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 Broken Borders 1st chapter

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zelman
One Star Member
One Star Member
zelman


Number of posts : 23
Registration date : 2008-05-20
Age : 37
Location : USA

Broken Borders 1st chapter Empty
PostSubject: Broken Borders 1st chapter   Broken Borders 1st chapter EmptyTue May 20, 2008 7:43 pm

The sun was shining through the window, casting the room in a warm golden light. A young boy was sitting at the window, watching the bustling activity on the street below his bedroom. His younger brother was still asleep in the bed. He glanced back at his brother and smiled. Even though none of the family had eaten for two days, he was happy that they had managed to cope. But that was all they'd ever done, since his father had died in that accident when he was nine.
Navolato was a bustling city in Mexico. The warm summer breeze flowed in through the window, and cooled the young boy's face. Antonio Gonzales didn't make a lot of money. The house had only three rooms. There was a bathroom, living room that doubled as a kitchen and one bedroom, and the other room in which Antonio and Rico slept. The home cost Antonio 400 Pesos a month and they barely had enough money left over to pay for food. His mother was forty, so she stayed home to take care of his five siblings, while he worked from sunrise to eight in the evening.
Antonio had managed to get through second grade in middle school. He worked six days a week in order to feed his family, and to pay the rent on the house each month. His siblings were twelve, ten, eight, six, and four years old. Antonio threw on some clothes and climbed down the stairs to the street below. He opened the door and left.
Outside people were walking to work. People were talking in Spanish and setting up tables to get ready for market day. Antonio walked briskly in order to get to work on time. If he didn't arrive on time, his boss took an hour's wages off of his pay. He ran down the road, until he got to the dirt path that led to the workshop where he worked.
As Antonio stepped into the small building, he heard machines clattering loudly. He walked over to his post and set to work. The workshop fixed cars. Antonio's job was to make sure the metal was straight. If it wasn't, he had to fix the metal himself. Antonio had to make sure he didn't lose any fingers when he worked. He had seen people lose two fingers on each hand when they cut the metal.
"Antonio!"
He looked up and saw his friend Louis walking towards him.
"Hello Louis. How's your mom?"
"She's doing alright. She sleeps a lot. I'm worried about her."
"Hopefully, she'll be strong. I noticed that half of the employees aren't here anymore."
"I heard the boss fired them all. I think he's planning on closing the workshop."
"What will I do? I've got my family to feed. Plus I'm trying to put Rico and Maria through school."
"Yeah, this is bad. Maybe America is better. Jobs are more plentiful there. I'd go there, but I'm all my mom has."
"Maybe I can make more money for my family if I go to America."
Antonio worked hard until mid-afternoon when he stopped to get some lunch. Everyone in Mexico knew about America. They had seen plenty of American families come to Mexico in the spring and summer and they also noticed that Americans had lots of money. Many of Antonio's friends had heard wonderful things about America, and that you could be rich in a year. Antonio knew that the best way to keep his family alive, and Rico and Maria in school, was to possibly go to America one day.
After his lunch, Antonio went back to work. Since half of the employees were gone, those that were left had to work at all the other places in the workshop as well as their own. When it was time to go home the boss came into the room and looked at everyone. The atmosphere went deathly still.
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zelman
One Star Member
One Star Member
zelman


Number of posts : 23
Registration date : 2008-05-20
Age : 37
Location : USA

Broken Borders 1st chapter Empty
PostSubject: Re: Broken Borders 1st chapter   Broken Borders 1st chapter EmptyTue May 20, 2008 7:44 pm

