I took control of my life after surviving dehumanizing episodes in a family tragedy, beginning when I was very young and culminating in my leaving home to make a life for myself. I am determined to turn a potentially tragic story into one of triumph. My father is the central antagonist in my story.

I vividly remember my father attempting to poison my mother. At that time, I was too young to understand what was going on. When I began to understand, I remember seeing my father offering my pregnant mother a drink, telling her that it was all vitamins, but it turned out to be poison from which she almost died. During her pregnancy, this poison had the effect of disturbing my brother in the womb, so that after he was born he could not cry, scream, or speak loudly in response to emergencies without losing his voice.

In another of my father's attempts to harm my mother, my father pointed a loaded gun straight at her head in our presence. He told her that if she moved her head she would be shot, and it would be all her fault. He said that he would inform everybody else that it was an unfortunate accident!

I was five years old when my father abandoned us. He left us for another woman and demanded that we leave, so he could bring his new paramour to what was our house. There were five of us children, and my mother was pregnant with my brother. After walking for many hours, we stopped at a ranch. My mother knew the people, and they let us stay there for three years. We did daily chores in return for our keep.

Francisco was tall, and Yia was short and stocky. They had no kids. I remember their house: It was made completely of stones and was set on a hill. Everything in the house was very organized. Yia was clean and particular in the way she liked her house to look. They treated us as if we were their family. To this day, I remember with fondness the cane candy Yia would make for us. On the ranch, they had a mill where they transformed sugar cane into raw sugar. From that she made melcocha, a kind of taffy.

In time, my mother met a married man in whom she took great interest. He became her common-law husband. After the birth of the first child of this second union, the so-called stepfather attempted to sexually abuse my sisters and me. But he never succeeded, because we always screamed in alarm, and the neighbors came to rescue us from his advances. After my mother’s recuperation from childbirth, I personally informed her of the sexual attempts upon us by her paramour, with all the disgusting things he tried to do to us. Her answer was that she did not believe what was being said about him. She felt we were against him and trying to separate them. Convinced of this, she gave us the option of "getting out" and leaving if we did not agree with her. She simply knew we had nowhere else to go! Being so young, we had no other alternative but to stay with them. 

Later, she bore four more children by this man, not to mention the many miscarriages that occurred during this cohabitation. Like clockwork, my mother gave birth every ten months to a new child. These births posed greater problems to us, because each new birth meant an attempt at sexual abuse upon us. Likewise, the burden of caring for the newborns was thrust upon each of the girls, so that the chores of feeding, changing, and other necessities increased significantly.

In the meantime, we managed to make contact with our paternal grandmother, who indirectly and secretly helped us. In the process of assisting us, she became alienated from her son, our father; he hated her because of all the help she covertly provided to us. When the time came for my mother to have her fourth child by her paramour, we succeeded in arranging to leave in order to live with our beloved grandmother. All five of us daughters left home to join with our grandmother.

Our biological father lived near his mother, our good grandmother, but he never paid any attention to us, nor did he care about us. Only when he discovered that we were useful as workers did he begin to take interest. He recognized an opportunity to exploit us, and he did so. He promised to pay us if we worked for him or in his stead, but he never paid us what he promised. Our grandmother was very upset about how our father treated us. Consequently, she made it a point to speak to him about the matter. She stressed the point that he was morally wrong to make us work under the hot sun while he sat in the shade and fanned himself. We picked peanuts for about twelve hours a day, every day, seven days a week without a day off, for three years. Digging peanuts from the earth was done barehanded, without tools, which required sifting and shifting the soil between our fingers. The work resulted in bleeding and cracked cuticles. Besides that, he did not give us enough food to eat for working outdoors in the sun.

Many times, one or more of us got sick in the sun because he made us work long hours every day. His excuse to his mother was that he never really wanted us in the first place. Since we were here, he felt the least we could do in return was to work for him. At that time, when I looked at my stepmother, I could tell she was maliciously glad to hear my father talk disrespectfully like that to his mother about us. Our stepmother had a lot of influence on how our father treated us. If she complained, he would believe her and whip us very hard. I still remember at the age of nine when he hit me with a stinging belt that he had made for himself. I still have marks on my back from those beatings. I resent him for not being a good father and for all the physical and mental abuse we suffered. Every time I see those marks, I remember that day as if it happened only yesterday.

Not long after the beating, I finally left, saying to myself that it was not worth staying with this family. To me it seemed like they hated me, and therefore there was no reason at all to stay! I began to take long walks to the mountains and rivers, trying to think and find better ways to leave that life that was slowly destroying me. My sisters managed to adapt and cope with this type of existence. They grew older and married. But I was more careful and always took matters seriously, even when they were not too serious. I used to walk to an old school that everybody at that ranch attended, but we were not allowed to attend school. My father made us work extremely hard, so we had no time to go to school. When I walked around in those rivers and mountains, I dreamt about leaving for a big city where there were many schools that I might attend. At that time, I did not know whether I was competent to or capable of attending school at all. All that I knew was that I wanted to become a teacher. As I grew older, I began to understand my desire to become a teacher. In Mexico, a teacher traveled everywhere, teaching one year in each state. My urge and compulsion at that age was to escape from that ranch. I thought that becoming a teacher was the only chance I had of really leaving the ranch.

