It was around 7 in the morning in English class when my teacher told the students to think and write a memoir. He first explained to us an event that happened to him, how he felt about it, and the problem he dealt with when that problem occurred within himself. He told us to think about an event, any event that happened to us, or a historical event, and the first thought was my parents divorced. I was a kid when it first happened. Before I was born, he was already talking to girls when he and my mother were married and had my two older siblings. There was a point in time when he stopped talking to girls, but that was a short amount of period. He continued after, but because my mother had us, she didn't leave him.

A few months ago, my mother was talking to my sister, Cindy, about why she didn't leave my dad when my sister asked her, "why not leave dad when everything was happening?" I overheard it as I was in the kitchen and walk towards my sister's room and my mom was in front of me because she was in the doorway and my sister on her bed because it was her room. "Yeah, why didn't you leave?" I asked her, "because I had you guys. I didn't want to leave without you guys and leave you there with him. I know how he is." my mother told us, "but you could have run even before?" Cindy asks, "I stayed with him because I was young and stupid. We got married when I was 10, and he was 21. We came to America at that time too." my mom told us, "you could have taken us and left even before." Cindy said, "I didn't have any money at the time. Your dad was the only one working." Cindy looked at her, "but when he first did the few times, why didn't you leave him?" mom sighed, looking at me, "I was stupid. My dad liked him so much, but my mom knew I didn't like him and would side with me," mom said. Cindy and I looked at each other, "that's how much my dad liked him." I sighed. The thing about my mother was that her patience was very long. She doesn't get angry fast like my father. My mother, patience, was like a trained dog. She dealt through all of the things life threw at her and still had patience. Patience to deal with us, to keep living.

I begin to write about the memoir and begin to plan everything out. I begin to recall every detail of the house, where I was, my sister was, the room, what it had in it, what was in two of the living room since it was a kind of big house, what was in the kitchen, the closet, lighting, and everything that was there that I can remember.

I had woken up in the morning because of hearing the tv playing. My dad likes to play the tv loud because he's deaf, so you have to speak loud enough for him to listen to you and know what you're saying. I came out of the bedroom, which all the three sisters share. The oldest was Nancy, the middle child was Cindy and then me. There are five kids — Nancy, Kevin, Cindy, Michael, and then me. I am the youngest out of all of them. I saw my dad sitting on the couch, watching the tv and turn to the left to see my two sisters. Nancy was washing the dishes while Cindy was moping the floor. I turn back again and walk towards my dad to see what he was watching. My dad has a collection of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and some of Donnie Yen movies. He was watching one of the old Bruce Lee movies. He tends to love watching martial arts or action movies in general. I sat down next to him and watched the film with him because I grew up watching my dad movie collection of martial artists that he has stacked up.

I remember my dad waking up my two sisters by coming to our room that we all share to make them clean the house. My dad was very controlling. He took care of everything and blame things on us when we don't do things right or when it was his fault. He doesn't say sorry when he's wrong. He always has to be right even though he knows he's wrong. He starts to get angry when he and my mom argue about him being wrong and not being able to admit it.

It was the night of a school day when my dad came home. My sister and I were alone in the house. Nancy, Kevin, and Michael left the house to go hang out with friends. My dad came home and was on his phone, doing something and had a Bluetooth in his ear. He was talking very sweetly to the person on the other line. It told me that he was talking to a girl. Whenever my father begins to speak gently and kindly on the phone, it meant that he was talking to another woman. I went back to watching the movie with my sister since we had nothing else to do. Maybe an hour or two later, my mom came home. She had her bag on her shoulder since she worked in a company. I remembered the smell. Her work clothes were dirty with black, almost like your hand when you fix a car and the grease gets on you. She smelled like gloves. The gray-ish gloves when workers have to lift something substantial and not cut their hands from carrying it.

