Summer reading essay by Mike C

I am scared. The people that took me away from my mother are sending me to live with my father’s sister in New York City. I’ve never met my aunt. The stewardess has buckled my thin, frightened body into my seat for the long flight. After the plane takes off I fall asleep. I hope she treats me better than my mother did.

I get off the plane and find my aunt holding a sign that says DAVE PELZER so I can find her. She seems nice but should I trust her? We take a couple buses to reach her apartment in Harlem. On the trip she explains to me that she is a nurse and she enjoys painting in her spare time. She also told me where I will be going to school.

Harlem is nothing like my old home in San Francisco. In San Francisco it’s very clean with lots of very nice houses. Harlem is full of poorly kept apartment buildings, including the one my aunt lives in, with many people living on the streets. Many of the people we see on the street are begging for money, food, and clothing, similar to me when I had to live with mother.

As we make our way into her apartment she sees one of her neighbors.

“Hello, Miss Pelzer,” he said.

“Hello, Alfred. This is my nephew David. David this is a nice boy that lives right down the hall named Alfred Brooks,” she replied.

“Nice to meet you David,” he said. I hid behind my aunt.

“It’s okay. Alfred is a nice boy. He won’t hurt you,” she said reassuringly. Alfred is a black, late teenager that is well built. We shook hands and he went down the stairs while we went up to her apartment.
While we were putting my belongings away in the apartment, my aunt’s phone rang.
“I’m very sorry David, that was the hospital. They need me to come in to work now,” she said with a frown. She changed and hurried down the stairs. She came up a few minutes later with Alfred, the boy we met in the stairway. “Alfred is going to stay here and watch you until I get back. Bye David!” as she rushed out of the apartment.

“Why are you here living with your aunt, David?” Alfred asked curiously.

“My mother abused me for several years and they just took me away from her yesterday,” I said.

“That’s terrible! What would she do to you?” he asked.
“She hurt me a lot. She wouldn’t feed me, she made me sit on the bottom of the basement stairs while the rest of my family was eating, she choked me, and she smacked my face into a mirror. One day she stabbed me in the chest and didn’t take me to the hospital. Her favorite way of hurting me was making me sit in the bathtub in freezing cold water for an hour or so. I was also made fun of a lot at school because I stole lunches from the other kids because I never got food at home,” I told him.

“That’s awful!” Alfred exclaimed.

“I’m glad to be away from that now. When I was in school yesterday they called me to the principal’s office. I told them what my mother was doing to me. They decided that the best place for me would be here with my aunt. Do you live with your mother and father?” I asked.

“No. My mother died and my father left when I was young,” Alfred explains.

“Sorry,” David replies. “My dad left us, too.”

“Now I live with my aunt and my three cousins. I dropped out of high school. I was doing drugs and getting in a lot of trouble. Now I’m working at a grocery store down the street. I work at after school programs for kids when I can. I like to go to the gym to see some of the up and coming fighters. I used to box because I needed to prove to myself that I could be somebody. Now I’m going to night school to get my high school diploma,” Alfred said.

Wow! Alfred and I aren’t really that different from each other. The problems we’ve had in our lives are different but we were both strong enough to fight through our troubles. At least now I know I’m not the only one that has lived a hard life. Maybe I’ll be a teacher someday so I can help kids with problems like mine.