writing

My Writing Students: Their Chronicles

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I currently have both the honor and privilege of teaching a community college English 1A course. However, this class is slightly different than the others I’ve taught, as my current students are high school seniors, dual-enrolled in the course while they are still seniors at Alisal High School. I am a full-time teacher at Alisal High School, and I teach the course from my Alisal High School classroom instead of a Hartnell College classroom. I’ve been an adjunct English professor at Hartnell College for several years, and I have always thoroughly enjoyed working with this demographic. For context, my everyday course load at the high school is comprised of sophomores, some defiant, some affected by COVID, and some simply disinterested in school. The personalities and energy and intelligence of my English 1A students charge my battery and help me get off to a great start to the day.

We do a significant amount of writing on a variety of topics. Their writing is incredible. I’ve always said that students at Alisal High School are sitting on winning lottery tickets. If they could only write their stories, they would be rich! But this is another more complex topic for a later time. Their stories are good–very good! The following is an essay written by one of my students from my English 1A course. Her name is omitted, but you can refer to her as “Destino.”

My Destiny

Growing up, I faced challenges that forced me to grow up quickly, long before I should have. Losing my dad emotionally and trying to hold on to my mom while she drifted away left me feeling alone, confused, and responsible for things no child should carry. But living through these experiences taught me strength, independence, and the importance of knowing my own worth. In addition to learning these particular traits, I also learned resiliency, emotional maturity, and the strength to speak up and advocate for myself when I needed help.  

I learned very early what it felt like to be surrounded by love, but it was a love that didn’t always feel like love. When my parents split up, everything in my life changed. My dad, who I was once super close to, slowly started slipping away. I would find myself waiting for him, before school, after school, at award ceremonies, and even just sitting on the stairs hoping he would show up to spend time with me. I tried to be understanding every time he called to say something came up, but eventually I stopped feeling disappointed and just accepted his excuses as normal. When we did spend time together, it was rarely just us. He often brought different girls around, and even after telling him how much it hurt me, things didn’t change. He promised me he’d do better, but a few weeks later, he would be in a new relationship.  At one point, I found out his girlfriend was pregnant from someone else, and after the baby was born, nothing changed. 

We never spent time alone. I missed him, and even though it felt selfish, I really wanted him to choose me the way a dad should choose his daughter. When I told him how I felt, he told me he didn’t have time for me anymore and needed to focus on his new family. He thanked me for teaching him how to be a dad, and after that conversation, we never spoke again. It felt like losing him twice, once when he left my mom, and again when he left me.

After losing my dad, I turned to my mom, whom I desperately needed. However, my mom depended on me for everything, but not in the way moms usually lean on their kids. She expected me to take care of her emotions and her needs, even when I was barely understanding my own. After the split, she changed in ways she never noticed, but I definitely did. I tried so hard to understand what she was going through: losing a partner, adjusting to a new life, but she never realized that I was going through the same thing. She was rarely home because she was out our partying. I would stay up to open the door for her late at night, and she forced me to sleep in her bed, asking for affection whenever she needed comfort. What she didn’t see was that she was filling her emptiness and at the same time adding to mine. I was too young to be around so many adults, too young to be the one she leaned on, and too young to stay awake worrying about when she’d be home.

When she started a new relationship with a man in prison, everything changed, again. At first, I believed her when she told me how things would get better when he got out, but as the years passed, he never left prison. She only grew more distant. She spent hours on FaceTime with him, even when she had promised we’d watch a movie together. I started joining her on prison visits, not because I liked it, but because it was the only time she paid attention to me. During an argument, she told me that if I ever ruined her relationship, I could forget I ever had a mom. Days later, I found out she married him in prison behind my back. I realized her world revolved around whatever made her feel wanted or distracted, even if it meant forgetting about me.

In June 2023, things reached my  breaking point. In many traditional households, hitting children is brushed off as “normal,” but after this I understood this to a certain extent. My mom had always been verbally abusive, but she was physical too, slapping me, pulling my hair, and even punching me. As I got older, it didn’t stop.  It only escalated. She even started hitting me in front of people. Then, one night around three in the morning, there was another change. We got into an argument while lying in bed, and it escalated fast. She hit me so hard it drew blood and caused my vision to go black. I had never bled from one of her hits before. When I came back to my senses, I got up, and yelled “You made me bleed!” I saw blood covering my hands, the bed, and the floor. I ran to the restroom, and  I waited for her to check on me, but she never did. Instead, she remained on the phone. I cried myself to sleep that night, hoping she’d apologize in the morning. She didn’t. She was in another room talking to her husband. That was when something in me finally snapped. I realized no apology would ever come. I quietly ran downstairs, called my aunt, and asked her to pick me up. When my mom agreed to let me leave, I ran out the door before she could change her mind. For the next few weeks, I moved between relatives’ homes until CPS got involved.

