The Life I Had (by Rika)

The Life I Had

March 10th, 2008
I am standing here….facing the most beautiful palace that I’ve ever seen. The carved 4 meters high door is almost about to swallow my dignity. My dignity, it has always been the only thing that I have in life, the only thing that has kept me going all this time. I have done all possible ways to earn a living. Yeah… I do mean all possible ways, from becoming a newspaper boy, washing dishes at a restaurant, taking pizza deliveries, painting houses, gardening, until baby sitting. That last one may sound an ordinary job but it’s not so ordinary for a 14 years old boy. All those struggles have always been for my mother. My mother, a 42 years old woman that looks 10 years older ever since ‘life’ decided to turn itself against us.
For the past 6 years, we live in the Southern California's suburbs, in a 3 x 3 m2 room that smells like garbage because it’s surrounded by it. Having no day passed by without her sweat, my mother has determined to achieve our own better life, the life without him, the father that I once had. That’s right, I had a father 6 years ago, a father that I adored very much, a handsome tall brown haired man who drove me in his Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph to school every morning. Life was a whole lot different back then. I can’t really remember any sorrow I had had until the lightning stroke our family. The lightning that I usually call ‘the blond bitch’. Since she doesn’t really have a brain nor a heart, her 27 years old body must have always been her one and only weapon against my mother. I still can’t forget the day when both my mother and I saw that disgusting view in our very own 2 story house, the view that shouldn’t been seen by an 8 years old, the view that involves 2 people and one of them was a husband and a father. We hate him for giving us the worst day of our life and since that day on, we have promised ourselves to live our own life. It has never been easy, but we have always found a way to survive.

March 9th, 2008
The only woman I love is now lying on the hospital bed, weak, and thin. It has been 2 weeks now and no good signs have appeared. The cancer in her has somehow managed to change the most beautiful woman I know into this fragile old woman. The hospital bills that I can’t cover even by selling my soul have been playing inside my head over and over again. And just now, the lightning stroke my life once again. This time, it was ‘the doctor’ saying that the hospital will stop treating my mother with those highly expensive liquids if I don’t come up with a good intention to pay up our debts. This is the point where I decided to disregard our promise 6 years ago.

March 11th, 2008
“Can you slowly tell me what just happened there? Just take your time and tell me all about it, so that I can help you” said the nice lady who introduced herself as my attorney. This small room where we’re having this conversation has nothing in it but a medium size wooden table with 4 chairs and a big weird looking mirror. Then I told her everything what happened in the house where I once lived in, where for the second time, I begged for my father’s help to save my mother, where the lightning stroke for the third time when he simply can’t disobey ‘the blond bitch’s order to refuse my request, and where I saw a knife on the dining table and stabbed it right into his stomach.

(By Rika, rikacintara@gmail.com)