New Start

Well, lets see.. the year was 1993 and i stepped off a plane to face a whole new world. there standing waiting for me was my new mom, my new dad and my new baby brother Winston. i cant say that i was scared, i was filled with joy, joy to be away from the horrible people who had hurt me so much. from the very start my mother was fascinated by the pretty little light skinned girl with long indian hair that she could now call her own. she kept me groomed very well, i always wore dresses, with sandals to match, and matching barrettes. i guess you can say i was a show piece. soon after i settled down into my new life, my mother discovered that i could not read, not of no fault of mine, you see back home, no one took any stock into whether or not i was learning in school. i remember this phrase my mother said very well : you cant have such a pretty face and not have and book learning. there began the long grueling process of teaching me how to read. now back in the, my mother did not know about tutors, she did it her way and believe me her way was the HARD way.  every morning before my mother went to work she would give me twenty words to learn before she came home. i would spend all day studying because i knew what would happen if i miss spelled, or got stuck on a word. for every word i missed i would get a lash across my back from a very thick belt that she had just for me, sometimes she would tell me to hold out my hand and she would hit me until my hands were red and swollen, and then there were the times when she got so fed up that i would get an all out beating, welts and bruises all over my body. it was the same case when i would read or i should say attempt to read a book with her... sometimes i was already anticipating the lashes and that would make me stutter and stumble over the words. this carried on for many months until somehow, i started to make progress with my reading and spelling, up until this day i honestly believe that the reason why i learned to read so well and fluently was because i wanted the beatings to end. BUT let me make this very clear, if it wasn't for my mother teaching me to read, yes it was harsh, i would not be here today writing this blog and for that i will be forever grateful to her. i remember the very first book i read, it was entitled "The Little Princess" and after that book, i fell in love with reading, for majority of my life after that i was always buried in a book, it was my way of escaping the life i was given. i started school and was immediately classified as one of the smartest of my grade, i was always entering reading contests where i represented my school and i never placed lower that third, i was the ultimate teachers pet, but while every thing was rosy in school, it was another story at home. My brother Winston was getting all the attention and i guess that made me mad and i started to resent him. some how i would always get blamed for what he did even if my parents knew that he was wrong. on day i believe he was around six or seven, my brother took a picture of my father in his younger days out of its frame and ripped it to shreds right beside my father as he sat watching tv. as you can guess i somehow got the blame, my father said that i purposely sat and watched him rip his picture up. for that whole day, everytime my father walked pass the empty picture frame he grabbed his belt and whipped me, that was the first and last time that my father ever beat me and it was one of the worse beatings of my life, then when my mother came home she beat me to, in the shower and sent me to bed, at that moment in time i swore i hated my brother....