Finding
Sootsey
Taking a walk in a homeless student’s past by annika sisac
212 days sleeping in a tent on the frigid, hard, desert ground. 547 days sleeping in an RV where the cold seeped through the broken windows. 152 days living without their beloved cat who was part of the family. 730 days in an apartment with their own room and a door. After moving from Oklahoma, one thing
was certain, their* mom’s pay would be better, but what this family didn’t know was if they could find shelter in this new town. For the first part of their journey to Grand Junction, the family took up residence in the desert, camping in tents and using piles of blankets for warmth. The outdoors, only separated by the thin nylon wall of their tent, became their home. “We had U Haul that was full of a bed or two and just mattresses. We didn’t have a lot of furniture. We gave away our microwave and toasters. We would put our stuff in a storage unit,” they said. The family kept their clothes in pillow cases that they put in the back of their car, and they only had a small box of knick knacks they kept on them. “It was during Spring Break, during my middle school years, when we first moved here,” they said. “It was freezing.” Months on end they cooked on a campfire, eating the same three flavors of soup for every meal: tomato, chicken noodle and vegetable. “My mom probably starved more than we did. We moved out here, which she did for us because the schools back in Oklahoma were
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cutting down on extra curricular activities and she didn’t want to make us feel limited,” they said. “I felt bad because I feel like we did this to her. Like she was losing weight and not eating as much because of us.” If they had a chance to wash their dishes they could pour the soup into a pot to warm it up, but otherwise they set the opened can on the fire to let it boil. “We had a rusty grill thing that we put over our fire,” they said. At night they felt exposed. Everything was pitch black, except if the moon was out. “I lived in a tent alone for the majority of the time we were in the desert, so I felt paranoid and scared,” they said. They love to draw super natural and
“I almost cried when we finally got an apartment. It was nice to be able to sleep in a bed again.” unearthly beings. They think their time living in the desert may have spurred some of their creative ideas which are reflected in their art. They have always enjoyed sketching, oil pastels and oil paints. They usually focus
on more grotesque art but often they draw nature and animals as well. “You can only live in the middle of nowhere for so long without waking up to strange noises in the middle of the night, or feeling like something is watching you,” they said. Soon the family found an RV park that was willing to take them in. They stayed in their tents until the man who owned the park gave them a broken down RV to stay in. The fridge had mold in it so it was unusable. Instead they would use the other residents’ refrigerators. “It had electricity, like we could plug it in, but we didn’t have AC or anything,” they said. “It was better when you were in the RV, but some of the windows were broken, and we didn’t have heat.” They were able to shower once every two weeks, and in the meantime they would use wet wipes and dry shampoo to stay clean. Because they weren’t paying to stay at the RV park, they only were permitted to use the showers sometimes. Otherwise they went to a friend’s house to borrow their shower. “My friends always had places to go, and I could go to their house, but I couldn’t invite them to my house to hang out. I felt bad socially standing,” they said. I felt like I couldn’t tell my friends that I was homeless.
*this student asked to remain anonymous