Member-only story
Conditional Love and the White Canvas Shoes
The shoes were unlike any I’d ever had. I gently placed them on the windowsill next to the bunk bed, turning them slightly to the right so the sunlight would fall on them and create a shadow. We didn’t have curtains on any of the windows. Privacy was to be avoided at all times, but I didn’t give that much thought back then.
I had the bed on the bottom. I’d wanted a top bunk but had been afraid to ask for one. A little girl named Marguerite was above me. She didn’t say much, just pushed the ladder closer to her when she needed to go up or down. She must have been about six and small for her age. I was ten.
It was all my fault I’d ended up in this place for a month. If only I hadn’t wanted to join the Girl Scouts. Looking back, I guess I wanted to please my mother more than myself and that’s why she did what she felt she had to so I could have the Girl Scout uniform. But it didn’t matter now; in one afternoon everything changed and she was in jail and so was I, in a matter of speaking.
We went to court and I had to sit in the back with a social worker while my mom stood in front of the judge and answered his questions. Then I heard his gavel hit the desk hard and everyone stared moving around the courtroom. They let her come over to talk to me for a minute and she said,
