Chapter 1:
“The words flew out of her mouth like bullets, ready to shoot down anything I was about to say. My ears were already numb from all her screaming, so the plate crashing into the wall just above my head didn’t bother me that much. ¨See what you’ve done now?! You insensitive little brat, you can’t do ANYTHING right can you?!¨ she spat the words out like venom, searing them into my brain. She was becoming more resourceful than she was in her past though, taking off her heels and projecting them across the room, still shrieking.
Who knows what happened this time? Maybe it was the dog, jumping up on her ready to welcome her back home with wet, slobbery kisses. Or maybe it was the plates I had accidentally left on the table from the kids’ breakfast that morning. I started to apologize as fast as I could in hopes that it would calm her down a least a little bit. Hell, I don’t even know what I did wrong this time. I don’t think I ever knew why I was always in trouble. I’m not sure there was ever a real reason; but whatever it was, no matter how small and pointless it was, any reason was good enough for her.
This plate now marked the 4th time this week that she’s thrown a dish at me. Our fighting was starting to get out of control. She no longer knew or cared about any boundaries.
She was a tall blonde woman, who, after her gastric bypass surgery in 2007, was incredibly skinny. The fact that she still had a working liver was almost magic in itself, seeing as how she spent every chance she had drinking. I don’t think I ever saw her without a beer or a bottle of wine in her hand; her lips only parting with the rim of the bottle long enough to insult me 3 and tell me something that needed to be cleaned.
Later in life, as she grew a bit older, she decided to start doing drugs. Starting out small with weed, but later moving onto hash, meth, LSD, acid, heroin, and ecstasy; always searching for a high. A way to escape the reality that was her life. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, and she still isn’t. She had me at 19, and after a complication with my birth dad, she picked up all her stuff and left. Taking me with her on the pure fact that she knew it would kill my birth dad. She had something that he wanted more than anything in the world, but this something was what she would blame all her life problems on.
It was amazing how fast she could change her personality when we were in public versus when we were at home. The only thing she loved more than drugs and alcohol was attention. Her narcissism could be dubbed queenly with the way that she faked medical problems so that people would pity her. Her public image was her trophy; how she looked in church, picking up my siblings from school, going grocery shopping with the moms from her ¨mommy and me” playgroups, was the only thing that mattered to her. She always made sure to never yell at my siblings and I in public, but never hesitant to twist my arm or pinch my leg till a dark purple bruise appeared. When people asked, why I had so many bruises, it was always “we got in a fight because I was a ‘rebellious and out of control preteen who couldn’t control her hormones’, and I managed to hurt myself on purpose”, to try and make her look like a bad mom.
I was always the root cause of all of her problems. Just being born was a problem. The fact that I was breathing angered her. With this being said, it was kinda a given that yelling was one of her favorite activities. Her method being, shout till you´re heard; Make sure they remember what you tell them.
She almost never shut her mouth. Only taking breaks long enough so she could open another beer or take another shot.
Busy in thought, she found the opportunity she was waiting for. A sickening crack was produced by my rib cage. Slightly hunched over, I didn’t even have enough time to process why I was now in pain, before she was back at it, her eyes scanning the room for the next item to throw. A second plate came crashing into the wall just above my right shoulder, shards of glass scattering themselves across the floor and buried themselves in the carpet as if hiding from her; it wasn’t long before her insults just became high pitched shrieking. With the way that she threw things, it was almost as if she had a certain amount of time before they would burn her hands.
Dear God, the noise coming out of her mouth was insufferable. Her voice could rival a banshee.
My head was pounding and yet, all I could hear was her voice. The constant headache that accompanied my living was threatening to get worse. Rough hands with sharp claws tightly gripping the back of my neck; while its counterpart worked like a magnet pulling itself from the inside of my skull, both pieces hoping to meet each other. The fact that I was dehydrated probably didn’t help. God, I can hear the blood rushing through my veins! Is there never silence in this house? The sound of my heartbeat was soon overwhelming, threatening to make me throw up. The only thing I could do now was focus on the present and hope that I could get out of this house soon.
She’s getting better with her aiming, I thought, still clutching my side. I guess practice really does make perfect… Soon I was surrounded by a sea of broken glass, and she was running out of things to throw. I probably would’ve been standing in a pool of blood, had I not been wearing shoes when this whole thing started.
¨You useless piece of shit! What are you still doing here?! It’s not like anyone here actually wants you!¨ she shrieked, clawing the air just inches from my nose.
A familiar burning sensation spread across my cheek as she pulled her hand back, reloading for the next blow. Her nails were freshly done, still sharp from the file, so each time her hand kissed my cheek, her claws would scratch the surface. Small lines of blood were slowly welcomed onto my now raw skin. Hopefully this time it doesn’t bruise. I can just say it was the cat if someone asks, but bruising might give it away.
¨You know, it’s for the best.¨ she said, fixing her nails. The words practiced over a thousand times.¨This is all just a lesson on how to behave next time. Maybe next time youĺl listen and do what you’re told.¨ she finished. A sly grin slowly creeping across her face. This was her favorite part. It can only go downhill from here.
