I remember calling for them. it was 12:00 am and was really cold. I haven’t seen them all day, and my anxiety grows as seconds pass by. As soon as I was about to give up and go back home, I hear a faint scraggly “meow”. I turned around. and there he was.  One brown cat running out the bushes coming to greet me. Seconds later, another cat come out, an orange one, following the brown one. I smile and say “Hey bravery and Chaz”. I realized how weird it was talking to two cats, but I didn’t care. They went from running away from me just by the mere sight, to frantically chasing me by the sound of my voice. It was odd, but they were so important to me, even though they were two strays. They had their own little quirks and personality, especially when they know you have food. They were days where I felt so alone, and only they could truly cheer me up. Today was a really long day at work, and I felt like I didn’t really do a good job. Its weird, but that made me feel a bit insecure. Then when i see them, I feel like someone who is truly appreciated and loved.  I met so many wonderful people due to how loved they are in the neighborhood. They may just be two strays, but they have such a huge impact on my life. As well as sparking my interest to be a wildlife vet.

In psychology, they say that no human being can truly remember anything before the age of 4. If think you have a memory before that, then they say that memory is just a reflection of stories other people have told you about your childhood; they are not coming from your own memory but instead, from other people recounting their own memories of you. If that’s true then the following events will shock you.

Since she was a little girl, Emelia could vaguely remember a very specific memory. Whenever she thought back to it, she couldn’t remember it completely, but she could visualize it in flashes. In one flash, her mother was dressing her in a pink dress with white shoes. In the next flash, she was in a van with some of her family members and she had a toy baby doll on her lap. In the next flash, she was in a shopping mall with her family, pushing a toy stroller with her baby doll in it. The last flash she remembers is one where she stops in front of a store, and gets her picture taken. As the years went by and Emelia grew into an adult, she began to think that memory was probably a dream. Her mother didn’t remember it, and she couldn’t ask the family members she remembered being around because they permanently moved out of the country. She decided that it was just something she imagined.

A few years later, Emelia and her mother went to visit their grandmothers home in Jamaica after 15 years of being away. The  house is full of memories and images. Emelia and her mother decided to go through old photo albums that were stored in the house. Their eyes filled up with tears as they say their great grandparents wedding photos, pregnancy pictures, and baby pictures of everyone in the family. At the end of the last photo album, there was a picture of a brown little girl in a shopping mall. She was wearing a pink dress and white shoes and was pushing around a stroller with a small plastic baby sitting in it. On the bottom right corner of the image was a date: 05/26/2002. The little girl would’ve been two years old when that photo was taken. That little girl was Emelia, and Emelia is me. Maybe psychologists don’t know everything.

End of the Beginning

10 PM. January 26th, 2011. Winter season. Leftover sloshy snow covered the borders of the sidewalks and the streets. One of the darkest days that I’ll never forget.

Bouncing on a bare mattress that wasn’t even mine right beside my bed. It was somehow more comfortable though, despite my brother and I both having the same kind of mattress, but in my seven-year-old mind, it was an excuse to jump on it like any child would. My cousin Ashly was over for a sleepover, which meant one of us, my brother Michael or myself, had to give up our bed for her to sleep in, and the other would have to share the other available bed.

10:13 PM. The phone rings.

My mother answers. My pediatrician on the other line. Unintelligible conversation, she comes to my room. “Get dressed,” she said. “We’re going to see the doctor.”

I can still remember what I wore that day; the white with multicolored spots pajamas that I never changed out of but put pants and a sweater over them. A cyan blue hoodie with a rainbow on it that would instantly make you think of Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony but was in fact no way related to the children’s television show. A multi-colored pom-pom scarf and a matching pom-pom hat from Children’s Place. If you were a child in Bushwick or Ridgewood once, most of your childhood wardrobe was made up of Children’s Place clothes, from your winter hat down to your shoes or boots. A purple coat that was darker than my walls. My mother in her soon-to-be iconic updo bun and the nostalgic hot pink North Face jacket.

10:27 PM. We were out the door. I remember being blinded by the streetlights that prevented car accidents to a degree, the smells of the cold water as if it was going to snow again, damp and chilling to the nostrils. But for some reason-and maybe it’s thanks to the gloves-I can’t remember feeling cold despite the winter season. Nor do I remember feeling tired.

We walked up through Halsey Street and took the L train two stops on the Manhattan bound track to Dekalb avenue, where my pediatrician was waiting for us at Wyckoff Hospital.

This is the end of the beginning.

The Big Bad Monster has come again.

