted white stripes down the front of the dumpsters.

I stated Kindergarten while living there. My mom decided I better study before school stated. She bought me a notepad and a pencil. She told me to practice my ABC’s I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. I drew the number eight. I filled the pages of little eights. She took the notebook from me to see how I was doing. When she saw all the eights she went crazy. “My soon is stupid! How did this happen? How can you be so stupid?” I just sat there and said “I don’t know.”

Smack

“Go to your room.”

“Don’t come out till dinner”

Mom and dad got drunk. They forgot about dinner.