Seeing that I was in pain made her happy, but seeing I had no reaction to being hit angered her more. There was something about seeing me cry that filled her with an overwhelming sense of pride. She was in complete control of something. She could do whatever she wanted and not get caught because she knew I’d never tell. I couldn’t risk being taken away and leaving my siblings in her care. This was her entertainment. She slapped and clawed my face, and yet she got no reaction out of it. This only angered her more. Why didn’t I just fake it?! I could’ve said ow, or forced a tear or two out…
The adrenaline had already kicked in so the pain was no longer an important variable. While it didn’t hurt, I wasn’t gonna let get a bruise out in the open. I no longer cared whether I lived or died, but I wasn’t gonna let her pass her anger to the kids.”
- A Mother’s Love by Daisy Ramirez
Daisy Ramirez’s unique writing is about true stories and events from her often-colorful past.
“I use it to vent like a therapy session that I can write down and take back or change anything, to word it better later,” Ramirez said.
In Ramirez’s book, “A Mother’s Love,” she writes about her gloomy childhood. She started at MTHS in freshman year, the year when she got out of foster care and came under the care of her stepdad.
Ramirez was placed in Vince DeMiero’s honors English class in her freshman year. “I hoped that Honors English was going to be more writing than more like the meaning of writing,” she said. But throughout the years, DeMiero said he heard about Ramirez and her writing from his colleagues and the incredible ability she has with words.
“I wrote a lot in DeMiero’s [class] and I vented a little to him, and he helped me a little bit with that and he suggested changing some words to see how I could describe scenes better to really make you feel like you are there,” she said.
With that help, Ramirez went to Peter White’s honors English class in her sophomore year, where she actually started writing her book. The genius of this book came when White assigned her class an essay about some meaningful memories of their lives.
“Since it was sophomore year, I didn’t have any good memories. I didn’t have anything good to write about,” she said.
While the rest of her peers would talk about going places with their families and friends, Ramirez lacked similar warm memories to recount in the essay.
“I’m over here, like, I was inside all the time. Like my mother literally isolated me,” she said. “There was nothing I could do.”
In her essay for White, Ramirez talked about the woods that she used to live nearby. From there, the essay branched off into the daily life that she experienced while growing up.
“Broken dishes on the floor, constant screaming. This was my life,” Ramirez said.
It was supposed to be a two-page essay, but she ended up printing a 30-page essay, and when she handed it to White, he read through it in its entirety.
White was Ramirez’s favorite teacher. He was always the teacher that would let her swear in her papers. In one of his comments on an essay Ramirez wrote, he said, “I love how passionate you are!”
Ramirez would later feel extremely grateful for the motivation that White provided her in continuing with her writing. White fondly remembers Ramirez as a highly skilled and striking writer.
“I love the way that Daisy writes, that was one of the things that really struck me,” White commented. “She had a really unique voice and she knew how to say what she wanted to say. I saw a very promising writer in Daisy early [on], [a] novelist kind-of writer.”
In Ramirez’s junior year, she continued the process of writing her book through another essay about personal morals, which she wrote with English teacher Jennifer Widrig-Hodges’s permission. Later, at the end of the year, there was an extra credit project to read out one of the essays that her class did during the year. She decided to read out her story about personal morals.
Ramirez got through around three chapters in the half an hour she was given to share her writing. More than a quarter of the class had to leave by the time Ramirez was finished, the majority of them crying by the time they went out. These classmates stayed in the hallways until the end of the period while recovering from the severe emotions that Ramirez’s story generated in them.
She does wish to publish the book in the future to show people what happens behind closed doors in an abusive relationship, and how coming from certain places doesn’t necessarily mean that one is safe when it comes to upbringing.
Ramirez said her mother abused her as a child. She remembers a time when, a week before Christmas break, her mother physically abused her to the point where she couldn’t move. She was laying on the back porch, screaming and crying to the point where her neighbors called the police. However, her mother persuaded the officers that the screaming was Ramirez’s fault instead. This resulted in two full-grown policemen yelling at an 11-year-old girl for an hour about her being a bad child and how it was her fault, she recalls.
After high school, her plans are to take a year off so she can eventually go to Sweden to attend Stockholm University, as it is home to one of the top two hundred universities in the world. However, she needs a student visa from Sweden in addition to needing to support herself for a full year without a job.
When she eventually makes it to Stockholm, she will be taking psychology and sociology as her major in the hopes of becoming a forensic criminologist.
“I would like to find out how people’s minds work, figuring out what certain things make them the way that they are to help create the person they are today,” Ramirez said.
After college in Sweden, she plans on returning to the United States to start her career in forensic criminology.
She initially chose to follow this career path because, while she was looking through Pinterest feed in eighth grade, she saw people reporting about the classes they were taking in forensic criminology.
White holds that it would take over a day to think about all he has to say to Ramirez before she graduates, but he finally came up with some words to send her off.
“I’m really proud of Daisy, I’m proud of what she achieved as a young woman, just in life. Overcoming life and being strong, staying true to herself. Just being a strong independent young woman shows incredible strength and resistance,” White said. “She is a unique voice and I look forward to seeing what she will achieve in the future. She will achieve whatever she sets her mind to as long as she goes after it.”
You can find the rest of Ramirez’s draft of her book here: http://goo.gl/vYXf2N
