My father thought I’d be pregnant by the time I reached my fifteenth birthday. I know this because my mother repeated the last words he told her before they separated over and over during my adolescence. It was easy for him to say that. After all, he moved back to the Dominican Republic and left my two sisters and I to be raised by a single mother who barely spoke English and worked minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. He thought we’d end up raising ourselves, end up in some older boys bed, drug addicted, with an infant as our prize. My mother, however, would not let that happen, reminding us of this every time she thought we were straying off the path.
Once, my high school sent home a postcard stating that I had not been attending my math class. “Have you been cutting school, Larissa?” she asked me while shaking the postcard at me. “ No! I think that was a mistake. They do that all the time.” I told her. She looked into my eyes, accepted my answer and walked away. The next day, during math class, my teacher received a note asking me to go to the main office. I walked into the main office and found my mother staring at me with the postcard she had been shaking at me the day before. “Muy bien,” she smiled “just making sure you are where you’re supposed to be.”
That was my mother.
It’s may 1 and no new updates boooooo – lol hope all is well chica!
Wow. You need to submit something to Latina magazine. This spoke to me so much. My mom was single and raising 4 of us while my father was in DR. They also separated over and over and over again, including having a kid after divorce. We were born here (our parents came here as kids) and my mom did everything possible to keep us off the street life. She was mentally ill so I do not have the awe you have for yours as my mother was mentally violent and scarier sometimes than the street life she was protecting us from. Still, I think I am a homebody because I am so used to entertaining myself indoors because I couldn’t play outside in such an unsafe neighborhood (80′s Washington Heights) and even when I could, it was supervised by an adult and I could ride my bike on one block and my aunt, the cop, checked the park for crack needles. My other aunt went to a local Catholic school and I remember being 13 and she was 14 and we would run into all these girls who were pregnant at her school. I felt really lucky to be awkward-looking and acting and not having a boyfriend to 17, who was gay so I didn’t have to deal with sex or pregnancy or anything. When straight boys were interested in me in high school, I was so awkward (nervous laughter kills the mood when they confess their undying love/lust) that it kept me out of trouble. My mother was more worried about my perpetually gorgeous sister. Being an ugly duckling kept me safer. But thank G-d, none of us were pregnant teenagers. My grandmother was pregnant by 16 in DR and was never really a mother to my mother and I think everyone would have been disappointed if we had followed the same route.