I’d never underestimate the struggles of being a parent, because I haven’t yet been one. However, I do believe that no matter the hardships a person may be obligated to go through with their children, extreme violence towards that child is unacceptable and unnecessary. It solves nothing; it only leaves that child to be broken in the end, especially when they justifiably did nothing wrong.

            My dad isn’t a normal man, but then again, he is. He has no addictions to anything other than coffee and cigarettes, which wouldn’t give him the powerful outlook he has on himself. I can see right through him, but I’m unable to determine why he is the way he is. He honestly believes he’s better than everyone else, and what he says is right. There’s no talking to him; he may just be the most stubborn person I ever met, and fully realizing this, I unintentionally stepped into the beating of a lifetime.

            I wasn’t a good student in my early years of high school. I always attended class, but what good does that do when you don’t do any work? Anyway, I had an afterschool commitment that I attended, against my will. I had to go to Grade Recovery, a program that brought an F on my report card to a D. I wouldn’t consider Science Leadership Academy to be a normal school, which explains why on Thursdays we got out of school at 3:50 PM. Grade Recovery started at 4:15 PM, and was over at 5:45 PM. My best friend at the time would always suggest going to Papa John’s after long advisories and Grade Recovery as a way to cool off and just hang out. That Thursday, I got home around 7:30 PM, which didn’t seem to late to me. However, my dad felt differently.

            I came inside and tried to explain to my father why I had been so late, but he didn’t want to hear any of it. He threw me off though, because his tone of voice seemed so far from violent. I figured he didn’t mind, so I went upstairs to my room. I was sitting in a corner on my laptop, playing a game. When I looked up, I saw my dad. His face was redder than my face would be in a few minutes. I knew what was coming though, because as he came closer to me, I kept asking him to calm down. He picked my laptop off my lap and threw it at me. It hit me in the arm and bounced onto the floor. I was furious, because I didn’t have $1,000 to fix a laptop that wasn’t even mine, but before I had a chance to make that clear, he did something I’ll never forgive him for doing.

            As soon as I saw his hand coming for my face, I tried to duck, but he was too quick for me. He punched me in my left cheek, right below my eye. I could feel my skin being forced off my face, then coming back to my bones, much like how it happens in boxing. I was hysterical. I kept trying to get up and leave the room, and every time I would he would grab my ponytail and throw me backwards to the floor. My stepmother was in the doorway, watching as if she enjoyed what she saw.

            “If it were your kids you wouldn’t be standing there watching. You’d be going after him, making him stop. You’re really just going to stand there and watch this?”

            She had nothing to say. She just shrugged her shoulders as if it were nothing. Typical evil stepmother move; I felt like Cinderella, except with a father who was on her side.

            I didn’t care if my hair got ripped right out of my scalp; I was getting out of that room. I got up again, trying to leave, knowing I’d have to push my stepmother aside, which would only land me in more trouble. I tried to run, but this time when my father grabbed my hair, instead of pulling me backwards to the ground, he pushed me forward towards the steps. My stepmother moved out of the doorway, as if they’d planned this out precisely for weeks. Although I almost fell down the stairs, it was better than being in that room.

            I ran down the stairs, looked for my schoolbag, and headed towards the back door. I saw my little brother sitting in a chair, crying, asking me not to leave.

            “I have to buddy, I’m sorry. I’ll be back soon, I promise. I love you,” I said to Storm, as I kissed his forehead reassuringly.

            I didn’t have time to put on and tie my shoes, so I decided to skip looking for them. With my schoolbag and jacket in hand, I ran out the door and through the cold, muddy yard. I got to the graveyard, which was unfortunately locked. I didn’t have time to go around, which would give my father time to find me, if he even tried. I hopped the graveyard fence, and then swerved in and out of gravestones. When I got to the other side, I climbed over the fence and ran about 20 feet to my house. I ran inside crying, asking for my mother or brother. My stepdad said my mother wasn’t home, so I ran into my brother’s room. I fell on the floor, spilling out every detail of what had happened.

            When I went to school the next day, a teacher had noticed a bruise on my face. I had been late to class because I was covering the bruise up with makeup, or trying to at least. The teacher kept asking what had happened, but I kept denying anything. Finally, I told him I’d gotten into an argument with my dad. I tried to make him swear not to say anything, but he told me he would lose his job, so he brought me to the office, where they called DHS.

            DHS had come to my house a few times, interviewed me at school, taken pictures of my brother and I, making us all feel like criminals. The last time he came to my father’s house, I was present.

            “You’re daughter keeps defending you, and we realize this is most likely a mistake, and something that didn’t mean to happen. However, hitting your kids, especially hard enough to leave bruises is not okay. The next time we get reports on you, your children will be taken away from you,” said the man from DHS.

