Oranges

I was 6 when my mom kicked my sister and I out of the house. Not for good anyway. My sister was 7. We were playing in our old house in Oakland with a ball when it happened. We were throwing the ball around in the dining room. I threw the ball at my sister, but it went off course and hit my mom's favorite lamp. The next few minutes went by in slow motion as we watched the lamp fall to it's doom. As the lamp made impact with the floor, my sister and I knew we were in deep trouble. Listening to the sound of the lamp as it hit the floor was the worst thing we ever heard. It was a long and loud sound that reverberated throughout the whole house. We thought the sound would never end. It felt like hours when it was only a few seconds in reality. When the ringing ended, we only had a second of complete silence before our mom came and saw the lamp. We both ran to our room, but our mom caught us. We tried grabbing onto anything in the room. My mom easily got me, but she was having trouble getting my sister. She managed to grab onto our dresser, but my mom grabbed her by the legs and was pulling her. My sister had a tight grip on that dresser because my mom was pulling it too. I was crying at that time so everything I saw was blurry.

My mom finally got my sister and I and we were kicked out of the house. Not literally kicked, but locked out of the house in the backyard. We have a big backyard. There are only 2 ways of getting into the backyard through the house. The door at the back of the kitchen and the doors in the dining room. We were 'kicked out' of the house through the dining room doors. They are 3 big doors similar to the sliding glass window doors, but the swing outwards to open. I think it was the middle of Spring then because I remembered it was still a little cold and we were hungry. Our backyard has a big driveway filled with gravel. We never use it to park the car. There is a big wooden gate in front of the driveway, so we didn't have to worry about some stranger walking in trying to 'help' us. In the back we have cherry trees and a Jacuzzi. We never use it so we always have it covered up. If you come into the backyard through the driveway, then on the left side you would see orange trees, and on the left you will see a wall, but if you follow it and turn right when you get to the end, you will see stairs leading to a porch outside the dining room glass doors. If you go to the back by the cherry trees area, you will see a door to the kitchen after you climb some stairs. Somewhere in between, you will find doors to a shack or something. I only seen it once so I'm not sure. Anyway, we were kicked out of the house with nothing to eat and we were hungry. We went down the stairs to the orange trees and tried to get some. We were only able to get 6 if we jumped or used a stick. We split it between the two of us. They were sour, but it was better than nothing. Later, we tried making a pile of rocks to stand on, but we only got 3 more oranges. we saved them for later because we didn't know how long we were going to be out there.

We were out there for hours. We had nothing to do and we were cold. We tried opening the door a few times but they were all locked. Eventually, we realized our mom left the house and it was getting dark. We decided then to eat the oranges. We each had one orange and when we finished, we began fighting over the last orange. We were both still very hungry. We weren't thinking straight. Our minds were clouded with hunger and exhaustion. After a while, we just stood there in total silence. Soon, I felt I needed to break the silence. I was too tired to fight over the orange, so I began to tell her to take it. At that exact same moment, my sister told me the same thing. We then began to laugh at how stupid we were being. In the end, we both decided to split the orange in half. When we finished the orange, we saw a light shine through the wooden gate. We looked through the crack and saw our auntie drive up to gate. She told us how mom went to grandpa and grandma's house. At that time, they were still living in Oakland too. So anyway, grandpa and grandma called our auntie and she came to get us. We were brought to our mom, but we did not want to leave our auntie's side. We began to cry again, so our auntie made our mom promise not to yell, get mad, or hurt us. Eventually she agreed and we went back home with her. We never said a single word to each other until the next day. My sister and I were feeling bad about breaking the lamp, so we got up the courage to apologize to her. She was still mad, but eventually she forgave us. My sister and I felt a big weight lift from our shoulders. From that point on, we both tried our best to keep our mom happy.