Every time I think about my childhood, I always try to remember the times I went to summer camps, went to the beach with my family, and just went out to different places with my family. But these memories always seem blocked out by one major event during my childhood. It always makes me feel like my childhood was robbed because all the happy memories are overshadowed by it, and I’m just left with this event.

My parents came to America in the 2000s, life for them initially was simple but slightly difficult due to a language barrier at the beginning. But in 2014, everything changed for us. I remember I was around 9/10 years old. It was a school night. My sibling and I were about to go to bed, but then there was a knock at the door. My father opened the door, and a man was standing at the door, and he was telling my father something. I couldn’t see the man’s face since the door was in the way, he was saying that we had to move out of the building since we were the last family that was still living in the building, it was the first time I had ever seen my father have such a defeat.

About two months before this, the landlord had started to go up to every unit and banging on the door, stating that we had to move out and were “compensating” us with money to move out. Most of the families that lived in the building were Hispanic. So, they didn’t understand and didn’t put their minds, including my parents. A few weeks passed, and I was going to shower. I lifted the stick for the shower head and turned on the water to warm. And only cold water was falling, so I turned off the water quickly and called my mother. She thought that there was just no hot water for today and boiled water so we could shower. But, the hot water would just come and go, and people realized that it would be the owner of the building that would turn off the hot water. So people started to move out, and my father started to get the gist of what was happening, but then it hit him that we had to move out since they were closing the building. My father tried to look for an apartment, but it’s not so easy when you are a native- Spanish speaker living in a country where almost everyone speaks English. Also, the fact that there were four children made it more difficult to find a fitting apartment for us. My father worked at a supermarket, just making enough money to still pay rent for this apartment. And, these apartments that he would look at were just too expensive. My mother was a full-time stay-at-home mom, taking care of my6-month-old sister and trying to get food stamps to at least help us out. By the next month, everyone had moved out, even my cousin’s family, and it was just my family that was living in the entire building. I remember it felt so lonely and empty since my cousin would no longer come upstairs and play with us. I thought they had abandoned us since they moved out. My father still paid rent, hoping that they would give us more time. But then, one day, there was no hot water at all, and it never came back. Some things that I still vividly remember are not having hot water, not having heat, there being no light at all in the stairwell, and being completely dark. I would come after school and walk up the stairs, and it was dark, and I would be scared because I was afraid of the dark when I was younger. In the kitchen, the wall had ice; the apartment was so cold that ice was starting to form on the water. Regardless that my father was still paying rent,they didn’t supply us with heat, hot water, or even electricity. I remember feeling so confused and sad because I saw that my parents were stressing so much. I remember my father opening thedoor to one of the units because the door had no lock. When he opened that door, my legs felt so weak, and I was scared. There was no floor or wall, we were on the fifth floor and looking down at the first floor. Our apartment was the only one that had flooring and walls. Eventually, we were completely forced to move out, and the city placed us in a shelter.

In the book, “Bread Giver,” “But didn’t you say that the poorest beggars are happier and freer than the rich?” Sara says these words back to her father. In reality, this is a complete lie, having immigrant parents and living in the lower class. We were not happier, having parents who are struggling in a country they know nothing about and having to communicate with people in broken English and barely understanding what people say back to them. Living in a lower class doesn’t always allow me to be happy and free because how am I supposed to be happy when I feel trapped in a box surviving on my own? That’s how my parents and I felt, we felt like it was us against the whole world.

Although most of my memories are overshadowed by this event, half of my life was in that building, and that is where most of my childhood happy memories are. I learned to accept that this happened in my life, but I won’t allow it to ruin my childhood. But I always wonder if we were a normal American family, would we have gone through this?