More College Essays

If I had it my way, I’d never set foot in a Home Depot ever again.

Every Ace Hardware, every Lowe’s, every boutique tile place, every obscure little hardware store that only sells Phillips-head screwdrivers smells the same way: dusty. Sawdust, catdust, paint-flake-dust, laminate-dust, ancient-grumpy-cashier-dust. It’s post-apocalyptic, the shuffling shoppers dead-eyed from looking at a thousand identical refrigerators, fluorescent tube lights casting ultramarine pallor over their faces.

We kill tigers, you see.

“Where are we going?” I’ll ask, and my father will say, “Lowe’s. Hay que matar tigres.” Gotta kill tigers, gotta take side jobs to fill in the gaps where the money doesn’t quite reach. Where others might have taken up Uber, my family started building houses, with me and my brother in tow.

When we arrived, my parents caught the American dream like Tío Conejo used his rabbit tricksiness to outwit Tío Tigre in the fables: so artfully that they themselves hardly believed they’d pulled it off. We killed tigers in Georgetown and Langley, diplomat townhomes and tasteless McMansions alike. We moved seven times within the same ZIP code, as my parents bought ugly houses and sold them beautiful.

It isn’t much like HGTV. I spent countless hours searching for nonexistent cans of Spackle in the back shelves of Home Depot. My mother laid out carpet samples on the floor and paced around them, forever deliberating between ivory and cream. She’d be on the phone with some hung over subcontractor when she picked me up from art club. I’d sit in an abandoned corner and sketch as they haggled eternally over hardwood pallets at auction. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent more time under the watchful eye of an orange-aproned paint mixer than a babysitter.

All this is to say that construction runs in the veins of the Blancos. My grandfather, after all, came out of nowhere to build a concrete empire on the baked dirt of Maracaibo. The mixers molder now in that hinterland, but the force of his success was what fueled our escape from Venezuela before things got bad.

What use would my grandfather have had for all the sketches I’ve sketched, all the paintings I’ve painted, I wonder? Could my parents paper their clients’ walls with pages from my sketchbook, could they tear up the canvas and use it for insulation? Probably not.

In art, there’s this fantasy of The Muse reaching down and the lucky artist’s paintbrush dancing with a press of her rosy fingertip. The truth is that I can have the most perfect concept handed to me by the ghost of Gentileschi herself, and I’ll still get in my own way. Perfectionism won’t let me pick a background color for weeks, envy will distract me with foolhardy attempts at others’ success, simple laziness will keep me in bed watching episodes of “Chopped” 15 times.

Whenever my still-white canvas stretched blankly into the infinite, I thought about that, about the long nights my parents must have spent thinking about their own parents. About the three hours daily my mother spends commuting to her day job. About my father’s lost stories, the jokes he doesn’t tell because English warps his humor. About the life they left behind in Maracaibo, all so that we could live here. All so that I could come here and be an artist, of all things.

So it’s not easy moving from concrete to canvas. But I must do it anyway, because the force of my ambition and, well, my talent demand it. Because my family’s risk deserves a risk of my own. A risk that I must fight my indolence and ennui for. A risk that will honor our sacrifice of all these years between two lands. I can’t let all those dusty hours at Home Depot go to waste. Hay que matar tigres.

2.

My friends and peers don’t understand my relationship with Big Betsy. This is mainly due to the fact that Big Betsy is far older, louder, and larger than what is considered “normal” at my school. She is constantly surrounded by others who serve the same exact purpose, but are more elegant.

Big Betsy was always different. Every time I went out with her I could feel judgmental eyes wondering why a kid like me would even want anything to do with her. Despite this, I was always proud of her and what we accomplished together. She was made fun of relentlessly, but I always knew deep down that we had something special together.

It was like we had known each other for years when I first laid eyes on her. I was sure that we would stay together for a long time. Since the day I bought Big Betsy on Craigslist, I have loved her unconditionally. I still remember driving down the winding country road to the seller’s sprawling ranch and instantly falling for her. The way that she glistened in the sunlight beckoned me to her. I had no problem spending the money for her that I had accumulated over years of saving birthday gifts, doing undesirable odd jobs and babysitting unruly children. To me, she was worth more than my entire bank account.

Big Betsy has been loyal to me throughout the past couple of years. She even provided me with the opportunity to set up my own business, The Westport Workers. My friend and I realized that all the dump-run services in our town were grossly overcharging their customers, so we decided to provide an inexpensive alternative. We have worked countless jobs together, including transporting an antique bar counter 50 miles away for a Gilmore Girls fan club meeting and hauling a battered boat motor through knee-deep sludge to dispose of it at the dump.

Big Betsy and I are constantly relying on each other to get things done. In the blistering summer heat she would wait patiently for me while I pulled weeds for hours on end. With sweat trickling down my face, I would take shelter from the sun in her soft embrace. She and I made a respectable living through our business, and I would always make sure to buy her the things that she required to keep her going.

