Living day to day...

Each day I wake up in a dark and cold room, which I share with three of my siblings. My mother has been unemployed for a long time, I’m not sure how long exactly, but she cannot afford for us to eat breakfast, so I leave for school in the same clothes I wore the day before. I am in charge of getting each of my siblings to school, because I am the oldest. Being the oldest, places a lot of responsibility on me. During school, we may get a free meal if the kitchen is working. After school, I usually wait for my siblings to get out of school and then walk home. They always have stories that they have heard at school about someone’s house getting robbed or some type of violence.
East St. Louis is a low income part of Mississippi, the city itself is in horrible condition, the land that my younger siblings play on is poisoned, but no one has money to do anything about it. There is not a house on my block that does not have some type of destruction; my house for example has only two windows with glass in it. The adults in the community do not try to hide anything from the children in the community. We know how dangerous the city is and we have grown up with it all our lives. My mom says there is hope for my little brother to go to college, if he stays in school, because he is a great athlete. She has not said anything about me getting out of East St. Louis, and I do not expect to.
In school, we are very over crowded. There are over 35 students in my English class. My teacher always talks about how she would love for us to read Shakespeare and other plays, but the school district and families are too poor to buy the plays. Many students have dropped out because they did not care. I am getting to that point. Living in East St. Louis and knowing what my future holds, I do not feel an education or reading is important. This is not true for all students, some kids love to read, and read the slim selection that is provided for us. They say that it lets them escape our horrible reality for a short time.
My little sister loves to go to school. It is a place where she feels safe. I’m not sure why, I guess she does not understand that the building is rundown, but she does not know any different. I do not either, but I know have learned about other parts of the country that are better off. When I was younger, I loved school too. Everyone did, but as we get older, more of us lose interest. I see the point of an education, for those kids who have hopes for a future, but for the majority of us, we will be living on the streets of East St. Louis taking care of our families.
I feel like the guys have a better opportunity to get out because they are more likely to enlist in the military, but usually the girls stay and raise families single handedly. I guess you could say that we lead a pretty depressing life, but that is what we are used to. We have not seen anything else.