“Trouble’s Daughter”, is what I’ll always be called. I hear it everyday from my aunt’s mouth, and that is when I start wishing my mother wasn’t my mother. How could one feel so much hate towards the one who gave birth to her in pain? She may have given birth to me in pain but she has caused me to suffer greatly. My mother once a very beautiful woman now has nothing, not even the beauty that caused my father to fall into her traps as so many men had done before. Where did all her beauty go? What happened to the person she was? I don’t think I’ll ever know I never really had a chance to bond with my mother, because she was always going places and doing something. One of the things she did was go to wok at her job in Marathon when I was seven. That was where and when she first got arrested after some guy knocked her two front teeth out. Hearing that my mother was in jail devastated me but I didn’t know that that was just the beginning. Three years later, I wake up listening to arguing, I’m sort of used to it by now. So I get up do what I have to do in the morning. The next thing I know there are punches flying and screaming. A few moments later glass was being shattered, glass from the window in the car I was supposed to ride in to get to school that morning. The feeling of shame, embarrassment, pain, and fear engulfed me, but the feeling of hate rose faintly. When does one fear their own mother? Surely when one has done something wrong, but I guess the only wrong I committed was being born. Can it be? Because she used to tell me, “Dayana you are the most beautiful girl I know and I will love you and take care of you forever”, and I’d respond by saying, “You are the best mommy in the world and I will love you forever”. This so called love I had when I was young has now turned into the most profound hate. A hate that emerged when she would take and break the things that I loved, and then tell me that she’d buy me another one, knowing fully well that what she would forget. She loved to play and toy with my fragile heart. I am now twelve and the arguing at home has become so unbearable, that school is the only place that my min can be at peace. They say, “Home is where the heart is”, well for me it was, “Home is where Hell is”. I was living in hell and each day hell became more and more horrendous. One day I came home pretty late when I heard peace and quiet. Peace and quiet! I couldn’t believe my ears, and I was right not to because a few minutes after I got there my mother and aunt started arguing. After that we pushed her out. A few seconds later the windows were being pummeled by a huge rock. My heart then stopped for awhile, then fear overtook me, and then I grabbed a knife. We ran to the bathroom. Who knew my mother would put so much fear into me that I’d be willing to attack her? My own mother? It took me to a time when I was six when my aunt kept bad mouthing my mother, and I took a cup of water and threw it into her face. I hated when people said negative things about my mother, but at this moment I didn’t care. Well, we’re sitting in that bathroom, my heart beating fast, tears streaming down my face, hate raging through me, but the pain of it was excruciating. The police have now arrived so our fear has subsided. We are able to move from the bathroom, to the living room, we are frozen in our tracks gaping at the sight of glass. She being the rebel that she is sits in front of the door when the police come. She has a deep cut on her left hand from where one of the glass shards cut her, and she tries to tell the police officer that one of us has bitten her. What a liar! Our neighbors are standing outside watching this unfold before them. I can just hear what they’re thinking and their facial expressions just prove me correct. They’re saying, “What a shame, I hope that never happens to me, Look at those poor kids, Is that woman alright, Look at that disastrous family, and OMG”. I’m standing there thinking, “Why can’t all these people disappear and leave us with our problem”? The police have hand cuffed her, and my aunt is arguing with the officer to let her go. All the while I’m standing there muttering curse words at the officers. Then my mother shatters the moment by asking for a drink of water, and the police officers said that she couldn’t, and that about broke my heart. She looks as if she’s already ready to die of thirst and her facial expression was peaceful and serene. The most peaceful I’ve ever seen her look before in my life. That is when true tears started rolling down and my heart opened just a little bit to the fact that she was my mom, no matter what. The next day she came home and everything was peaceful for awhile, until the arguments started again. Not more than a year after we were faced with the same situation, but this time the police were not involved and we managed to flee. I never knew I could run so fast! Maybe I’d try out for track and believe me I’d win gold medal at the U.S. Olympics, and all they’d have to do was have someone chase me around with some kind of weapon. Seriously, I outran my little cousin and no one, NO ONE outruns him. We drove to my aunt’s house and the whole family had to come down, and discuss my mother and what they would do with her. As I listened to the conversation I suddenly wished my mother was really dead, as I had told my friends so many times. My friends always asked me, “Dayana, how come we never seen your mother”? Then I’d reply, “MY mother?”, and I’d repeat again, “MY mother?” That is when they’d get annoyed and say, “Yes YOUR mother”. I‘d tell them, “My mother is dead”. They then they’d get that incredulous look in their face and ask, “Really?!” I’d look them dead in the eye and say, “Yes my mother is dead”. They’d leave me alone to come bother me again, and ask me the same question again and again, until they figured out that I wouldn’t tell them anything more. Sitting in my aunt’s living room I was wishing with all my heart that she could be dead, her body lying in a grave, her spirit no longer alive to torment me. Why couldn’t God just strike her down? He’s done it so many times before this would be no different, to me it would’ve been good if God got rid of her, and it’s not as if she could impact the world positively. I then started to think about all the innocent people that had died and I said to myself, “Those people were probably the ones that would really change the world for the better, and where are they? Gone. While this wretched woman was allowed to roam the world causing havoc wherever she went”. Recently, she’s been sent to a psychiatric ward, and I wish she can stay there. I don’t feel like going through all that stress she caused me anymore. As a matter of fact, I’ve tried to erase her memory from my mind, even though I’ll always be called trouble’s daughter. In my mind, trouble will never have daughter, and I will be Dayana J. daughter of the Lord Jesus Christ.