You Are Still a Child
A story about the difference between needing help and owing someone your story
I called the county helpline at 2:11 in the morning, sitting on the linoleum between the stove and the sink because that was the only corner of our trailer that did not feel like it was actively caving in on itself. I had tried the living room first, but the draft coming through the gap in the window frame made the cold feel personal. The bathroom was too small to breathe properly.
The space between the stove and the sink was just barely big enough to fold myself into, and I had discovered early on that small contained spaces could hold you up when nothing else would. I was thirteen years old and I had been awake since eleven trying to get Noah warm enough to fall asleep. He was six.
He had one sock on and one sock missing and had been too tired to care about finding the other one, and he had curled himself into a knot on the floor because our mattress had given out three weeks before, the springs working their way through the surface like something trying to escape, and we had put it out by the dumpster and replaced it with towels folded into a laundry basket. He looked smaller than six in that basket. He always looked smaller than he was when he was trying not to complain.
The woman who answered the helpline did not rush me. That was the first thing I noticed, that she gave the silence room to be what it was instead of hurrying me past it. I told her nobody was bleeding, that I was just thirteen and my little brother was asleep on the floor and I could not figure out how to make any of it better before morning.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
TAP ” READ MORE ” 👇
