By Carmen L. Belen
I am convinced that any suffering we endure is nothing, compared to the glory that he will reveal to us later. —Romans 8:18
I lay in my bed, the top bunk, of a wooden bunk bed. Staring at the ceiling, at 3 a.m. while everyone in our little one-bedroom apartment slept. The one-bedroom apartment was shared between my mother, my little sister, and me. The silence is broken by the sound of the house phone, loud rings that sound like alarms. I lay there paralyzed. My mother, who is sleeping in the living room, answers the phone. There was a pause, then I could finally hear her. “What did you say?” she said, right before she hung up.
I could hear her in a soft yet rattled voice, telling the man that I now call my stepfather “El papa de las niñas,” the girls’ father, she said in Spanish. I lay there, my heart racing. The moment I felt was coming had arrived. Prior to the phone ringing, I felt unbalanced. I felt a shift in my life. The emptiness. So when my mother walked into our bedroom and cut the light on, I said, “Papi died.” She didn’t say anything, her face went blank, and she nodded as her eyes filled with tears. We told my sister, who at the time was only five years old, so she didn’t really comprehend it.
The days to follow were all a blur, a web of memories that blended into each other so I wouldn’t be able to say if it had been hours or days or even weeks. Perhaps because I was only eleven years old, or just the way my brain grieved the death of my father. I recall the drive from Massachusetts to New Jersey. In my grandmother’s station wagon, with my mother, my aunt, my two sisters, my little cousin, and my grandmother. I remember the quaint little hotel room we all shared. I remember getting to the church and barely making it to the casket before I ran out scared. I had never seen a dead person before, and I didn’t imagine the first to be my father.
I recall the morning in the cemetery. Everyone was crying as they lowered the casket to the ground. My eldest brother scooped me up and carried me out because I wanted to jump into the grave. I just lost my father; no little girl wants to lose her father. All of these days were webbed together. I couldn’t tell you an exact timeline, and while all this was very traumatic, this is not my origin story. It is a small moment in the trauma of my entire childhood.
What I did not mention was that my father was addicted to cocaine. Three weeks prior to his death I said goodbye to him for the last time. My mom came to pick my sister and me up from my dad’s house, at the end of summer vacation. As we were leaving my father gave me a hug and said, “I’m glad I got to see you one last time.” The words always danced in my mind because even as a child they felt eerie. I knew I was never going to see my father again. I never told anyone. So when my father hung himself on September 17, 1998, just a little after midnight, I knew before the phone rang. I felt it in my stomach.
I was a little Puerto Rican girl who grew up in a home with three drug-addicted parents. Yes, three. My father, his wife, and my mother. Also in the house were my two older half-brothers and my baby sister. I was the little girl who slipped through the cracks. The girl who was neglected, physically and emotionally abused by her parents. The girl who was being sexually abused as far back as she could remember by one of her half-brothers, who would eventually be raped by him and his friends. I was the girl who never told because no one would listen. I was the girl who chose to be sexually assaulted to spare her baby sister from the same fate. I was the little girl who watched her father dehumanize his two wives, and then all three of them be too high on cocaine and drunk on blackberry brandy to realize that I was watching from the shadows. No one ever knew, because I never told. To this day, I can still smell the blackberry brandy.
While my entire childhood was traumatic, and probably someone’s “villain origin story,” my origin story started on February 12, 1993, when my baby sister, Glory, was born. I remember that day, I remember the room where I was sitting. Burned into my core memory. Weirdly, I was alone, in the bedroom, watching The Bodyguard with Whitney Houston. I was about six years old, watching the moment when Whitney is singing “I Will Always Love You” when my “other mother” walked in to tell me that my baby sister was born. The core memory of that song that till this day my sister jokes about because I cry whenever it comes on. Because “I will always love her.”
Not much changed after my mother ran away from my father with my little sister and me. We ended up in Massachusetts. My mother stopped doing drugs but continued to be an alcoholic. She constantly left, leaving Glory and me home alone while she frequented bars and left for days at a time with random men. I became my little sister’s main caregiver. Me, a ten-year-old girl, who didn’t get a chance to ever be a child, raising Glory, a curious four-year-old. But I ensured she never had to give up her innocence or childhood. I kept her spunky, wild, and free personality intact. I made sure she was always happy. I became my sister’s keeper.
The reason I am who I am today is because I had my baby sister, Glory, to get me through my darkest days and my toughest nights. Growing up in a three-parent household filled with neglect and drugs was traumatic, but locked in my bedroom I had my baby sister. Being sexually abused and knowing it was wrong, I allowed it to protect my baby sister. Grieving my father’s death, when my mom would get angry that we cried because “if it was her, we wouldn’t” I had my baby sister to look out for me while I cried so my mom wouldn’t get mad at me. She claims I was her savior, but she was mine.
As I grew from a child into a teen and then a young mother, I always had my baby sister, my best friend, to support me in ways no one on this Earth had. Many nights I cried myself to sleep, and many days I fantasized about a world where I didn’t exist. I wrote suicide notes and contemplated ending my life. I felt pain and trauma from a life no one should ever experience, but the one thing, the one person that kept me alive was her. Because of her, I knew I had to be a role model. I had to make sure we had a better life as adults than we ever did as children. I had to sacrifice and work hard so she would want to.
I got part-time jobs as soon as I could to give her the best Christmases and birthdays. I hustled to keep a roof over her head and food in her stomach. Through poverty-stricken moments in our childhoods, I found ways for her to have fun and not notice the struggles we were facing. So many times we faced homelessness, when we slept in the car and I would pretend we were on these crazy road trips, although we were parked in the back of a dark parking lot. Watching her grow from a happy carefree child to a decent adult gives me pride. Pride in knowing my sacrifices were not made in vain. Today she is a preschool teacher and an amazing role model. She is caring, loving, and ambitious. Most importantly she is my best friend.
Being able to guide her through life and protect her prepared me to become the best mother I could for my four daughters. Many people see me as a victim of unfortunate circumstances; however, I am a survivor. I knew I never wanted my children to experience what had been normal for me in my life. My children know they have an open line of communication to tell me anything and everything under the sun. I never allowed them to witness drug abuse, and I made sure the people I kept around them were safe. If there was a family member that my child expressed made them feel uncomfortable or uneasy, I simply limited contact to little or none. My village was small, to say the least. This, however, is how I work toward giving them a childhood they never have to recover from.
As for my relationship with my biological mother, she lives in Florida, and we have become estranged. Although we never had the best relationship, I tried to maintain one with her regardless; however, she refused to respect my boundaries. I heard my “other mother” suffered many health conditions, as a result of years of drug and alcohol abuse. She passed away in 2014. I hadn’t had a relationship with her since my father passed away. At that time, I also discontinued my relationship with my half-brothers. I shut the door to my traumas. My sister Glory as I mentioned before is my best friend, my favorite person in the whole world. Not a day goes by that we do not talk. Oftentimes, we sit on the phone, going on about our lives, not even really talking but just knowing that we’re there. When life gets to be overwhelming and I feel as though I’m lost, she’s there to remind me of everything we overcame and to put me on the right path.
I spent many years negatively coping with my traumas and hiding them. After seeing how my past was affecting my life as an adult, I decided to seek counseling to help me overcome some of my childhood trauma, or at least come to terms with it. I am still a work in progress. I am a survivor who is still surviving every day. Telling my story is just one of the many steps I have taken in my recovery and growth.