In case it isn’t obvious, Big Betsy is my beloved truck, a 1998 Ford F-150 with over 230,000 miles. The first months I had her, I spent all my time between early morning football and work fixing her up, and it was worth it.

Not only has she been a great truck, she also helped me to realize how little other people’s judgments of me matter. I used to be shy and avoided differentiating myself from my classmates because I was very concerned about what others would think about me. In a school almost entirely minority-free, I was always uncomfortable with my ethnicity, and even my name. I felt extremely self-conscious every time that I pulled into the high school parking lot filled with Mercedes, Jeep Wranglers, and BMWs.

However, as time went on, Big Betsy became a bit of a local celebrity and I became more confident, and not only while driving. I found myself less anxious when voicing my opinions, applying for leadership positions, and challenging myself to do better in all aspects of my life. Big Betsy made me realize how damaging it can be to my potential when I become unwilling to stand out or take the risks required to achieve my goals. If it wasn’t for her teaching me how to be confident in myself and that it is good to be pushed out of my comfort zone, I would not be nearly as happy as I am today.

3.

Twist, bend, through the loop. Repeat.

It took me a month to crochet my first blanket. One month of twisting, bending, sending my hook through the loop, and repeating. It was an almost meditative pastime. I spent bus rides and evenings working on my blanket, determined to finish.

I learned to crochet so that I could feel closer to my mother. I poured my heart into every stitch. Each square of the blanket meant something different; the colors represented memories. It was a summary of my life.

Green double treble crochet stitches take me back to the smell of wet pine needles in the spring, laughter from my sisters climbing high on tree limbs, the curve of mountain roads. Green is the forest of my childhood, sheltering my first home. I taste the smoke from our old wood stove and see the oil lanterns flickering in and out. The cabin in the woods where my sister was born, water from the river that she took her first bath in.

Green fades into blue as squares meet, treetops brush the sky. I see myself, young and spinning across a playground with my classmates. I am at my one-room schoolhouse, holding hands with the two other children in my grade and lying with our backs on grass, looking up at the never-ending sky. We whisper dreams of becoming doctors, actors, artists.

I see the blue of California oceans as I leave for high school, finding my home away from home. Pine trees replaced by palm trees and sand between my toes. I recall beach cleanups and surfing trips, touching shy sea anemones in tide pools. Blue paint on signs for women’s marches and the sound of people beside me who want to be heard. We demand equality.

Purple is for my mother. It’s her favorite color. It reminds me of her strength and determination. I feel her calloused hands from work on the farm, work in the field, and chemical burns from cleaning jobs. I smell her earthy clothes as she studies at the kitchen table, determined to finish her homework so that she can finally graduate college after decades of trying. I see the violet sky at dawn; when the sun rises so does she. Mother up at twilight to start her day, breath released in freezing clouds as she milks the goats and feeds the chickens, never disappointing the hungry mouths that depend on her. Each day, I recall the things she has given up for my sake. Her sacrifice and desire for me to succeed encourage me to be better and work harder. Yet, I desire more. I do not want to live like her, I want better.

Red stitches are passionate outbursts. Angry shouts from Dad as he returns in the middle of the night, breath sour from drinking. Tears of happiness after receiving his first chip for a year of sobriety. Screams echoing from my biological father’s mouth as he hurls threats that sting like arrows as his disease makes him chase his family away. Scarlet stitches of fear during our six months without a roof over our heads after he forced us from our home. Pain in my sister’s eyes after she begged for help from friends with deaf ears. Promises that we will keep her safe, and check-in calls after I leave home.

Twist, bend, through the loop. Repeat.

Each stitch is a part of me. I rarely relive these aspects of my upbringing, but I call on them when I need to be reminded of my strength. When I completed the blanket, I cried. I was proud. I made this. This is me.

4.

“No more broken plates, you understand?”

I could make little sense of the broken English that spat from his mouth but his scrunched-up face spoke a universal language. It was a Friday night in Little Tokyo, and while families were eating five-star meals in the front dining room, a 14-year-old boy was in the back washing their dishes.

Wash the plates by hand, dump them into the sanitizer, place the plates into the machine, dry the plates off, return the plates to their designated spot and repeat — hopefully without damaging any. On this night though, a porcelain plate slipped through my soapy fingers and shattered onto the floor in five pieces. My face flushed even as I tried to keep my composure, but inside I was screaming, “Why me!?” as if my scream would make the plate whole again.

The shattered plate was only one of the many worries fighting relentlessly inside my head for attention — there was the Advanced Placement United States history midterm, a low grade in calculus, the eviction notice, a little brother getting into trouble and a dozen other smaller but pressing concerns.For me, there was no calling in sick to clear my head, getting some much needed rest or carving out study time before an upcoming exam. I had to contribute to the necessities. I shut up, got back to work and pushed with all the energy I had left. I knew all too well the symptoms of bottling up my emotions — the bitter taste of salt in each drop of sweat, losing myself in the background music and the muscle aches were nothing new to me.

