Content note: this story explores childhood institutionalization and family trauma.
The shelter sat in an industrial part of town, a plain stucco building that looked almost too ordinary for a place children came when home stopped being home. Inside, Casa tried hard to soften itself. Arched doorways, tile, colorful decorations, placemats, and heavy furniture made the shared house feel almost like a grandmother’s home if all her grandchildren had moved in at once. It smelled that way too—old, stuffy, lived-in, with the occasional body odor that came naturally with a house full of teenagers. The boys disappeared to one side and the girls to the other, two beds to each room, while laminated rules and information followed us down the hallways. Alarms guarded the doors, staff watched from their stations, and the shelter connected directly to the counseling building, small reminders that no matter how homey Casa tried to feel, this was not anyone’s home. I was twelve, younger than nearly everyone around me, and already carrying the heavy certainty that I had been forgotten. Then I saw the bedrooms. Every girl’s bed was dressed in bright pink; every boy’s in blue. Great, I thought. A pretty pink bed to match the ugly, crippling depression I’ve got going on inside. Nothing about me seemed to match that pink—not the way I dressed, not the way I felt, not the person I was trying to figure out how to become. Yet there it was, tucked neatly around a mattress in a room for two: cheerful, identical, and waiting for me, as if belonging could be assigned by bedding.