Like anyone who leaves a painful home, I faced new challenges afterward. CPS decided to place me with my dad, even though I hadn’t seen him in years. It was insanely hard. I wasn’t treated any better. I had to watch my dad be a dad to someone else while barely acknowledging me, and I was kept away from the rest of my family. I hit a breaking point. I tried to explain to him that I needed to be with my uncles, where I felt safe, but after speaking to my mom, he changed his mind. In all honesty, I went  emotionally crazy. My dad called 911, and I was taken to a hospital and then transferred to a mental health facility for teens. I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t going to do anything to myself or anyone else. I just needed peace and a place where people cared about me. I did everything I needed to do to be released: I followed every rule, ate what they asked me to, and cooperated with every test. After nine nights, I was allowed to leave. When I was out, my mom allowed me to remain with my uncle under certain conditions, but none of that mattered to me because I finally felt safe. I started my sophomore year a week later. Even though people doubted me, I finished the year with straight A’s, something I’m proud of after everything I had been through. I worked hard, asked my teachers for help, stayed in classes during lunch to get additional help, attended Saturday school tutor, and went to tutorials at least once a week. 

For years, I felt trapped, stuck in a life that was shaped by fear, manipulation, and the belief that I wasn’t enough. But now, I am finally stepping into a life where I get to choose who I become. My experiences were painful, but they shaped me. They are my destiny, and I would never erase them, because they made me strong, independent, and determined. They taught me how to protect myself, how to recognize real love, and how to keep moving forward even when everything feels impossible. Most importantly, they showed me that I deserve a better life than the life I was born into, and that I am capable of having the courage to create a future completely different from my past, because I am more than just a kid with daddy and mommy issues. I am a kid who survived all of these challenges and one who knows how to be resilient, mature, and strong.

Something to Really Cry About

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By Mark Cisneros

Prologue

I was three years old when my dad first hit me. It was a brutal, insensitive beating, made more so by the fact that before he laid into me, I was already in immense pain, crying hysterically from a kitchen accident that took place just seconds before. 

Today, had a nosy or concerned neighbor ratted on my dad, he surely would’ve gone to jail for child abuse, but this was 1973 Los Angeles, and we were Mexican, and nothing was more Mexican than getting your ass beat by your parents.  My dad hit me many times after that, even into my early teens, and I’m sure I deserved a few of those beatings, but I was a baby when he first hit me. It was not deserved. 

The pain is gone, but the memory lingers. I can still clearly see that night and hear it. For a long time afterward, and even now as an adult, I asked, “Why?” Why would my dad hit me at a time when I was completely helpless, a toddler just barely learning to be loved by his parents? I asked myself this question and many other questions. I tried looking at the incident from different angles and through different lenses, but nothing I came up with satisfied me. 

I realized I was making excuses for my dad’s actions, even justifying them. “Well, his parents beat him, too.  This is the way Mexican parents dealt with their kids back in those days,” I would say. And it was partly true because every Mexican kid in my neighborhood got his ass beat by his parents. It would happen in public, too: at the park, at Little League games, at Back-to-School Night. Getting beaten by our parents was part of the Mexican culture. I came up with several reasons and excuses to justify the beating, but the truth is I didn’t know why my dad did it.  No rational explanation came to mind.

I knew my dad as a loving man— a hard-working man. He was a veteran of the Korean War. He was a blue-collar worker to his core.  But I also knew my dad to be an angry man. Anger was in his blood, and it came from somewhere that no one knew, not even his brothers and sisters. It controlled him. It often got the best of him. The night he hit me was no exception.

Chapter One: Burned 

I love my mom’s cooking, and when I was a kid, my favorite dish was her homemade French fries.  Being by her side in the kitchen when she made them was a special time for me when I was an only child, and I had her all to myself. I watched her closely and quickly became familiar with the French fry process. First, she would heat a frying pan on high. When it was ready, she would drop in a generous scoop of Farmer John’s Lard right in the middle of it. As quickly as the lard hit the pan, the kitchen and living room came alive with cracks and pops from the sizzling Manteca as it danced in the pan.  The pops were a welcomed sound in our house because it meant my mom was cooking, and my mom’s cooking was in my DNA.