He rages outside the door, stomping his big bad feet and pounding his big bad fists and unleashing his big bad shouts of fury that make the air shake and the floors vibrate. The two children in the house have barricaded themselves behind the door. They’ve shut the lights, hoping the monster will believe they’re not home. They’ve covered themselves with blankets and muffled their ears with pillows, hoping to drown out the monster’s roars, and hoping their own cries will go unnoticed. The sheets are soaked with tears they dare not wipe away, for any motion means the Big Bad Monster may hear it, sense it. He makes shadows in the sliver of light piercing through the gap in the door, stomping this way and that. The children have their eyes glued to to it, watching where he goes. If they sit and wait, the monster will go home. He will settle down again and sleep, and so can they. If they just sit and wait.

But the Big Bad Monster doesn’t forget them. Stomp stomp stomp! The light underneath the door is now black. His feet stand right behind the threshold, waiting. He raises a big bad fist that the children can’t see but can feel and hammers at the door.

BANG BANG BANG! “Is this door locked? IS THIS DOOR LOCKED? OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!”

One of the girls shrieks, the other shushes as soon as she does. The pillows come down harder over their heads, contorting themselves to cover every crevice where sound may permeate. But it can’t hide the shaking of the beds with every blow.

BANG BANG BANG! An intermission. Now there’s a violent jerking at the door, the handle spazzes in the dark. He’ll rip it right off, the little one thinks. He’ll rip it right off and there will be nowhere to go.

“Open the door,” the monster yells again. For a second there’s silence. The girl contemplates it. He knows she is contemplating it. Her sister’s eyes glow white in the dark. Don’t.

“I SAID OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”

“No!”

The sister shrieks as the little one tears through the darkness. Her hands clasp the doorknob and fumble; they’re wet from tears. The monster pounds at the door and it makes her hands shake more than they already are. Just wait, she pleads. I’m opening it, just stop.

The flood of light reveals the Big Bad Monster in all his glory. He takes up the door frame, a thick shadow. Finally his commands were obeyed. He looms over the children who dared to think they could hide from him.

“Don’t ever lock me out again.”

The little one cries and nods her head. Her sister glares behind her back. One knows there’s no point in hiding, the other tries to think of how to hide for good. Somewhere he won’t ever find them. As they stare up at that raving man, both of them know one thing.

The Big Bad Monster will come again.

Remember that shy little girl that would sit in the middle of the classroom?

Yea me neither

She was a shy, quiet girl who could also be described as a pushover. I hated that little girl, but I understood her. Always wanting to avoid conflict I tried to live in that fantasy in my head of sunshine and rainbows knowing that if I stayed to myself everything would be fine. Oh, how I was wrong. When being blamed on by my sister and getting bullied by that girl in your class that would pick on you for no reason. I would be that little girl who would just sit there and take it.

Did I do something wrong?

Did I say or do something to provoke them?

What did I do?

Constantly asking myself the same question repeatedly but have yet to find and answer.

As I entered high school, I found myself speaking up more defending myself. I realized to survive in this cruel world, you need to fight back to defend yourself. People are not always going to be kind and will try to abuse your kindness. That was me once upon a time. Something changed about me that led me to become the person I am today. As time goes on, I realized my worth. I’ve found my courage, I learned to speak up for myself, defend myself and changed that little push over of a girl to a strong, independent, confident woman that’s you see today.

Ten minutes left in class, and it felt like the room was caving in, and every fiber of my body was disintegrating into thin air. I kept scratching my sweaty palms, hoping that the clock would move at a rapid pace and I can get out of this class without the professor knowing that I didn’t complete last night’s homework. She’s supposed to ask each person to recite one fact from the textbook we were supposed to read. I had every intention of reading it, but the Knicks-Lakers game last night was too riveting. Knowing this moment would come, my anxious self spent all morning figuring out ways I could finesse my way out of this situation. One option was to go to the nurse and fake a stomach ache. Another option was to go to the bathroom and poop, but each time my anxiety won out and the worst case scenario always came to mind. The professor was going to accompany me to the nurse’s office and ask me the question there, or even worse, stand outside the stool as I fake poop and ask me the question, and find out I’m a fraud and fail me from the class, thus ruining my life. Irrational and extreme, I know, but that’s what anxiety does to you. So as my knee continued to tap, and I took deep breaths, MS. Daniels finally called on me. “David, what did you learn from the “Great Depression in 1929” not knowing what to say? I gulped and was prepared to just say umm to maybe either one of my classmates helped me out or a meteor struck the classroom. I don’t remember saying my prayers the night before, but perhaps I did in my sleep because it was at that moment a loud ding went off, and the fire alarm rang to bless me. As the teacher encouraged everybody to leave their stuff and exit the classroom, I smiled, knowing that class would be over by the time we had to go back in, and I didn’t have to answer the question today. To say I was relieved or happy would be a significant understatement.