It was 12 a.m. when my shift finally ended. I boarded the bus home and took out my notes to study. I got the usual looks from people fresh out of bars or parties, either because of the stench of a hard night’s work on my clothes or because I was muttering to myself while feverishly flipping flashcards on a bus in the middle of the night.

Their stares didn’t bother me at all. I was used to those too, and they were nothing more than another set of speed bumps in the way of achieving my goals. I was tired of seeing childhood friends flashing gang signs, relatives glued to the beer bottle or my dad coming home late at night with burn scars from work. Something had to change and I knew it fell to me to initiate that change.

Fortunately, I also knew I had dedication, desire and grit in my blood. My grandfather was part of the first wave of Mexican immigrants that settled in Los Angeles. He returned home to a small village in rural Oaxaca, with his savings and tales of the land of opportunity.

Both of my parents left Oaxaca in their early teenage years and began working long hours in Los Angeles, as a cook and a maid. The work ethic was passed down generations; from the cornfields in Oaxaca, to the restaurants in Los Angeles, to the classroom, which helped me thrive both in school and work.

On this particular night, as I walked through the front door at home, I saw an uplifting surprise: My mother had fallen asleep waiting up for me despite her own long day. I tucked the cash tips I made that night into her purse and turned off the TV.

I peered into our bedroom where my brothers and cousins were lost in their blissful dreams. Watching my siblings snore and breathe slowly sparked a yawn that cued the rest of my body’s delayed exhaustion. However, it would be a while before I could join them in sleep. I had an essay due early the next morning, and Ms. DePaolo doesn’t accept late work.

5.

My kitchen is largely occupied by my old, dirty, warm-brown dinner table.

It’s seen better days. Every time I sit down, I’m surrounded by splatters of old paint, hot glue and the occasional dab of nail polish (that’s thanks to my older sisters). Whenever I sit at either of our two chairs, I have to be extra careful they don’t fall apart because the legs are held together by a tedious mixture of wood glue, brute force and pure spite.

The kitchen table itself has been the hub of my family for the entire first half of my life. When I was younger, we (my Gram, Pap and two older sisters) would eat a home-cooked meal, courtesy of my Gram, at that old, dirty, warm-brown dinner table at exactly 7 p.m. every single night.

At these family dinners, I would argue with my Pap for fun, watch him get yelled at by my Gram for interrupting me eating my dinner and listen to my sisters either fight or joke; it was always a gamble. Originally, my kitchen table had five sturdy wooden seats. A couple years later when my oldest sister was 16 years old and I was 8, the chair count lowered to four, as my oldest sister moved out. She fought too much with my Gram and wouldn’t follow the rules, so she left.

Three years later my grandmother was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer. That triggered a few more changes to our dinner table routine. First, my other older sister started to skip dinners. Not because of the inevitable food quality decline (cancer messes with your taste buds and overall cooking abilities), but because she was never home. I don’t think that she wanted to be around post-cancer-diagnosis Gram.

The chair count dropped to three. The dinners themselves after a year or so were much less frequent, not so much because of my Gram, but because my Pap was determined to make Gram rest. She ignored my Pap’s concerns, so it sort of ended up in a middle gray area that I had to live in.

A year and a half after my grandmother got cancer, she died. It may sound quick in words, but it was pretty dragged out. Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandmother, but people with cancer are usually dead long before they die.

I was there when she died, right smack dab in the middle of our living room. I was on one side of the bed, and my Pap was on the other. Her labored breaths slowed and then stopped. It sounds depressing, but it was sort of a happy moment. The first thing my Pap said was “Give her a hug, you can’t hurt her now.” And, despite the phlegmy cancer smell, I did. We only needed two chairs.

After that, Pap and I, with the remnants of our nontraditional American family, built an extra nontraditional family. It took a while before we stabilized ourselves, because, to be honest, we were low-income before grandma got cancer, but post-cancer was much worse.

Pap and I cut down on everything. We got rid of our cable, phone and internet. We used less oil, we used less water, we wasted less food, and at times we didn’t have a car because our minivan took up a bunch of gas and liked to break down frequently. But, despite a dreadfully boring WiFi-less and phoneless year, we made it through.

I still live in the same house, except now it has Wi-Fi. Our kitchen table is still standing, though we took the center piece of wood out so now it’s the perfect size for just the two of us. We don’t have nightly dinners anymore, but sometimes Pap and I sit on the couch and hang out.

Sure, maybe our coffee table chats aren’t the same as our nightly family dinners, and maybe our television doesn’t turn on anymore. Maybe our kitchen has ants, and maybe we have to listen to the Super Bowl on our outdated radio from the ’90s, and maybe, possibly, he is getting sicker now, too.

I don’t care that my new life revolves around a holey old couch, a grumpy old man, a couple of fat cats and a bearded dragon. I’m content with my Pap, and I’m content with the fact that every night at 7 p.m., two empty chairs surround my old, dirty, warm-brown dinner table in the darkness of my kitchen. These days, the lights are on in the living room.