Without a Childhood IV

I woke up the next morning, completely disoriented. I was still in the guest bedroom. I went into the living room, thinking “mom” would be there. She wasn’t. I only saw my grandpa. I asked him where my mom was and I was told that she was back in Portland (I was in Corpus Christi, ten miles away from Portland). I was confused. Why was she in Portland? Did she forget about me? Why did she forget me? I didn’t do anything to deserve it. My own sister wasn’t even there at grandma and grandpa’s house. Again, she wasn’t there for me. Why wasn’t she there for me? She should have been there when I needed her. I knew it. She hated me. She hated me so much that she thought it would be okay just to leave me with total strangers. My so-called mother must have thought that, too. I had told her the night before that I was going to be in the guest bedroom in front of total strangers. Someone could have slipped away from the party and molested me for all I knew. Later, when I was still going to school in Victoria, she had the gall to steal books that my stepmom had gotten me. They had been found later in Adriana’s car.

Fifth grade...

The fifth grade wasn’t any better. I couldn’t believe that I could hate people so much. Why are people so horrible? I was waiting for the bus to stop one morning by the elementary school I used to attend and there was this red-headed kid named Bradley. He had a skateboard with him and I was standing right in front of him. He put his skateboard up to my neck and started to push it against my neck. I had asked him what he was doing and his reply:

“I’m trying to put you in a coma.”

A coma? What the hell did I ever do to deserve that? I was just there. Nobody knew what my life was like and Bradley’s behavior was just making things worse for me. Everybody was just making things worse. Nobody liked me and apparently I was an ugly girl. I wished that somebody would just shoot me right there and then. I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I wanted to find someplace where nobody would find me and die. Nobody would care. Adriana’s family certainly wouldn’t care. I was nothing but a pawn to them.

Getting back on track, I went to the nurse to see how bad my neck was. It didn’t hurt, but I wanted to get out of the cafeteria—where all the students would congregate before class began—and see what I could do. I couldn’t describe Bradley then, but the nurse went to the office to get a file and when she showed me his picture, I recognized him immediately. The only thing that really happened was that he got detention. Honestly, I thought he should’ve gotten more than just detention. The kid should’ve gotten suspended from school. However, since it didn’t happen at school that was all he got. I couldn’t have been angrier, although when I saw him waiting by the door that led into detention, I couldn’t help but snicker to myself.

“He got in trouble, he got in trouble!” I would sing quietly.

Very mature, I know, but I was only eleven. Like I said, he deserved more than just detention, but he still got in trouble and that settled me down some. Sometimes I wished that C.J kid would get in trouble, too. He was just so mean to me that I hoped that he would get his just reward. It never really happened. I could never get him to stop and I couldn’t get him to be my friend. He was friends with a kid named Russell, the class nerd. I couldn’t even get the class nerd to like me, let alone appreciated. I just gave up and went through my fifth grade year practically friendless. I couldn’t get along with the kids in my science class, which was the last class of the day. There was this kid name Mitch Ruiz and he sat next to me for most of the first semester. Whenever I wanted to read from our science book, I would raise my hand up to read. I loved to read. Mitch, the rude one, would tell me to put my arm down. I didn’t understand why he wanted me to put my hand down at the time, but it was because I was sweating and most likely I smelled. It wasn’t my fault that I had sixth period P.E class. That boy would always point out something that was wrong with me and he would get away with it. My science teacher never really did anything.

That same year, I registered for soccer. I told my stepmom that I wanted to try and play the game. Thankfully, she let me play. I loved it a lot, in spite of a few players teasing me. So you have the occasional player having a crush on one of their coaches; big deal. I didn’t have a crush on him, though. I was just trying to help get the others to listen, but who would listen to a little girl? No one. I wasn’t important enough to the team. Our teamwork was so awful that we lost every single game in regular season. The only game that we won was at the play-offs and that was by forfeit, mind you. My team was called Blue Streak Lightning and our next game was against the Cowgirls. A classmate of mine was playing on that team while others were on my team. My sister said that girl, Cassie, was a brat. Jessica knew Cassie through her Tae Kwon Do class. My sister was right about her. Cassie was annoyed with me even though she didn’t show it. Everybody, apparently, thought I was annoying. I couldn’t be friendly with anyone without being annoying it seemed. That was when I first thought that if I died, everybody would be happy. I was making everyone miserable by being there. I didn’t know what suicide was then, but I figured that with me out of the picture, everything would be better. Everybody would have probably said some mean things, but hey, I was going to be dead. Why should I care? I wouldn’t hear anything they would say. At the very least, I wouldn’t be suffering from insecurity, depression and low self-esteem.