GINA'S YOUTH

I met Mr. Benson one night while I was hawking my goods on the street for anyone who cared to pay, then I was still going home with men who paid me crap compared to Mr. Benson, he pulled over to the curb and offered me a ride, ever since that day a year ago my life changed a whole lot. I could afford to wear decent clothes in the day time. I am not ashamed of what I do. I do it to survive, my mom died when I was eight, she had a heart condition and it was unlikely that she would live past my eight birthday, my father walked away from the house and I never saw him again. I don’t think I would know what he looks like right now if I walked down the street. I have two siblings. An older sister and a younger brother, we were all taken into foster care because none of our relatives wanted to care for us. I hated that and so I swore that when I got out of the foster care system I would be on my own and make it in life. I don’t know what happened to my sister and I never saw her again. I lived with Miss Mattie, a widow in her mid forties and my story became worse than Cinderella’s. She had three lazy children all girls, I did most of the housework. I was actually treated like an outcast more than a foster child. She shopped for me at the Thrift Store and bought me some old clothes. I dressed good on the days the Social worker came around, she made me wear one of her daughter’s clothes. I was in a pitiful state. She was being paid money to take care of me instead she spent the money on herself and her evil daughters. I once tried to tell on her when the Social worker came, Miss Jeryln was a very nice, petite young woman. Even though I looked well, she could tell something was wrong. One day Miss Mattie paid one of the neighbors to take me to see the Social worker in her office, I had those kind of visits once in a month. Miss Jeryln bought me some Chinese food, I hadn’t eaten that in a while. She watched me eat with so much relish.


“So how are things at the house?“ she asked me.

“Good” I replied with food in my mouth.

“Does she treat you very well?” she asked me.

“Yes”

“Are you sure?”

I looked at her, how did she know I was not well treated, I don’t even know what to tell her right now. She looked me in the eye and asked me the same question again. I looked away from her. She stood up and walked around the table. She finally pulled the chair beside me and sat down.

“Gina, I like you a lot and this is my job, if you are not happy, tell me I will make a report and have you moved to a different home” she told me.

“No ma’am, I don’t want to move to a different home” I told her with tears running down my cheeks.

“Do you like it over there where you live?” she asked me.

“Yes” I replied quietly.



Sometimes I look back and I wish I had spilled the beans and told on Miss Mattie. I should have told on how she made me wash dishes till midnight, how I had to do homework when everyone else was asleep and was barely awake in the morning. On weekends, I cleaned the house all by myself with little or no help from the girls who were always getting ready to go for one pool party or another, they chatted endlessly to my dismay. When I was fourteen I had decided that school was not for me. Most of the girls in my class made fun of my clothes and there was this one girl who was always looking for ways to humiliate me. One day she found it. It was during lunch at school where she walked over to me and pulled my $3.99 ponytail from the discount rack at the Beauty supply off my head. She held it out.

“Ewwwwwwwwwww, what is this?” she asked and her friends laughed.

I was too embarrassed to speak.

“Even if you don’t have any hair on your head, this is not to proper thing to wear, it looks like my cat’s tail and when was the last time you got a perm, your hair sure does look nappy?” she said. I took a look at Natalie. She was Miss Thing at school, a tall girl with braces which I would gladly knock off her mouth. She had two cute brothers, Ken and Henry. I took a long look at the ponytail she was holding up like it disgusted her.

“If that looks like your cat’s tail, you surely must have an ugly cat” I responded and I was surprised that I had actually said something in my self defense for once.
Everyone laughed. No one expected me to talk back to Natalie, not the Gina they knew. Natalie was angry, her facial expression changed on the double. She slapped me to everyone’s horror. Okay we are about to take this outside. I grabbed her hair and pulled her braids, I grabbed a handful out. She screamed pathetically. We threw punches at each other, one of her friends Tina tried to come and separate her, I don’t know if it was Natalie or I who punched her in the eye because she screamed in agony and fell down. It took two boys to separate us and then I saw the Principal walk into the dining hall, the uproar must have attracted him from his office. Half an hour later we were serving detention in Detention room.