Like I'm Bad

(Fictional Story)

By: Gabriela McGrue

Sometimes I don't understand my mom. I’m always talking to mama and giving her a lot of love, but when I talk too loud she yells at me and when I do something wrong she yells at me for that too. Mama doesn't only yell at me though, she hits me too. Usually, when she takes her flip flop off, that's when I know I did something wrong. I always try to run but she catches me and hits me so hard that I don’t know left from right. Along with hitting, I can also tell she’s really upset at me when she starts to blabber nonsense that I don't even understand, not that I understand her most of the time anyway. However, the absolute worst thing mama does when she’s mad at me is say “Dios me ayude.” I don't even have to know what that means, all I know is that after she says those three words, she looks at me with those two brown eyes like I don’t belong, like I'm bad. After that stare I always feel like running away, but I don’t because she's the only real family I've ever had.

I had a family before mama. I was born in a gated area and I had a mom, named Luna, and a dad, named Luke, who seemed to really care about me, or so I thought. We all used to live in a dirty, four wall place and a tall thing would bring us some food and water throughout the day, I would mostly have Luna’s milk though. Looking back, I think I looked more like my dad than my mom but who am I to know, I was too young to really remember anything. Though I do remember having his ginger hair and his sad eyes, he used to call me his “special girl" because I was the only one who truly looked like him. All my five brothers and my older sister looked like Luna, their names were Ryle, Phoenix, Ranger, Sammy, and Clover, and my sister’s name was Mila, she was my favorite. My brothers were rough and didn’t really pay attention to Mila and I, but we liked it that way. When Mila and I would play outside in the backyard together, Ryle and Sammy would forcefully kick us out and scratch our faces. They would always hurt us but we never showed them any sort of weakness to their faces, but in secret I would go tell Luna what happened. She would just tell me that that is how brothers and sisters are supposed to play and that I should continue playing with them and be a “good girl”. Even though I refused to go back outside with them, Luna didn’t hit me. She never hit me actually. She thought it was okay that my brothers hit me and hurt me, but she never hit me. I guess that made her a good mom, I would've stayed with her and Luke if I hadn’t been taken away. It was an early morning after I ate my food, some weird people just showed up and took Ranger. Then a couple hours later it was Sammy and Clover, the next day it was Ryle and Phoenix, and lastly it was Mila and I. I thought we would be taken together but she got taken first and never looked back. The next day is when I met mama. She didn't have ginger hair like me, instead she had long light brown curls, her curls were so long I could wrap myself in them. She also had pretty brown eyes like chocolate, I don’t think I could eat chocolate though, the way mama hides the chocolate makes me believe that if I have one bite, i’m a goner. She didn’t really look like me at all, but it was the way she looked at me, when her eyes would lighten up like she saw the rarest thing in the world. It was like I belonged with her. I knew mama was the one as soon as she picked me up and gave me a cuddle, I kissed her face but she didn't like that and made a weird sound. While in mama’s arms, I felt bad leaving my true parents, but I didn't know why I was taken away or why mama chose me, so I needed to find out.

Mama didn’t just have four walls, she had more like twenty walls. She lived by herself which was really weird since she had so many walls. Her walls were so clean, I could see little sparkles if I closed my eyes half way. I was still in her arms when she showed me my big play area and my sleep area. It was a big black gated area that was all for me. She let me play outside for a while and I met some friends from the other side of the fence, we got to know each other for hours until mama yelled something at me. I ran inside, but before I saw anything, I smelled something so marvelous I had to look around. I didn’t think it was my food because Luna never gave my siblings and I food like that, but Mama pointed at the food, so I ate it so quickly I didn’t even have time to really taste such a yummy dinner. Mama had a weird look on her face, but it was a good weird look, and it felt like she said “What a good girl.” Later, when the sky turned black and the white dots appeared up above, mama grabbed me by my neck and put me in the black gated area until the next day when the sky turned bright again. As the months went by, mama took me out, let me play with my friends, fed me, bathed me, she basically did everything for me and I loved her. However as the years went by, she cared less about me and I wondered where she went for half the day. She left me all alone crying thinking she would never come back, but she always did. Although sometimes she left me in my area the whole day. I would rip up things to make her know how mad I was at her leaving, but I would always try and hide it so she won't hurt me like my brothers used to. One week passed and I couldn't take it anymore so I wet myself. When mama came home and opened my black gated area I ran to give her kisses because I missed her chocolate eyes and long curly hair, but she took off her shoe and hit me. She hit me and it really, really hurt. Mama continued to clean my pee, but she never let me out for a while. Sometimes when I would see her walking around my area, I would try and talk to her, hoping she would forgive me, but that made her hit me more. It was the day when I tried talking to her the most when she hit me the most, wack after wack after wack. I was trying to tell her that I loved her and she’s my real family, but she didn't understand me. That was the day she gave me the stare and told me to obey because “that’s what dogs do” she said. That’s when I knew I didn’t belong. Her eyes never glowed when she saw me, she never held me in her arms like she used to, and she never, ever called me her good girl. Instead she kept me locked up and always, always looked at me like I'm bad.