"Everyone sit down," the boss said.
Perplexed, the workers sat down on the floor. It seemed to Antonio that he and Louis were the only people in the room who knew they were about to get fired, though neither of them knew why their boss wanted to close down the workshop. Most of the employees either had parents to take care of, or wives and children.
"I've decided to close down the workshop," the boss announced. "Before anyone says anything let me explain why. The reasons are that I'm getting too old to run a factory, and I have a family to take care of, and the other reason is that an American businessman has decided to buy the factory and make it into a clothing store. This will be the last day that the workshop will be open. Everyone will get double pay for today's work. Goodbye."
Before their boss left, he handed out the money to everyone. Most were in shock that they had just lost their jobs. After twenty minutes of standing there talking amongst themselves, everyone left to go home. Antonio walked with Louis to his house and then continued on to his own. As he walked down the road to his house he thought about how his life had been when his father had still been alive.
Antonio smiled when he remembered his father. His father had been a strong, yet kind man who had treated his family like the world. His father had met his mom in a clothing factory when he had gone to buy some new clothes for his parents. She had just turned twelve when he first saw her. He had been sixteen at the time, and had dated her until she turned fifteen, when he proposed to her. When she turned sixteen, they had gotten married, and moved into a six-room house.
His mother had quit working when she married his father. His father had worked in the Government until his boss had fired him for arriving at work two hours late. When his father had gotten fired, Antonio's mother was pregnant with Johnny. After the firing, they had to sell most of their belongings, to survive until his father found a new job. He'd been unemployed for four months and was forced to beg on the streets to feed the family.
With the grace of God, Antonio's father had managed to get a low-paying job as a construction worker. His father earned 100 Pesos a day and had managed to feed the family. His mother had just given birth to Angela, when his father had died. It was January. His father had been up on the roof of a Government building fixing a section of the roof when he had slipped off the roof and had fallen to his death.
Antonio had been in school when his father died. He had taken Rico and Maria home. They had walked through two feet of snow for ten miles until they had reached home. When they arrived, his mom had been sitting at the table holding Angel and crying. Johnny had been in his bedroom, sleeping.
His mother had handed him a letter. Antonio had read the letter silently, and sent Rico and Maria to their room. Then his mother told him that she would need to go to work in order to take care of them. She had started looking for work the next day. Antonio had stayed home from school to watch the children, so his mom could hunt for a job.
Two weeks went by with no luck. Then, one day, Antonio's mother left a note on the table telling Antonio to watch his siblings because she was starting her job. His mom worked sixteen hours a day for 80 Pesos a day. Antonio had to do his schooling at home and take care of his four siblings. His mother had gotten a job in a mill that made sweaters and she worked from five in the morning until nine in the evening. In the pitch black of darkness, his mother walked the nine miles to work and home again each day. The children often cried because their mother wasn't home.
Antonio cleaned the house and fed his siblings. Because of their low income, they were forced to move into a small one room shack. There was no heat in the house, so Antonio had bought a dozen blankets, and each night covered his siblings with three blankets. Angela slept with him on his stomach, and his other three siblings huddled together under the blankets. Antonio cooked food over a fire he'd built outside. His three siblings slept on a small cot, and he slept on the cold floor with his baby sister. The only other bed in the house was for their mom.
Nobody helped his family at all. People who had been friends when his father had been alive suddenly shunned his family. In Mexico, it was a disgrace for a person to get fired from a Government job, and even more horrific was a widow who chose to stay single. It had been hard on his mother to lose her friends and become an outcast overnight, but she had eventually gotten over it. His mom always told Antonio not to worry about the neighbors. She had told him that they were the losers.
One day Antonio's mom came home with a black eye. Antonio had questioned his mom and discovered that her boss had hit her. He begged his mom to let him take care of the family but his mom told him his education was more important. Every day his mom came home with bruises on her entire body. Her boss fancied her, and was angry at her repeated refusals to marry him. Antonio's mom had decided to remain faithful to his dead father.
Angela got older over time so Antonio moved her in with his other three siblings. She was a lovely girl who was full of energy. Antonio spent most of his time chasing her around the room. Angela could always make Antonio and his other three siblings happy. She took after Maria.
Johnny was a quiet child. He liked reading and being by himself. He listened when Antonio told him to do something. He didn't understand why their mom was working everyday. Johnny always followed Antonio around. He was more like a father figure than a brother to Johnny.
