Family frustrated with American Dream

By Amanda Guerrero

My family came to America in 1991. We were after the American Dream, but the so-called dream was only hardships and suffering for all of us.

We are a family of six, my dad Roberto, my mom Eva, and two sisters, Kristina and Melissa, my brother Jorge and I. We came to the U.S. when I was 1 year old.

Coming to America with no food, no shelter, no money, is not what I really expected. Luckily one of my dad’s friends helped us out.

He provided us with a trailer home. It was not a fancy place, one bedroom and a bathroom. It was so small that we could barely breathe. The living room and the kitchen were in the same room. For months, we slept on the floor in sleeping bags.

My dad, my mom and my oldest sister went out every day searching for a job. My brother went to school, and my other sister stayed home babysitting me.

They worked from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. My brother was at the school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. We didn’t see much of each other, but what hurt me the most was not having enough food. Some days we ate only once a day, and if we had had a good week, we had dinner on Sunday.

Three years later, our way of living improved. This time we have a bed to sleep in, and we ate twice a day. My dad rented a bigger house, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, but they also had to pay more for it.

My brother started getting home very late. My dad didn’t say anything about it to him. He was not doing well at school, and he got a lot of tattoos, the meaning of which Dad did not understand.

My brother was 16 years old. He didn’t want to eat, he did not even sleep, and I knew the reason.

You don’t have to be smart to figure out he was doing drugs and that he had joined the gangs. But my parents did not pay too much attention to us, since they had to work all day long.

One night, a very dark one with not even moonlight, I couldn’t sleep because I was waiting for my brother. About 3 a.m. the telephone rang. The Juvenile Delinquency Office called up to inform us that my brother had died at 2 a.m. He was playing with a pistol -- Russian roulette, an absurd practice the gangs have set as a test for the kids who wanted to become members.

My mother was left speechless. The news dropped as a bomb, and her whole world fell apart. My father blamed her for the entire event, and he left that very same day. He abandoned his family, and my mom tried to figure out what to do to keep going on with her three children.

But she never gave up.

We moved to Washington, and we started all over again. We had one meal a day, and we had dinner on Saturdays if we could afford it. My sister Kristina stopped babysitting me in order to attend school, but she provided us with food when we didn’t have even a bit. I had to go to a day-care home, but since they were migrants, too, I got only one meal per day there, as well.

A year later I started schooling. I remember it to be awesome. I loved going to school for two main reasons -- I made friends and tasted pizza for the first time. My sister Kristina would come home and teach my older sister Melissa all she had learned at school.

Years elapsed and things changed. My sister Kristina got married and went away. She could not finish school because she didn’t have legal status in this country. The same year my sister Melissa got her legal status, went to school and achieved the GED certificate. She was in the top five of her class. She got married and has her own life.

Then there were only me and my mom. I was 12 years old, and we had a much smaller house, but the best of all was that I had my own bedroom!

I won’t ever forget my brother. Now I am 15, and I know why he got mixed up in all those nasty things that brought his life to an end.

You may think that along the way things would improve, but they are about the same. My mom is never at home; she is always at work. I hardly see her, and we barely talk to each other. School gets harder and harder.

And the rich get richer, and the poor poorer.

I don’t know what else to do. My mom cries every day, although she thinks I don’t listen to her, but I do. Sometimes I cry, too, but I don’t even know why.

In my childhood I always wondered why my brother did what he did. Now I know he was in need of love our parents never gave to us, not because they were bad parents. They just wanted to bring food to our home, and in order to do so, they had to work many hours.

My brother didn’t grow up at home; he grew up on the streets. Sometimes I feel impelled to do the same as he did, but I know about my mother’s suffering, and I don’t want to be a reason for her worry. I think she won’t bear it.

I wonder if our life would be different if our dad had not left us. I think it would.

Now I know there is no such thing as an American Dream. It’s just hard work and hardships. However, my life is not only troubles. At school everything is different, I get good grades and I speak fluent English.

But those coming to the United States after the American Dream are just wasting their time.

As far as I am concerned, there is no American Dream. And if there is, my family has not found it. My mom has been working all her life long, and I am attending school but still don’t know what it is all about. Perhaps it is getting out of one problem to get into another.

Whatever it is, whatever it means, everyone wants it, but nobody knows for sure what it really is.

Now, my sisters I luckily see often, my dad I meet once a year, and my brother I will miss forever. I will never see him again. The American Dream took him away from us.

This is our American Dream.