The Making Of Alexis Valdez: Chapter 1

FATHER FIGURE

Trigger Warning: The following episode includes descriptions that may be triggering for some and/or may not be suitable for younger readers, including discussion of suicide. Reader discretion is advised. 

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My stepfather “Big Mike” was the kindest man I knew. I remember the way his big, bushy beard tickled my cheeks when he bent down to wrap his arms around me. His physical appearance - long, blonde hair, tattoo-covered body, massive frame and towering height - should’ve been intimidating. Instead, it was a stark contrast to his personality. He was a gentle giant. 

I called Big Mike “Dad” because my biological father refused to see me. At about five or six years old, I was still begging my mom to visit him. I wanted her to call him. I wanted him to come get me because I was Daddy’s little girl and I just wanted to see his face. I’d nag my mom till she couldn’t take it anymore. 

“He has a girlfriend now,” Mom said. “He’s too busy for you.” 

There was no consoling me after that. Years passed and it became clear that my father wanted nothing to do with his family. Mom really tried to get him involved, but he disappointed me time and time again and she was left to deal with my tears. 

So Big Mike became my family. He met my mother when she was pregnant with my baby sister Stacey and working at my grandmother’s bar. It didn’t bother Big Mike that mom was expecting, so they began dating and he took us all on as if we were his own. I remember times in the summer when he’d pack us all into his dark green pickup truck and we’d go camping or take road trips to beaches outside the city. 

When I think of how much I love the water now, it’s connected to memories of my sister and me sitting in the back of that truck headed out on another weekend trip where we fished in the lakes or sat on beach chairs eating snacks. Big Mike let me hold my own rod while he held my sister in his arms just off the shore. 

I know now that the relationship between him and my mom wasn’t perfect, but at the time I thought things between them were great. Of course, there were many times I fell asleep to arguments that reverberated through the walls of our apartment. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were fighting about, but I figured that’s what couples do. I thought this was normal, until one night’s argument became their last. 

We were all at my grandmother’s bar that night and I could tell that they had too many drinks. It was normal for Big Mike and my mom to take me with them because my grandmother was always there to watch over me. That night, the screaming happened before they even got to our front door and it turned physical as soon as we got inside our eighth-floor apartment. Big Mike dragged my mom to the bathroom shower and turned the cold water on her. That’s when my mom told me to call the police, and because I was so scared, I did what I was told. 

But things didn’t end there. 

My mother has a really slick mouth, especially when she drinks. She can be vicious with her words and that night, for whatever reason, she was at her worst. 

When Big Mike left her in the shower, he went out on our balcony to cool off. He worked in construction building skyscrapers, so sitting on the ledge wasn’t a big deal for him. 

Then Mom came barreling down the hallway into the living room. She looked at Big Mike sitting comfortably on the ledge and said words I know she wished now she could take back. 

“Go ahead and do it. I don’t give a fuck.” 

She was angry, and even in her anger, there was no way she thought he’d actually jump. 

Read chapter 2 of The Making Of Alexis Valdez

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the knock at the door that triggered some kind of fear in Big Mike. Till this day, I still don’t know how to explain what happened next. 

All I know is that time stood still as I watched Big Mike throw himself over the railing of the balcony into the darkness of the night, followed by the shrill sound of Mom’s scream. The part that still fucks with my head is the sound of his body banging against different balconies as he was falling to the ground. Later, the autopsy showed that his wrists were split open from trying to grab onto whatever he could. 

He wanted to live. 

When the ambulance arrived, Mom held Big Mike in her arms as she watched life pass through him on the way to the hospital. He died before they arrived. 

The years afterward, from eight years old to my early teens, were a blur of therapy sessions, moving around from home to home, and switching to 13 different schools. 

Mom forced me to live with my father when I was nine because she thought I was getting out of control. I knew she always had lots of cash in her purse from tips, so I took toonies and loonies to buy gum from the gumball machine or to go to the arcade with my cousins. None of this felt like a big deal to me, but I remember having to write her a long apology letter because I took $10 out of her purse one time. Perhaps she feared that these petty thefts would eventually escalate, so she sent me to live with a more authoritative figure. 

My dad beat the shit out of me each of the four years that I lived in his house. 

“You're going to be a whore!” he said. “One of those prostitutes walking the streets.” His heavy hand left red marks and swelling on my skin. 

There were at least three times that I had to clean my blood off the wall of his apartment after he hit me. I never fought back.  

In his eyes, I would become his greatest nightmare; just like my mother - a bartender, working at a bar with guys hitting on me every shift. 

Read chapter 3 of The Making Of Alexis Valdez

By the time I was 11 years old, I woke up every morning counting down the days until my father would have to turn himself into custody. Out on bail, I couldn’t wait for him to leave and do his time so I could escape the horrifying grip of his abuse. 

I moved back in with my mother when he went to jail and my brother was born. I don’t think she realized how bad the beatings were, but the trauma of the years living with him never left my body. Carrying the memories of Big Mike’s death and my father’s punches and insults terrorized my insides. For two years, ulcers tore through my stomach. I couldn’t eat anything and was always nauseous. A cocktail of antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills was prescribed to calm my nerves, but they never helped. 

Then on a typical high school day, I stood in one of the dingy stalls of the girl’s bathroom calmly pouring pills into the palm of my hand and shovelling them into my mouth. Boyz II Men’s “A Song for Mama” played on my Walkman. 

Mama, Mama you know I love you

Mama, Mama you're the queen of my heart

Your love is like tears from the stars, yes it is

Mama, I just want you to know lovin' you is like food to my soul

I replayed that song and “4 Seasons of Loneliness” over and over again. They provided me with moments of peace I hadn’t felt in years. 

When I went to gym class afterwards, I sat on the sideline of the gymnasium. 

“Where’s your gym clothes?” my teacher yelled from across the court. 

By the time she walked across the gym to get closer to me, all she could see was that my usually olive skin had turned stark white. 

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?!”

I could barely open my eyes to respond to her.

She picked up my lifeless body and placed me onto a chair to roll me from the third floor of the school. Outside, an ambulance was waiting. I could hear the buzz of voices as crowds of teachers and students gathered in the hallways to see what was happening. 

At the hospital, they gave me charcoal and gallons of fluids to counteract the pills that had taken over my system. Eventually, the pressure of the liquids I was chugging weighed heavily on my bladder and I urgently needed to pee. 

“You’re going to have to wait,” the nurse said flippantly as she barely looked up from what she was doing to refill the fluids. “You did this to yourself.”

I closed my eyes to silence the sound of her voice, but visions of the last time I saw my father came rushing into my mind. 

A few nights before I had decided to take my life, we’d gotten into a huge argument. 

“I’m so ashamed of you. I should have you killed,” he said as he stared right through me. Grabbing a butcher knife from the kitchen, he held the sharp blade to my throat. I shook with fear because I knew this was not an aimless threat hurled at me in anger - he meant every word he said and he had the means to make it happen. The men that my father associated with were dangerous. I thought of one of the men from the neighbourhood that I knew my father would get to do it. 

The reason he was so pissed that night was because he found out I had lost my virginity. A confirmation that I was in fact the whore he had been calling me since I was eight years old. More palpable than my father’s rage was his disgust that his daughter had sex with a Black guy. Yes, he was a brown-skinned Latino man, but he believed that being with anyone even a few shades darker was beneath us. 

At the hospital, after my suicide attempt, the staff ran a bunch of tests on me. They let my family know a secret I’d been hiding and had scheduled an appointment to resolve - that I was pregnant.

I was 15 years old.