The tingling sensation that always has your body tense is normal for the majority of human beings, but why is that? Your heart always pounds very hard, the nerves in your system run around like mice do in a dirty house, your head spins as if it’s on a carousel that won’t stop, and your body can’t keep still and soon starts to shiver. Well, my friends, it’s the feeling of nervousness. This feeling is caused by fears that we all possess in our minds such as not getting hired for a job because you couldn’t get past the interview, or you weren’t successful when it came to passing a test, which is what I fear the most. 

The day of my road test was here, and I can assure you that I’m not ready for whatever comes my way as I’m nervous about the fact that I will fail again. I took it the first time, but that one didn’t go too well as I thought it would. 

It was a cold morning, with everyone still asleep except for me. The skies were mildly bright with no sunlight until later on in the morning. My driving instructor pulled up in his car once I let him know I’m ready to take the road test.  

On the way to the road test, I was already feeling tense as I thought to myself that if I don’t perform greatly on the road, I’ll never be able to get my license, and buy myself a car. We were soon approaching, but we had to make a line for the road test. There were many driving examiners ready to get on the vehicle, and they were sharp as blades. My turn finally came, and the examiner asked me questions based on COVID-19. I responded “no” to every question as it can affect the delay of my exam. I took in deep breaths from my lungs which used up their energy to release it once I was ready. 

I started the car, then proceeded to wherever my examiner wanted me to go. He told me to make a right. I did, but it was a short turn, which was really going to cost me, but all hope isn’t lost. I then made another right in a two way lane. Then, the examiner ordered me to do a 3-point U-turn. Luckily, I was saved by the fact that there were no cars behind me because I would’ve definitely crashed into one. The next part was the hardest one for me, which was parking. I remembered the steps while I was doing it. It looked like I was about to hit the curb, but it was a close one with just only 1 cm away from the curb. The car was parked, and now I had to exit, and head back to where we started. Then it was a pull-over to end the exam, and the results showed that I passed. All the nerves in my body went to sleep, and my brain finally got out of the carousel once I got my road test over with. 

You have a terrible memory, and trying to recall things is like digging around for keys that have long fallen out through a holey pocket. Most things you know about yourself are stories other people have told you. But you have a few memories that are yours alone, and they come to you in finely-detailed flashes when you draw upon them. They go like this:

You sit in an ESL classroom, and your teacher painstakingly corrects your clumsy English consonants as you read aloud to her from Amelia Bedelia. On a crowded train, the three-seater you’re on is empty. A man materializes in your DMs when you are fourteen, and asks you if you know how to belly dance and if you’d keep your hijab on while doing it. Your mother fixes the folds of your first hijab and says you should carry yourself with pride. You see your grandmother again after four years. Her hair is silver, her fingertips are stained with henna, her face is lined with age, and envy burns hot in your chest as you think, if there ever was pride to wrestle away from the world, she took it all. You sit through a sociology class where your white teacher asks you to make him a film about how the world views you, about all the complexities of the identities you didn’t know you had until someone made them dirty. You make him a film, and watching it feels like a bad impersonation of the girl you’ve taken to wearing in the confines of a predominantly white institution. You go home and delete it off your computer. You’ve always loved a metaphor so, at some point, you remember a game you used to play with your cousins as a kid. You’d all give a raw egg to one person, and chase them up the stairs, through chicken coops. They won if they made it to the end of the round with a whole, unbroken egg. You think then that if the American immigrant dream was a round of the egg game, then your egg has long been broken, though you don’t realize it at first. All along, you’ve been trying so hard, so desperately, so blindly, your hands full of eggshells and yolk.

As I wake up in the morning, a day after graduation, I was excited to see that I ended middle school. I exit my room, I see my mom crying and bursting into tears and then I see my dad beside her. Both just sitting there, as the room is in silence and sobbing. They see me but I did receive no explanation, as I walk to the bathroom and come back out and sit. That’s when she said it “Your grandma has passed away.” As I look and try to speak my voice goes into silence as my breathing gets harder and harder, I start crying. I feel pain in the chest as if my heart will stop any second and then that’s when it hit me tears running down my cheeks. As the river of tears when down dropping to the floor.

I did not have a chance to say goodbye or even get to see her one last time. I was counting down the days to go visit her but I was too late, she went ahead and left us with memories.

As my day arrived to go to Mexico, I was excited to travel but also with a broken heart I won’t be able to see my one and only person. As the plane took off, all the memories just came to me, when she took care of me, when she kissed me on the forehead, when she defended me from any danger, when she hugged me tightly and said “Te Quiero, mija.” Those words were always with me.

