Julie Kim

DIVORCE

A girl named Jackie had a nice family. She lived in Billerica, Massachusetts. She was nine years old. She was a wonderful person. One time when she was sitting in bed in the hospital, her parents argued. One person was on each side of her. This was not the only time that her parents fought. They fought more after she got out of the hospital. After that time when they were fighting, her parents were never at the hospital at the same time.

                  Jackie’s parents were fighting because her father was having an affair. He had been seeing her before the fights, and her mother had found out because he came late from work every single day. Since he did not have work on Sundays, he would go out for three hours or so. Her parents were screaming at each other when they were fighting.

                  After a year of her parents’ fighting, they got divorced during the summer of 1994. Jackie was away on vacation with her sister and her father. They went somewhere out of the nation. Jackie’s father went because he wanted her mother to sign the sheet for divorce, since her mother was where they were going on vacation.

                  Jackie’s life changed because she was living with only one parent and not able to see her other parent. She was living with her father because she only wanted one child and not the other, but Jackie’s father only wanted her to take all the children or none at all. Jackie had two sisters. Jackie felt so sad; she was also depressed. She missed her mother ever since she left. Jackie cried really hard when her mother left. Her older sister cried too. Her older sister had to do all the food shopping and had to bring her younger sister to dance every week. Jackie’s younger sister did not remember many things about the divorce because her sister was too young. Her grandmother helped with most of the housework.

                  Jackie was in the hospital because she had gotten a brain tumor and had surgery on her head. She was not able to see well because the tumor was right behind her eye. Jackie was starting to get better when her parents began fighting. Sometimes Jackie thinks that the sight of one eye was lost when one parent was lost in the heart. But she knows that it was not her fault that they got divorced. She had always cried when she thought about this story. But she never told it to anyone. This event was too sad and depressing for her to tell anyone.