When I finally found the opportunity to escape from my father’s living hell, I ran away to a city called Los Mochis, a couple of hours from Mazatlán. I still remember getting off the bus with no money and no place to go. I was not used to all the noise and busyness of the city. I felt very tiny and alone. After walking for hours aimlessly, I noticed it was getting late, so I knocked on doors to see whether anyone needed a baby-sitter. Finally, a lady opened a door and asked me if I wanted to work for food and a place to stay but no pay, which I happily accepted. When she saw that I was very clean and hardworking, with no place to go, she offered to pay me. After a couple of months, when I informed her that I wanted to attend school, she consented. 

Thereafter, I went to night school, where I completed my primary education. Later, I started high school, paying tuition with the money that she paid me. Yet it was not enough. I was ambitious and wished for something better. Just working for room and board and a little money was not enough to continue my education. So, I left for Nogales, Sonora, a far distance from Los Mochis. I took the train from Los Mochis to Nogales on a cold winter evening. All of the passengers slept during the train ride, which lasted until 6:00 a.m., except for me. I stood on the platform outside the car, taking in all the scenery through the moonlight.

As soon as I came to Nogales, I found a job at a factory that manufactured television sets, where I made a better salary. I began to work all day, sometimes for sixteen or even twenty hours at a time. There was no time for school. Still, what motivated and drove me on was that I wanted to improve myself and better my life. I started to save money. I knew that some day soon I would need it. 

In the meantime, many men showed interest in me, but the thought of my past life with my father depressed me and ruined any opportunity for dating. I refused all of them except one older man who helped me and cared for me unconditionally.

He was thirty-seven, and I was seventeen. I did not return his love. He claimed that he just wanted to help me. One year, on my birthday, he bought a car for me and gave me many valuable presents, which I later sold, including the car, because I needed to save money. I did not want to live in Mexico anymore; I wanted to go to the United States. When I saved enough money, I left my job. For a long time, I debated emigrating to the United States. I still had no visa or passport, so I could not cross the border legally. 

On the day that I decided to cross I met another woman with two children who was also ready to go. We found a hole in the fence that divides the U.S. from Mexico, and we crawled through it. A car was waiting for the woman and her children, so I went on alone. While walking through the desert on the edge of Nogales, Arizona, I came across other people like myself who were headed north to Phoenix. We walked for a whole day and a night through the desert. The following morning we came across a ranch and did not think twice about running to their door, because by then, we were very hungry and thirsty. The woman living there gave us water, canned beans, and apples. After we ate and rested a little, we kept walking for the rest of that day. That evening one of the men managed to get a ride for us, all the way to Phoenix. When I arrived, the driver asked me where he could drop me off. I told him to let me out right where we were, at Sixteenth Street and Roosevelt. 

It was September 16, 1985. I started walking around aimlessly, and I saw a Spanish-language church service in progress at Roosevelt and Fifteenth Street. I entered the church, and everybody turned around to see who was at the door. I went straight up to the preaching pastor and informed him that I had just arrived from Mexico and needed a place to live. After the service, he asked the congregation if anyone would take me into their home. A lot of people raised their hands, but one couple raised their clasped hands together. I asked the pastor if I could go with that couple, because I could see that they were together in the decision to take me into their home.

It turned out that the decision to stay with that couple was the best. They offered their home and love to me. The wife, Francisca, sewed clothes for me, so that I might look decent for work. Her husband, Manuel, helped me find a job assembling lawnmowers in a big factory in Chandler. Manuel used to drive me to and from work. After I had worked there for six months, the factory's management asked me for proof of citizenship, which of course, I lacked. Manuel and Francisca helped me find another job cleaning offices. There I met another lady who told me that she regularly cleaned the office of an amazingly intelligent chemist and publisher who later began to show a keen interest in me. From her, he casually requested my telephone number. The same day he made sure to call me in order to get acquainted. In time, he invited me to dinner, where he proposed to me, and I accepted because he impressed me as being both brilliant and handsome. It was difficult not to fall in love with him.

Later, we were married in an elaborate local church ceremony. At that time, it was the brightest and most fantastic event of all my life! Out of this marriage came two beautiful children. I worked to make the marriage a success because of our children and because I loved him. I provided all the love, care, and consideration that my childhood lacked.

Six years of marriage uncovered certain problems not completely resolved, which we experienced as a clash of cultures and ideas. His was a Mediterranean culture; mine, Western. He wanted me cloistered, whereas I liked to associate with everyone and wanted to continue my education, of which he completely disapproved. After realizing a certain incompatibility, we decided to separate, and eventually divorced.

My life indeed began after the divorce, when I was able to take control of my life and begin to plan my future career. I realized that I would have to go to school to get a better job and to offer my children a better future. I had to start at the bottom, taking English classes for non-English speakers. Going to college and the university has been the fulfillment of my life-long dream—to have a good education and make the most of myself. My goal is to work through law school and become a successful criminal lawyer.

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