            As soon as he walked out the door, my father said something that caused me to live in even more fear of him than I already did.

            “Don’t think because DHS came, I wouldn’t hit you again, because I would.”

            He never hit me again, but we aren’t on the best terms. We hardly see each other, because I dread going to his house to visit him. When I do go, it’s to see my younger brothers and sister. I live at my mother’s house full time, which can be very hard at times, considering my father contributes nothing. Him being the violent, demented man he is left me broken inside, striving for a relationship with my father that will never exist. It wore me down inside, leaving me with a destroyed self esteem because my own father doesn’t try having anything to do with me. For this reason, violence from parents to children is a mistake. It’s wrong, and ruins more than it fixes, and should be viewed as unacceptable in all societies.

Rebecca Rainis

English – Ms. Pahomov

Brian’s Language

I have 3 close friends; Taylor, Jade and Brian. They all come from different parts of Philadelphia, and none of them act the same. The way I speak with every one of them individually is the same because I don’t feel the need to monitor my language around different people, unless it’s teachers and elders. I can talk to Taylor, Jade and Brian seriously, goofily, or just normally, but regardless the type of our conversation, my language and speech is the same with all of them, as theirs is with me.

            I’ve experienced Jade and Taylor around other people, and it seems as if they speak the same way they do with me, with others. I believe it’s easiest to have one type of language for all groups of people, because in a way, language shows others who you are.

            Because Brian is one of my best friends, as well as my boyfriend, I’m around him often. During the week, he meets me after school and we hang out together, alone. The way he talks around me when we’re alone is a lot like the way I speak. I speak with proper sentences, and I don’t use much slang. A typical conversation between Brian and I would go like this:

            “Hey Brian.”

            “Hey. What’s up?”

            “Not much, how about you?”

            “Nothing’s really up with me either. How was your day at school?”

            “It was alright; a little bit stressful, but I’ll get through it.”

            “Well that’s good to hear.”

Despite our weekly plans, on the weekends, we usually go to hang out with his friends. Majority of his friends are from the projects, which is a very bad neighborhood. For this reason, Brian’s friends come to a small park outside of the projects to hang out. The way they talk could be referred to as ‘ghetto’. They drag their words, and combine words to make their sentences shorter. Instead of hi or hello, they say yo. Rather than saying “with you”, they say “witchu”. They even abbreviate each other’s names. For instance, a lot of Brian’s friends simply call him B.

When we’re around Brian’s friends, he talks more like they do. It’s as if he has two completely different personalities, because he uses two completely different languages. A typical conversation with Brian and one of his friends would go like this:

“Yo B, wassup?”

“Nut’in, jus chillin’. How you been?”

“I been ard. Did I tell you ‘bout las weekend?”

“Naw cuz, what happened?”

“We got in the whip and drove to a party. It was poppin’!”

“Thas wassup!”

I know this language sounds confusing, but to clarify things, ard means alright; naw means no; cuz is just another slang term meaning friend, similar to homie; a whip is a car; and poppin’ means fun. 

According to James Baldwin, language “…is the most vivid and crucial key to identify: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.” He is saying that language is one of the most important things to consider when it comes to identifying someone, and it has the power to join people with or separate people from the public, as well as the identity of a community. Brian’s language around one group of people revealed who he was around them, and his language when him and I were alone revealed who he was when he was with me. It was hard for me to figure out what Brian’s true language was, because he was so different when it came to two groups of people. I agree with James Baldwin, because as Brian and my relationship went on, the differences between Brian’s two languages taught me a lot about him.

When Brian and I first became good friends, I noticed the language he used around his friends and I, and how different they were. I immediately figured that the reason for this was because he wanted to fit in with his friends, but as we grew closer, something changed my mind.

There are times when Brian and I are alone, and he starts to talk like his friends. When he talks to me individually that way, I sometimes get offended, because it seems as though he’s talking to me as if I’m just his friend, when at the same time, I’m also his girlfriend. However, this helped me to understand which language was true to him.

He wasn’t using the language he used around his friends with me because he looked at me as one of his friends; he would slip up and use that language because that was what was true to him. He’s known his friends much longer than he’s known me, and aside from the fact that I would get offended when he used the language he uses with his friends, with me, I assumed that the reason he talked a completely different way with me than with his friends is because his friends and I have two completely different languages. His friends use slang; I don’t. His friends find simple ways to abbreviate words; I spell and speak my words wholly and properly.

Although I was mislead by Brian’s two different types of languages, I appreciate his effort to make me happy in a simple way by speaking the same way that I do when with me. It shows me many things, other than the type of person Brian is. It teaches me that language can define a person, and people can change their language for other people, which is a very valuable thing to know.