It was my dream to come to America. The land of everything. I never hated nor loved my way of life in Jamaica but I thought there would be a country that’ll be better than it. I wanted to know what snow was like; I wanted to know how cold it was there. I wanted to know how the people were, how the children at school were, how it would feel to be there. I never thought about the negative possibilities that’ll happen in America. Besides I was only 12. I just turned twelve. America on television was beautiful. I thought about us not having to wear uniform to school, owning lockers and having really great friends.
        All they would talk about at school was America; children who were born in Jamaica and never went to America in their whole life would say that they were Americans. In grade 5 there was this boy name earl, a mean, bad boy, he kept telling people that he was American; he said he was born in Jamaica but went to New York when he was a baby. I didn’t believe such nonsense. He sounded Jamaican and he had Jamaican dialect. Jamaican everything, except the way he acted. He’d hit back the teacher when she hit him and talk back to the teacher, even shout at the teacher. Such things I’d never dream of seeing and was shocked at witnessing. I refused to think of him as American and I wasn’t a teenager, I was just 10 so I didn’t think of him as Americanized either. So I had thought maybe he was “ghetto”. Ghetto children were like that. At least that’s what I thought. But he wasn’t ghetto, because if he was he wouldn’t be going to a prep school. Prep schools were where rich parents sent their children. Rich parents didn’t have ghetto children. He even came to school in a convertible. The children would “oooh” and “aaah” when his ride came.
         He’d pick on me and my 2 close friends. He didn’t mess with the other children in the class for some reason. I didn’t care to know why, I wasn’t a teenager. He’d grab me and hit me and steal my lunch money. When I told the teacher, all he did was lie and get out of being sent to the principal’s office. One time he stole my lunch money when I put it in my bag; it was 100 dollars Jamaican dough. I didn’t keep my money in my pocket because I had lost money by doing that. It’ll fall out of my pocket. In America it would have been 2 dallors. I knew he stole it because I had one of those new bills that came from the bank, and was fresh out of my dad’s wallet. No one had those new bills. I never told my dad he stole it. My dad would say I was careless and was trying to lie. I hadn’t eaten lunch the day before and I saved the bill so I could have 2 hundred dallors the following day. I saw him give my money to the teacher to pay for his ordered cook lunch. He gave me a malicious laugh when he did it. I told the teacher it was mines and she didn’t believe me, she just wanted him to pay for the lunch. So there was it, the first time I’d have 100 dallors after school was gone.
        At lunch he’d drag my friends hair and chase them, sometimes he’d chase me and when school dismissed I’d stay in the bathroom until I saw my dad walking around the school to look for me. My friends and I never took his bullying serious, just fun. It wasn’t our culture. My brother found out about me being bullied and I had no choice but to tell my dad. My brother Rad, one of the most popular boys in the school wanted to beat up Earl. It was funny how my brother was so noticed and I wasn’t. Anyway, I doubted that he’d win and Earl would beat him though they were the same size and both were on athletic teams at my school. My dad had me show him where Earl was one day after school. He shouted at him and gave him threatened words. After that he stopped bothering me and didn’t go near me. But he still bothered my friends. He had a crush on this girl in my class and stopped bothering my friends. After everyone found out who he liked, he brought condoms to school planning to have sex with his crush. He was just 10 also. When he told the boys in my class, as if he though they’d go along with it. They told the teacher and the teacher Ms. Morgan asked him for the condoms, as if she was asking him to give her a cell phone he was using in class. He refused and hid them in his bag like a jackass. The principal had to get in on this. He wasn’t even suspended. But there were rumors going around the school and soon Earl was popular. Everyone knew him. He came back the next day as if it was no big deal, like nothing happened.
       My brother, who was in the 6th grade, came home one day, saying the chicken pox was going around in his class and that he can’t go to school or else he’d catch it. There wasn’t any vaccine you were supposed to take for chicken pox like in America. My mother didn’t care and he still had to go to school. The chicken pox spread in the 6th grade like a computer virus and even the assistance teacher got it. Soon my brother got it and he had to stay in a room with the door locked, my mom had to being food to him and he couldn’t touch anything that the 3 of us were going to touch. My father who was a pharmacist told us that you can get chicken pox my touching the person, touching whatever the person touched and breathing the same air they breathed. I asked,”what if you and mom get it?” he said it was a disease more contagious In children and adults rarely got it. My younger brother and my tom boy cousin 1 year younger than me didn’t understand quite fully that chicken pox was contagious and you could easily get it. They kept playing silly games with Rad like cricket in out back yard, climbing trees with him and playing wrestling with him. I yelled to my parents that there going to get the chicken pox too but I was ignored, my parents had issue of there own. They couldn’t get along. And my dad was going to America for his vacation. I didn’t care about America then, because my mind was on not getting the chicken pox. I did get the chicken pox first even though I tried to stay away from Rad as far as I can so I couldn’t get it. I did it to the extent that I had to scorn my bother. He got angry and blowed air from his mouth on one side of my face. After 2 weeks towards the Christmas holiday, my cousin and my little brother got the chicken pox and I had the most chicken pox blisters. We 3 had to use Clamie lotion to stop the itching and fever syrup to get rid of the fever. My dad was already in America and my mom said “if you’re going to get the chicken pox now, get it, because I have to go back to work January,” she also cursed that my father went to America not caring about his family. To be continued an edited.