Rabecca Rocha
Writing 101
Essay 1
I heard their voices that night, the both of them like angry chickens pecking at one another, a ruffle of sheets like that of feathers angry shouting and flustered tones. My Father's voice rumbled distinctively like a cumulus cloud building, electrodes gathering and ready to strike. The irritation in the voice of my mother only kept me situated behind the door, my ear pressed to it aching to know what was wrong. I couldn't fathom the thought of them being so angry at one another. I held my pillow in hopes that this in fact was a nightmare however I would soon find out that I was living in it. All the anxiety and tension in the house would eventually turn between me and my own mother.
In another instance the door for their bedroom swung open and my Father’s heavy foot steps creaked across the carpet floor. The front door slammed and I knew from then on this would only set the stage for the events that were about to unfold during the oncoming years. Nothing could explain the tension in that tiny blue house but it only seemed to accumulate with time. During their arguments I had done my best to protect my brother by turning the TV up, taking him to the park and anywhere but home. It only began from there soon after I began to try to find something that might repair what was left of my parent’s marriage.
I didn’t realize how soon my mother’s problems would then be focused on me. I was the Daddy’s girl and I had become the blame. So from then on I would attempt to do everything I could to make sure that we would find peace in our little home. This had been more complicated then I had initially interpreted it to be, for that year my father had been taken to the hospital due to kidney failure. My grandmother had to work to pay the bills, as did my mother however Being that my mother was gone numerous amounts of times this was no easy task, so I was given the duty of watching over my 10 year old autistic brother. At that time I didn't know how to cook so I had to try to make up ways in order to be able to feed my brother and myself. Sometimes if my Mother did come home with food she'd only feed me and not my little brother and tell me not to tell “snitch.” And by snitching she meant telling my grandmother. This amount of guilt on continued yet I kept this secret to myself.
That Christmas was a lonely little one, without daddy who would cheer us on?
My father had always took it upon himself to give us joy filled, warm holidays. Yet the following year was empty and Gray, without Dad who would cook the excellent Christmas meals, but the cook? Who would carry on the legacy of Santa Claus and hopes and dreams, without Dad nothing seemed possible, but the growing void that he wasn't home. The more that I missed my father the greater the gap between my mother and I grew.
In the months following My Fathers hospitalization and my Mother’s frequent disappearances, the computer became my only outlet and since I was hardly allowed to go out due to my brother I’d seek out some ways to communicate with the “outside world.” I engaged myself in conversations with people I had never met, talked to people I’d normally be to shy to talk to and in that saving grace I had made human contact. During that year my imagination had found me and I took those hours of solitude to improve my art. My mother’s presence became less and less significant, I had gone from hearing arguments all night to complete silence. I felt as though she had turned her back on me. Lately in the night she would stow away to somewhere else, to clubs and friends who were twice her senior. While I stayed at home and struggled to keep my brother and I fed, bathed and put to sleep. However, long into the night when I could hear the door creaking open slightly in the living room I found myself wishing so badly for her and overwhelming sense that I was the one who had to make her love me. I had to make things better in the house and by the Daddy would come home everything would be fine, they would make up and we’d be like every other family. I showed her that source that I had found clear on my own that source being the internet. We had AOL at the time and chartrooms, email and buddy lists were quite abundant. I figured since I was teaching her something we would bond. We'd bond over a mutual understanding of needing a get away from everything that was going on. However she became much more interested in it then I, and we began to fight over time. Time on the computer, time spent wasted when we could have been really bonding as mother and daughter. She soon began to talk on a community of her own; her disappearances became longer and longer. So much so that my grandmother began to take notice.
Meanwhile, my father was beginning to get better. My mother spoke of him often and yet I don’t ever recall her visiting him as much as my aunt and my grandmother had. Much like a child who had been caught eating chocolate my mother denied everything, she had claimed hurtful things against my grandmother to point the blame elsewhere. Regrettably my grandmother had backed off and my mother continued on her path to what she might have considered freedom, freedom from her spouse on the verge of death, the burden of children and the guilt of credit card spending. Her indulgence cradled her into denial all in front of watchful twelve year old eyes.
As for my father I was not allowed to see him, with tubes hanging from tiny metal poles and his eyes swollen from the medicine. I was guarded from the reality of what his pain truly was. As I had heard of his possible arrival I sought out some sort of truce with my mother. I would teach her how to use the computer faster and she would make amends. I sat in front of her begging for her to make better with us, to be a family again. I sat in front of her dreaming of barbeques and loving families, two families that wouldn't part but instead make amends. I wished so hard that would make right, since my doing wasn't enough; why wasn't I the daughter she had wanted? I only wished my mother would turn away from the computer and hold her for just one second to make everything go away. My throat became so dry and all my usual sensitivity to sound and the brilliant sun showing through the window had ceased. A tiny piece of me had begun to die, my grades began to deplete to nothing and I questioned myself. I failed the seventh grade; a grade that should have been easy for some, had become a daily battle for me. I wearily began make friends; however I never invited them home, never called them. They saw me and yet never knew of the constant war that I saw at home. The anger inside me rose and I couldn't quite contain myself as I stood behind my mother. Finally one night I gathered the courage to go up to her my fists, balled at my side. I asked her “Mommy where are you going?”
Imagining my hands wrapped around her neck, imagining something that would take her attention away from the computer and away from us. She stood at the pane of the door, hoping no one else would see her leave, but I did. I always knew. Sometimes I worried she would never think to come back. In an emotionless tone she replied. “Out...”
"Mom you need to listen to me this has to stop... you have to make everything better...”
The tiny clicking on the desk top was all that I heard aside from a slight huff. She seemed exasperated with my presence and turned her head towards me. I leaned back against the kitchen counter, my face hidden slightly by the dim light and my eyes heavy with tears. Her face screwed up in confusion as to whether to comfort or dismiss her daughter. In those seconds she chose the latter and as equally as apathetic as I was worried, she replied.
"What’s wrong with you?"
My heart jolted slightly and I crawled towards her.
"Please don’t go we all can fix this just say you're sorry." A slight grunt from her tilted head, I stared at her hoping for some sign of life, some kind of acknowledgement of my presence but she only sat there, one foot carefully placed under her thigh and her eyes fixated on the screen, so much so that she was hung over her mouth gaping at the screen before her. I had expected things to be different, I knew they would change but never did I suspect they would fall so fast that my very being would be dismissed by the woman who gave me life. In that moment I had become truly and undeniably self conscience. My world had died and she had been the guillotine. For a long time the walls that I had built up remained, in the year that followed my Father came home and I confessed, I confessed everything that had occurred and despite counseling, she was kicked out. Inwardly I struggled with the awkward teen years without my mother. I couldn’t get quite past figuring out what in fact had been wrong with me? My father got better and despite the fact that my family experiences would never again be the same. I am okay.
