it got better

t was the worst time of my life, but it got better.

SSDD scenario, same s****y situation, same predictable outcome, but a different human. We were out of money, rent was due in a week, and our cupboards were completely bare. The familiar feeling of despair, anger, and abandonment set in within an hour of walking in the door. Living in Fallbrook, California, a few years after The Divorce with my newly appointed Ex-Stepfather, having just run off with his last Ex-Boyfriend, leaving us in the lurch. Simply stating, “ You’d have nothing if I hadn't bought it for you.” Before prancing haughtily out the door, causing my mother to pack everything up and drop it out in the front lawn of his barracks. The other Naval Officers stood there laughing and jostling each other while looking on as if we were some sort of comedy act, and nobody let us in on the joke. As we drove off base, my mother and I had angry tears in our eyes, she cursing him both in english and broken spanish we had picked up around the neighborhood, I knew what this meant. As we pulled into our apartment, my mom got out of the car trudged up the stairs, and collapsed into the living room. Bowing her head, she started praying the same prayer over and over, “ Please lord give us a way to make ends meet. I  can take care of the rest, I just need rent.” It was the same with dad. He left, we got through it, we may not have luxuries, but we still survived. My brothers had no idea why Mom was crying. They were too young to remember the sequence of events when dad left. They simply put their heads down and shuffled into the bedroom, playing quietly with toys and complaining about being hungry.

During the next few weeks, we kept to the same routine we had been using before our Ex-Stepfather left. School, Boys and Girls Club, then walk home from the activity center, show mom the pilfered snacks we snagged from school and Boys and Girls Club. Put them in the empty cupboards and then changing from our day clothes into pajamas. Just to start all over again the next morning. Church on  sundays and we’d try to look as if nothing was wrong. Eventually, mom picks another job and works even longer hours, we have beans and rice, tortillas and lots of cactus jelly from the church warehouse. I remember the day we got our first taste of Carne Asada. My mom had just gotten dinner on the stove, and I was bathing  my little brother (Charlie). There was a knock on the door in the middle of mom making what our mother famously called “Dustbunny Stew”, a combination of all the odds and ends of our kitchen. This time it was corn, rice, olives, rice and Top Ramen chicken flavoring packets. My mother opened the door to see the apartments local old lady. Nobody knew her real name, but everyone called her Abuelita.

There she stood all wrinkly and pleasant with a platter full of Carne asada balanced on her head and a steaming pot of Tamales in her arms. She took one look at our cramped apartment and the pot of meager stew on the stove, and briskly walked into our house followed by her twelve assorted children and grandchildren. She sent her grandchildren to work cleaning and organizing. Her kids she sent home to return with all manner of canned goods and random foods. Honestly, I can't tell you how excited I was to see a real orange, celery and other fresh produce was a delicacy on our income. In the span of three weeks, we were supplied with new hand-me-downs from everyone in the apartment complex and our congregation, new shoes, and enough food to last us a few weeks. Though life was looking up, we lost the apartment.

We had to move in with Anne, as the Relief Society president of our congregation she took it upon herself to take us in. I hated Anne. Always looking down on people not Latter Day Saint(no. Not Mormon, that's a whole different paper.) She provided us with a home,  and while my mother was by no means a Lax parent, she was considered a “Free spirit” next to Anne. , Anne threw out all of my underware within the first three hours of moving in based on the “ obscene patterns and colors.” Basically, she got rid of them because they were pretty, and the only reason you have pretty underwear is so that people can see them. Next went all of my skirts, on the basis they were too short (they were exactly four inches above the knee.) Then all my shirts followed, except a total of four turtlenecks, on the basis they showed my cleavage. At the age of twelve I was busty, 4’5” in height and lean, the kind of kid who plays soccer and frisbee. She dressed me in muted tones of blues and pinks, ” Because black is an obscene color, and inappropriate for girls.”  The next problem at Anne’s house was that my hair was cut to match hers. A boyish bob that made me feel like a poodle. Mom had a b***h fit about that, mostly because I was sobbing over it, my mother stormed into her room and yelled for a solid three hours non-stop about us being her children, not Anne's. Soon after I was told simply, if I continued playing “boyish games” I'd be “corrected accordingly”, turns out that meant six hours of standing in the corner (six lashes if I bent my knees) and three days of no TV and all bible study. Then, on my thirteenth birthday, she threw a party. To which nobody I knew or liked was invited, including my own mother, the guests, all old women who smelled like cheese and vomit, told me I was a lucky girl to have Anne's help in “correcting my obscene behavior” A fistfight ensued, long story short, my momma won.

Soon after, We moved out of her house, and into my Granny’s a few weeks later (living in hotels was not as much fun in real life than it is in Suite Life of Zack and Cody). My granny, an avid church goer, who for all intents and purposes made me insecure about everything that makes me who I am. With pokes and prods at my developing adolescent body, and sharp jabs to the stomach with a curt, “suck in that gut!” constantly nitpicking about how I looked. Ripping a brush through my fly away hair (characteristically full of knots, tangles and snarls) and tugging my clothing this way and that till it was in some semblance of order and femininity. Banning my ripped skinny jeans and baggy tee-shirts. Systematically telling me I would be beautiful if I just ate less and cared more. I would be beautiful if i sat up straight and pulled my face out of my book and my head out of the clouds. I love my Granny dearly, but the woman is absolutely insane. While living at her house I felt more suppressed and angry than I ever have before or since. At my Granny's house everything was down to a military precision, worse than we were living with Ex-Stepfather. (Keeping in mind that he made us do drills and salute/at ease whenever he thought we were being annoying.) Candy and soda were out of the question and more often than not I just didn't eat. After we got are own apartment,  I went to school at the illustrious Isador Cohen. The most ghetto school I've been to. Even with the crisp uniforms and the parades and activities, Mrs. Grabbe the headmistress didn't know what she was doing. Bullying was swept under the rug, and I visited her office so many times I've got it memorized. When my brother started school my fights got worse. We have a policy in my family, only I can make my family cry, you do it, you'll regret it for at least a week. Any time I had lunch or a recess it was spent with my little brothers, when we were around mom it was fighting like cats and dogs, but anywhere else and without my mom hearing it I'll admit I love them. I know they will have my back and because of my mom working so much and so hard, I was the one who raised the little snots.

There are about a million other stories I can tell, but I'm pretty sure it would be a novel.  My life has gotten better. I have grown, and I am proud of who I've become. I am no longer as insecure about myself. I am still surviving.