When I was in the kitchen with her, I got close, but not too close. I made sure to stand a few feet away from the stove because when she dropped the potatoes into the pan, tiny drops of heated lard would jump out and land on my baby arms and babyface, bringing sharp little stings to my baby skin, and it hurt. My dad was asleep in the bedroom. He worked the graveyard shift for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and he usually got up around 9:30 p.m. before he left for work. My mom would cook him a late dinner, and he’d take the leftovers to work.  Part of our job while we cooked was to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake my dad.

My mom’s fries were amazing! Even when she made beans and rice with homemade flour tortillas, I still only wanted fries. When she had made enough for both of us, we would sit at the table. As usual, we enjoyed our dinner while my dad slept. I gobbled up my fries, so I decided to get up for seconds, which looking back was a pretty independent move for a three-year-old. My mom remained seated while I walked to the stove. Her back was to me. The plate with the greased-soaked napkins was sitting on one of the unlit burners next to the heated pan. It was the plate my mom put the freshly cooked fries on. The napkins were piled on the plate in order to soak up the excess grease from the fries. There were no more fries on the plate, but I knew more were cooking because I could hear them sizzling and popping in the pan.  I couldn’t see them cooking, though, because I was too small to reach the top of the stove, but I knew they were there. My mom was still at the table, not concerned with what I was attempting.  

My only chance at getting more fries was to reach up and grab hold of the pan’s handle, which was sticking out like a plank over the stove. Not much thought went into my actions. I knew there were fries there and I wanted some. I’d drop a few onto my plate and be right back at the table with my mom.  Excitedly, I pulled down on the handle to get a look at the fries. I’ll do my best to describe this next part. I remember feeling the searing grease land on my three-year-old baby chest and then watching the baby skin melt off my chest and avalanche onto my belly.  The pain was more than instantaneous. It was terrifying. It was torture. It was from another world. The top layer of the skin on my chest had been completely erased. The scene was in slow motion.

I went primal. I dropped what I was holding and screamed a scream that no mother should ever hear their child make. I catapulted from the kitchen to the farthest living room wall, some twenty feet away, frantic, screaming from my chest, completely out of my mind, hitting every high-pitched decibel I could muster. I sprinted to the farthest living room wall, touched it, and ran full speed towards my mother. She was standing near the table where just moments before we were sharing a peaceful dinner Her arms were outstretched, shameful tears, guilty tears running down her skin. I ran into her arms and she caught me like a Navy carrier catches a jet in the middle of the ocean.

She clutched me and immediately took a seat while I stood before her in pure agony. She was crying as much as I was. She was hugging me and rocking me back and forth with delicate timing, chanting, “Ya, ya, mijo. Ya. Ya. No llores, mijo.” But I couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. We had both surrendered to the tragedy. The pain was immense. Then came a boom. It was my dad. He had stormed out of the bedroom like a madman, in his worn-out underwear, yelling and banging on the walls. “Chingada madre! Que chingados paso! Martha? Que chingados paso?” He was my dad, but he was different. I had never seen him like that.

My mom tried in vain to catch her breath so that she could answer my dad’s question. “Se, se, se quemo, Marcos! Se quemo!” She could barely get the words out. She was still holding on to me, sobbing uncontrollably, feeling sorry for me. Suddenly, my right arm was almost torn from its limb. My dad had torn me away from what was the safe haven of my mother’s arms. He jolted me in his direction so that he could get a look at my chest. When he saw the damage, his transformation intensified. He was maniacal. Everything about him was new to me. I had never seen his eyes so lifeless, yet so fiery. He mashed his teeth, then grabbed me by my right arm, lifted me in the air with a mighty pull, and proceeded to beat the fuck out of me with his right hand, in the kitchen, in front of my mom, slapping the shit out of my ass, over and over and over again until the pain in my chest was gone—until I stopped crying from getting burned.  I don’t have any physical scars on my chest to give proof that this ever happened to me, but it did. Trust.

I don’t remember anything after this. In fact, my next memory takes place years later. It’s almost as if I glitched out for three years and then reconnected just in time to be acquainted with my little brother Juan. In a sense, I was reborn. This is how I see it.

I’m the oldest of three. I’m glad I am, too, because I want to believe that I spared my brother and sister from the more brutish years of my dad’s anger.  I absorbed the brunt of his anger in my youth, in his youth, so that they wouldn’t have to, and I’m ok with it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop here.