(Poetry)Beginning of The Unknown.

Silent Words of Her

When I was a kid, and able to speak, as far as I can remember.

The question that was always asked was, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

I often wouldn't know where to start and all I could think of is where I was in the present. I always wanted to be everything. But my dad always told us that to live a better life we had to be a lawyer or a doctor, anything else was off the table. So, that's what I told myself to be. Somewhere along the lines I began to mold myself into what people wanted or what was expected of me. I always wanted to make those around be proud, probably had to do with coming from a broken home where I never learned the proper way to be loved. I had these goals of seeing my parents stand in an auditorium waiting for me to get called. How proud they would be. I'd go on to live at home because for them it would be easier for me while I find something in my career path, and it was something that it in our culture to them felt right to keep. Those were the goals. But, maybe at the same time those were the dreams of my parents and those around me. It's not like I didn't understand. I get it, they wanted me to have a good life. A life where I didn't have to struggle, at least not like they did to provide me and my siblings with the life we had. I remembered when everything changed. I was eight. They say that's when a child is most vulnerable. When exposed to too many negative surroundings can lead to problems. I feel like that's where it all changed for me. I got bullied so much to the point where I never understood my body nor who I was. That's where I recall my parents' separation. Not that it started exactly there. I remember everyone thought we were the "it" family. Always well-presented from head to toe. My father believed that how we dressed, spoke, and acted all contributed to how people treated us. Which I now understand as a woman of color and as a woman where her first language wasn't English. But not everything is vivid in color. My biggest recollection as a child of when I knew things weren't right was when my parents were disagreeing, and I just remember the swinging of objects. I remember my mom wanting to throw the steam iron and to my surprise my father swung at her right in front of me. Not that her actions were right, but I knew it was her way of defending herself from him. She ran to the kitchen and just remembered her taking a box cutting knife out and what I saw her do next is something that I can't forget. She slit her wrist right in front of me. Like I said, I was a child. I thought that it meant she was dying and there was screaming, probably all mine. I just remember asking her to stop. Til today I often recall that and maybe I made it up? maybe it never happened. But it explains where I, we all get our diagnosis of depression and anxiety because yes, it is genetic or maybe I could've been saved from it if I didn't go through it. Maybe I could've held out longer if I didn't see that. From third grade I would get corned and often just cry. I remember I would ask my mom not to pick me up, especially with how our neighborhood always knew what was going on with everyone. Word of mouth is true. I would get confronted by a group of girls who would call me fat and I would end up like my mother, fat and alone. I don't ever recall my mom being fat nor that she was overweight. She had given birth. But I guess at that age most children don't know what a woman's body goes through after childbirth. That year was unbearable. For the consistent reminder of who I would be then to not having enough money to get food. We were being evicted with a couple of pennies that we would save up just to go somewhere to see what we could get. My mom would claim to not be hungry so we could all have enough. I know there was government help, but I came from two parents where one only knew broken English and a mom who didn't know any and being forced to feel small was even worse. It took a while to receive help and out of all the times we had gone it became known who we were. My mom would fill out forms which we would request in Spanish only to be greeted with annoyed eyes or something under their breathe that I could not understand. I was a child, so I just walked away and helped my mom to the best of my ability. (Maybe I could've been an interpreter.) When we did receive it, I remembered what the social worker did. She threw the snap card and told her the reason she was getting it was because of us. Like that made it even better to feel "sympathy". Like the clothes I didn't have were two sizes too small or that fact we had had hand-me-downs from people who disliked us but wanted to be the conversation of the town for helping. It was in those moments were I knew that being a child was something I no longer was. My mom didn't know how to use the card and being an eight-year-old with an older eleven-year-old brother we didn't know either. We had no internet and when I think about it now there probably wouldn't have been much information on it. We felt so defeated. I know my mom felt defeated and more. She was supposed to be an "adult" and how was having four kids with not knowing how to feed them? I remember a neighborhood friend helped us. Took us in the morning with my mom to Aldi and explained to her how to use it. Turns out as a kid the options seem endless... It was the first time since my father left that I'd seen a cart full of food, or food in general and it didn't matter that it was in cans or frozen containers.