I arrived in Mexico City, now I had to take an 8-hour drive to a city just close by Acapulco, just a 4-hour drive closer. As I spent my whole day in a car making stops every once in a while, I think more and more about the changes that I’ll expect now that my grandmother is not there any more. As the hours continue to decrease more and more and go down to 6 hours then to 4 and just then 2 more hours to go my heart starts to get more nervous. I take a nap and then realize it’s just 20 more minutes left.

I have arrived to my destination, there I see them my gradfather and my uncle waiting for me, but just that one person is missing. I feel just tears running to my eyeballs just for them to go down my cheeks, they get closer and closer and I hug them tightly. As they help me with my suitcases and put them on to another car to get another 30 minute drive deeper inside the city. I get in the car, and sit next to the window and remember some places as if it was recent hat she held my hand and took me for a walk around these places.

It wasn’t long until I arrived to home, the place that I ran around with my cousins. I drop off my lugage and my grandfather takes to a place close by we stop to buy some flowers and a candle. As we walk we enter a place where all you see is names and dates, we walk down more and more and more and more names appear. When we come along her name, “Angelina,” her new home were she is resting in peace and is an angel taking care of us from up in heaven.

Sitting on a futon in the basement, I lay feeling fuzz. It feels like I’m riding a wave of static. See this,

The feeling of a leg that’s long since fallen asleep without you knowing.

It’s that, but you feel it coursing through you.

Not limited to your veins.

Not limited to your body.

It’s your life, rather.

It’s in everything you feel, an aftertaste that makes your teeth melt.

So I lay there with one ear down in a soft blanket and one listening to the cartoons playing upstairs above the floorboards. My eyes are open but I don’t want much, my sideways view of the T.V. starts looking like cooks in a kitchen on the other side of a doorway covered by clouded strips of plastic.

I hear footsteps going towards the basement door upstairs. I sit up as the door opens, the fuzz is gone by the time the footsteps come down the stairs. I bring my hands to my face to feel tears rolling down my cheek and dripping from my nose. I turn my head to hide my face, my heart beat pounds in my ears.

She had red hair, textbook red head. She made me want to burn at the stake. She didn’t say anything as she walked up behind me, my back still turned and my hands scrambling to hide the mess of my face. A pale and pasty hand eased its way onto my shoulder. I felt the futon sink a little deeper to my right.

I didn’t want to turn my head, not at all, but I did it anyways. I wanted to show her, like someone shows a dog the puddle of piss on the floor that it was responsible for. I started crying again without a sound. I told her I was done with her, she was always one to speak physically.

I didn’t try and hide the tears or the blood on my face when I walked up from that futon. I wanted her father to know who he kept in that basement. I sat on a rock in the front yard and called my mother to have her pick me up. I picked up a half smoked cigarette and looked behind me with it hanging out of my mouth. In the front window of the house, a man with a great big red beard scratched his head and walked to the door next to him. He came outside in a robe and slippers and sat next to me.
He took the cigarette from my lips and said, “I started smoking when I was thirteen too,” now fumbling through his pockets, “better quit now.”

He pulled out a half full pack of cigarettes and slowly placed one in his mouth, then holding the pack out to me. I fingered one out and put it in my mouth, holding it like a drumstick.
He handed me his lighter, and while I was taking my first drag off of my tenth cigarette, he said, “Stat out of trouble, I like you.”

—

The air in my car was stale, the heat blowing in my face made my throat sore. This girl next to me was crying behind a curtain of blonde hair. I looked forward, off at her house, an off-white tower sticking out of a dirt yard. She kept giving me reasons why I was different, reasons I already knew. I let the fuse burn.

Wes.

Please.

I’m sorry.

I said I’m sorry.

Didn’t you hear.

You make me feel.

There’s no one like you.

I started to cry and pounded my leg with a closed fist. Everything was trying to squeeze out me not like toothpaste, but a ballon being blown up by a young kid, too young to know when to stop.

I dug my nails into my leg and said, “get the fuck out of my car.”

Three weeks before this day, after I had to explain my humanity, I was told by her that she was sociopathic. A week after that, we split. Three days after that, she forced herself onto me while I was driving her home from work. So now we’re here. In the previous months, I had been torn away from friends, my family, my job. Again, I was stripped of skin and left bare on the rocks.

I drove away after she got out of the car thinking I would chase after her. I left a perfect semi circle in the mud and sped off on the road. It was then that I started crying. Slamming the steering wheel over and over, I kept yelling that I did it, that I was free.

I know what I know. I know the shit I dealt with. That’s all that matters to me. The shit. I can smell it and I’m sorry if you can too.