Kelly and Jacob

Jacob loves cars and greasy tools. He pauses in his peanut butter toast revelry to watch a dump truck barrel down the one-way streets.
Kelly empties the last half of her water bottle on her head. It’s 85 degrees at 9 a.m. and all they have left for liquid is the warm juice in Jacob’s bottle. If they had 75 cents they could afford the floaty that would allow Jacob to jump into the public water park at the County Administration Building. But they don’t. So Kelly bums a cigarette and they find some shade instead.

Kelly is still angry that her mother showed up the day before, stoned, wanting to see Jacob. Her mother was constantly on drugs when she was a child in La Mesa. Her mother would leave her in the same diaper all day. One day she fell asleep with a burning cigarette and nearly burned the house down. Her father kept them on the run, Kelly said, so they could avoid her mother after that. Kelly has two older sisters and a younger one too. But Kelly things she got most of the abuse from their father, who would hit her and threaten her. She would even hurt herself to get the attention of CPS workers, hoping they would take her from the home. She tried suicide three times: one hanging herself, twice with pills.

When she was 17, her dad dropped her at the Storefront, an emergency shelter for youth. When she was 18 the shelter sent her to St. Vincent de Paul where she stayed until she was fed up with the rules and the hierarchy of residents.

She sold herself on the streets to survive. “I did dope, I stole things. When I was doing prostitution I was my own boss,” she said. Then she met he first baby’s daddy. She had never even tried smoking pot, but he got her a place to live indoors, introduced her to pot, and got her pregnant. Once the baby was born, her boyfriend got possessive. He made her stay at home and clean and cook. She was afraid to leave because she was afraid if she was homeless with her baby they would take Kayley from her. So she drank a lot.

Eventually her boyfriend locked her in a closet for three days with no food and only water. She started to go crazy. He finally let her out so she could do her chores. She bolted out the door and went to the police. They took her to the Rescue Mission and her boyfriend fled with Kayley to Central America.

Her second baby daddy cheated on her before she even gave birth. She put her baby daughter up for adoption through CPS. Her third baby daddy disappeared as soon as she told him she was pregnant. Still on the streets, she decided to put that baby up for adoption as well. That baby, Scarlett, was adopted by Scarlett’s biological paternal grandmother. “She just said, ‘Thanks, I always wanted a girl’ when she took her. Real snide like that,” Kelly said.

Jacob’s father was her mother’s drug dealer. All seemed well for the first few months when they moved in together. then he got violent. He would throw her on the ground, put a mattress on top of her and pile electronics on top of that, like the t.v. and stereo, then leave. She would crawl out from under there and pray the baby was alright. She had quit all drugs and alcohol when she knew she was pregnant, Kelly said. Having already had three girls, Kelly dreamed she was having a boy this time. They told her she was on crack. But she had a boy. The doctors discovered a cyst on her ovaries, but couldn’t operate because she was pregnant.

So she would lie on the triangle of grass behind Petco Park in pain for the entire pregnancy. During that winter, all her clothes and her tent washed away in the winter storms. A week before the baby was born, the family that was going to adopt Jacob backed out. So she determined to keep this one and turn her life around. She was in a room, she was clean, the baby tested clean. But at 2 a.m. two days after the baby was born, four police officer, three nurses, two doctors, four security officers all came crashing into her room while she and her boyfriend were sleeping, the baby tucked between them. It was November 22, 2015. They grabbed the baby, said “Thank you” and left.

Kelly got herself a lawyer and CPS returned Jacob two days later. But the celebration was short-lived. Her boyfriend gave her a black eye just before her CPS appointment. They gave her two options: one: run far away from the man, or give up Jacob. She went into a program.

“I learned about personal boundaries. I learned that love isn't supposed to hurt, to love myself before I love others, for my son’s sake,” Kelly said with more than a hint of pride.

She’d all but forgotten about the cyst. Then last years she went for an annual mammogram. They found advanced breast cancer. She’s had four chemo treatments, and this week will be re-admitted for surgery while Jacob is having a two-week court appointed visitation with his father. She’s glad she’ll be able to spend a few days away from the Rescue Mission where she acquired lice, and some members of the staff told her she’d never be successful in their Women and Children Center program so she might as well not apply. When doctors tied her tubes after Jacob was born, they tied them right on top of the cyst instead of taking it out first, so she knows even if they get all the cancer in her breasts there’s still the ovarian cancer to deal with.

She worries about the time her son spends with his father. Sitting on a curb, Kelly offered a big kiss up to Jacob and instead of a kiss he slapped her across the mouth. You could see the emotional pain burst across Kelly’s face. “While I’m trying to start a new life, he’s crazy, Kelly said of her ex-boyfriend. “He’ll call me and say he’s gonna kill himself. But the court says I have to let him see Jacob. It’s so stressful.”

“I’m 31 and I feel so old because I’ve been through so much already.”