I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [11]
I didn't pay much attention to the fact that we were all pretty much only half-siblings, because we all looked out for one another. Once we got a little older, when we'd scrounge for food or places to sleep because my mother had left and locked us out, we would usually work in pairs or small groups. Even when we were fending for ourselves we tried to stick together.
No one in my family--not my mother or my brothers or my sisters or my grandmother--no one ever said the words "I love you." I never once remember hearing that as a child. But even though the words were never there, I could feel the bond that connected us all together, and I knew it was strong.
It wasn't that our mother didn't love us, or that she was physically abusive. It was just that sometimes she seemed to forget that she had children and that we needed her care, so she'd go off for a while and we kids would be left to take care of ourselves and one another. Since we didn't know any other way of life, we just adjusted to it the best way we could and always tried to back up one another. And we weren't the only kids in the neighborhood who lived like that. It probably shouldn't make me feel better that there were other families with the same kind of messed-up routine as ours, but back then I think it made me feel less alone and a little more normal.
My mother is from Memphis originally. I don't know much about her life, but I imagine she was like most of the people who lived around us: She was born in the ghetto, and that's where she stayed. I don't know what her schooling was like, where she went, or how many grades she completed. Those weren't the kinds of things she talked about. I do know that she was, and still is, one of the nicest ladies you would ever want to meet--when she's clean.
There would be stretches when she'd get off drugs, straighten herself out, and get a job. It was great to be home then because she would always have a smile on her face and just make you feel happy. Since she is a big lady, it's impossible to miss her in a crowd; and with her huge grin and strong hugs, she makes you proud to know her. If one of us kids brought over a friend who needed some food or a place to stay, she'd welcome them in, even though we didn't even have room for all of us, let alone for an extra body or two. But she made room. That was just how she was. She was big-hearted and loved to have her family around her.
But she seemed to love the crack pipe even more. Crack and cocaine were her drugs of choice and she never seemed to be able to get very far away from them. Every time she would pull herself together, fight back against the addiction, get a job, and try to make a nice life for us, it would only be temporary. Before long she'd be back on drugs and back to disappearing for days at a time.
To her credit, I will say that she never did drugs in front of us kids. She always made sure that she was somewhere else when she got high. She would leave to meet her friends, lock the front door, and just not come back until she felt like it. It might be hours or it might be days. It was pretty bad getting locked out of our own home, but it was probably better than seeing her and her friends all strung out.
We moved around to a number of different places when I was younger. My mother couldn't seem to hold on to any place, even in the ghetto. We lived for a while in a housing project in North Memphis called Hyde Park. Parts of it have been redone, but it was and still is one of the most dangerous parts of the city. We got shuffled around to lots of different units because my mother couldn't stay current on the rent or bills or just keep the place from getting condemned. We went without power a lot. We were homeless and living under a bridge for a couple of weeks. That was pretty awful.
When I was four or five, we lived with my grandmother Aeline, my mother's