Fawnadina and Natalio

Fawnadina Hunter, 43, leans on her rake after smoothing out the patch of dirt around the large tent she shares with her husband Natalio “Junior” Aviña, 34, and their German Rottweiler, Oso. She sighs as she looks over at to the mound of trash her neighbors had piled up against the cyclone fencing that separates this patch of dirt from the sidewalk. She is also keeping an eye out for Junior. She hasn’t seen him or Oso since early morning. She fears he is with another woman or off smoking meth. She is thinking it may be time to call it quits on their 11-year relationship and return to her home near Porterville on the Tule River Reservation, where a niece is living in her house for now.

That home, however, is fraught with the complicated origins of what led to her being homeless for the last four years in San Diego. It is where the abuse between her parents, and the subsequent abuse she suffered by her mother’s hands when Fawnadina was blamed for getting more love from her father than she, the mother, was getting. It’s where abuse was so normalized that it seemed natural that Junior took out his temper on her. “I’ve always said I would never have a relationship like that (her parents). But I come to realize my relationship with Junior is exactly like that.”

Still, she doesn’t blame her mother for the beatings she got from an early age until she was 11. “I never held it against her. I love my mom so much. I don’t think ill of her. She did the best she could with what she had at the time,” Fawnadina said. “If beating me made her feel better, then I’ll take that. I never was mad at her.” Her father finally left when she was 11. He found another woman and had another family. Her mother never got over it.

Fawnadina grew up, had a husband and a baby girl. But when a woman in a bar started flirting with her husband one night, asking him to light her cigarette and letting him see down her dress, Fawnadina gave the woman a “beat down beat down.” Though the woman tried to stab her, it was Fawnadina that ended up doing time. She went to prison when her daughter was six months old. When she was paroled, her daughter was 11, having been raised by her grandmother.

“She grew up with me behind the walls. That’s time I could never get back. That’s one reason why my daughter and I don’t have that relationship like I wanted. Because she holds it against me,” Fawnadina said, adding “That’s one main reason why it’s so important to think about what you’re doing before you do it, or to think about what you’re saying before you say it. If you don’t, then you’re going to end up in a situation similar to mine, or maybe not, but you’re going to wish that you would have thought about what you did before you did it. Especially if you have kids.”

Her daughter is in Hawaii now, studying to be a nurse. Their relationship has much improved and they Skype often. As she reflected on this, Fawnadina said she thinks she’s ready for a change, possibly alone. She sadly admitted that after 11 years she might have to go back to the Tule River Reservation. “I can’t save him,” she said of Junior, referring to the addictions and temper tantrums that have characterized their relationship. “I have to take care of myself too.”

The next morning, however, Fawnadina was not alone. Not only has Junior and Oso returned, but now Junior’s brother was deeply snoring on top of a sleeping bag. He didn’t wake up as this guest crawled over him to get inside. The ongoing conversationFawnadina and Junior barely skipped a beat as I passed around the orange juice and extra coffee I brought, thinking there would be just one person home. Fawnadina said Junior had been taken to rehab by the HOT team, and that’s where he’d been all day. I asked how his rehab only lasted 12 hours and what did he do with Oso while he was inside, but we were distracted before he could answer by a visitor looking for a cigarette and some money.

Fawnadina turned to Junior and shared that she gets tired of being left to worry that he’s off with some other girl or smoking meth. He doesn’t like having his mistakes being brought up, she said, but they haven’t stopped. There’s going to be a day when she’s had enough because she’s getting hurt more and more, she tells him. “I know that I deserve better.”

But then she turns back to me. “So this morning we’ve come to an agreement that we’re not going to use any more. I know how to be clean. I was six years clean when my husband passed away.” Junior nods. That afternoon they had plans to go to SeaWorld to celebrate their decision, then stay at a motel for a few nights since her welfare check had just come in.