My mother had just come home, took off her shoes, and I saw my dad coming out like he was in a hurry to leave. "You went to talk to your boyfriend, huh?" he snarled, "what are you talking about?" my mother said, "you usually come home at 9 o'clock. You're late. You must have been talking to your boyfriend. That is the reason why you're late." my dad growled "what are you talking about; I stayed a bit of overtime because they needed me. I didn't talk to my boyfriend. What are you talking about?" my mom said confused, "I followed you to work and told
one of your workers to watch over you. They told me you left early." my dad said. The fight begins to escalate. It soon went from my dad talking angrily at my mom to them arguing about cheating, talking about their boyfriend and girlfriend they are talking to behind each other back. My father's anger was like two lions fighting for territory. The lion is trying to top the other for the land, so they know who's boss.

There stood my parents, mother on the ground, dad trying to pull her in their bedroom to talk about it because me and my sister, Cindy, was there watching as everything begin to unfold. The chandelier lamp shined brightly like a super energetic person who's always cheerful, have so much energy and always greeting her friends with that bright energy. The middle room, which is also another living room because there is two; the living room was gray, both lights coming from both ends, and it looked like a dead body, decomposing. My dad begins to be pushy, aggressive, furious and fed up with my mother who was on the ground, screaming at him, swinging her arms, trying to make him let go of her, make him not able to touch her, to pull her into the room. She was hysterical.

"You better come right now!" my dad told my mother like a little child who has something she is not supposed to have in her hands or have touched. "No!" my mother yelled back. My dad became even more aggressive than he was, angrier than he was before, furious with her not listening to him at all. "Come here, now!" he yelled before grabbing her left arm to pull her into their bedroom "no! That hurts! Don't touch me!" she yelled, getting her hand out of his grip. Everything was like a movie. My sister and I were on the couch. She had her arms around me like she was protecting me in case something happens to us or me. I was confused, scared that something will happen to my mother. I have never seen my parents in action like this before. I was wondering what will happen to my mother. I was in second-grade, meaning I was seven, almost eight years old when I saw my parents like this.

I continue to see my father trying to force my mother into their room to talk about it because my sister and I were there. I continue to hear the same words, "come here!" "come here right now!" "You better come here right now!" "You went and talked to your boyfriend, right?" it was like a
broken record of hearing my dad and then my mom screaming at him, "no!" "no, I am not." "Who told you that?" "You went and talked to your girlfriend!" "why can't I do the same if you did it first?" it was a broken record of hearing the same words every second it seems. The words couldn't be different, couldn't be changed. It was because the language was in Hmong. None of it was in English. So no one but Hmong people could understand. All of it was in Hmong. The screaming, yelling, everything.

My father is stubborn. He refuses to acknowledge that he's stubborn. My family is tired of his stubbornness. He also likes to control. He controls what mostly my family does. He controls what mostly happens in our house, like waking my two sisters up, for example, to clean the house. My dad did deceitful deeds. My dad always liked to think he's right, never wrong at all. He controls and stubborn.

I heard screaming when my dad finally pulled her into their room. I heard lots of yelling, screaming, and then something like glass hit the wall. "You're going to throw that at me? You trying to kill me?" my mom shouted, which I couldn't see, but I can visualize it. I can see her back against the wall, sitting down on the ground, my dad at their desk, throwing the glass-framed photos of them at her. I can hear the glass shattering as it hit the wall in which their room wasn't significant. The distance between him and my mother was maybe 2 feet; for it to break, my dad must have thrown the glass-frame hard at my mother but not at her, mainly but behind her since she was against the wall. "Go ahead! Kill me! If I'm not alive, what are you going to do?" my mother yelled at my dad.

My sister Cindy left, and I don't remember where she was, but I was left alone, sitting on the couch and hearing all these things, the yelling, screaming, glass shattering, and more things happening. I was left alone in the living room with the chandelier lamp on, looking at the wall where my parents' bedroom would be. I can picture my mom on the wall, covering her face as my dad threw the glass-framed photos at her. My dad's angry face, my mother yelling, and it continues until it stopped.

I looked at the time and realized that it was almost time for the class to end. I look at my paper and read what I have written down on my writer's workshop notebook. I begin to reread the story I had just written before adding more details and then pack up since it was the end of the first hour, English class.