Maria was the spitting image of her mom. She often helped Antonio take care of Johnny and Angela. Maria played a lot with Angela. She usually spent her time drawing animals on a sketch pad.
Rico read books on automobiles. He played football outside with Johnny and Antonio while Maria and Angel stayed in the home. Rico was thinking about becoming an auto mechanic when he grew up. Rico was very fast and quick on his feet. He loved cars which was why he was so interested in being an auto mechanic, and one day, when he was older, owning his own shop.
Two months after their mom had begun her new job, she found out that she was pregnant. She arrived home the next evening bloody and crying. Antonio remembered waiting for his mother all night and being worried about her safety. He had turned ten the week before, and had stubbornly told his mom that he would work to take care of the family. His mom told him that her boss had raped her, one night when he was drunk. When she had told her boss that she was pregnant, he had beaten her and had locked her up in his office the whole night.
The next morning Antonio left the house to go see his mom's boss. Anger was boiling inside his blood at what his mom's boss had done to her and put his family through. He wasn't sure yet what he would do. All he knew was that he wanted his mom's boss to suffer as much as she and his family had suffered.
When he got to his mom's job, he asked one of the employees where the boss was. Antonio walked back to the office to find his mom's former boss with another woman. He slammed the door loud enough to get the boss's attention. In a rage he rammed his fist into the boss's face and let loose all his anger, as he violently pummeled the boss's body. His eyes blazed with anger as he continued to beat the boss. When the boss lay dead on the floor, he left.
Antonio then went looking for a job. He knew he had to give up his education, but it was a small price to pay to keep his family from starving. After three hours of walking around Navalota, he had managed to get his job at the workshop. He had gone home to tell his mom, only to find his family on the streets. He found out that his family had been evicted because his landlord had gotten tired of his family living there.
For the next eight months, Antonio and his family lived in a small brick house in a field that was overgrown with weeds, three miles from where their previous home had been. The floors were nothing but dirt, and the water was very dirty. Antonio had to run a hose from the well to the shower in the house. Most of the roof was gone, so Antonio put up some old pieces of metal on the roof and weighed them down with heavy rocks. They cooked outside behind the house over an open fire. The house had mold growing on the walls.
Antonio worked seven days a week without a break. He was trying to save up enough money to get them a better house before winter. Antonio existed on very little food, so that the rest of the family could survive. He worked from four in the morning until midnight. His siblings never saw him, because he was at work when they got up, and they were asleep when he got home. He was often very sick, due to eating very little, but he continued to drag himself to and from work every day.
Antonio's sister was born in December. She was named Alena. Three months after her birth, Antonio had managed to move his family into the house in which they now lived. He continued to work the same grueling hours he had before Alena was born. He continued with his schoolwork during his lunch breaks.
On his thirteenth birthday, he quit school for good. Antonio worked very hard at his job for seven months, until he was arrested. The police took him to jail and put him in a cell. The next morning, Antonio went to court and was denied bail. He was being charged with the murder of his mom's former boss, and was facing thirty years in prison.
Antonio called his mom later that night. She started crying, and asked him how soon he would be sentenced for the murder of her former boss. He told her he didn't know. When he got off the phone and went back to his cell he put his head in his hands and started crying. He wasn't sorry that he had committed murder, because his mom didn't have to suffer anymore, but he was sad that he was sitting in jail.
Two weeks later, he was sentenced to sixteen months in jail. Because he had been ten years old when he had murdered his mom's former boss, that was the maximum sentence he could get. Antonio felt bad that his family was suffering. He was scared that his family was going to die without him. The sixteen months passed very slowly.
During his time in jail, he was put to work cleaning out the drainage pipes of Government buildings. He and the rest of the prisoners were fed one small hunk of bread and a bowl of soup each day. The prisoners didn't receive any adequate medical treatment at all. It didn't matter to the guards, or the rest of society, what happened to dangerous offenders, as long as they were kept off the streets. Antonio lived through watching many of his fellow inmates die of malnutrition and various diseases. He would have succumbed to that fate as well, if it hadn't been for his brother, Rico, coming to visit him once a week.
Antonio was handcuffed and led out by a guard to a small glass room, where he was pushed roughly onto a hard chair seat. On the other side of the glass was his brother, Rico. Poor Rico was only eleven years old and was very thin. Antonio imagined what he must have looked like to his younger brother. Rico put on a bright face and smiled. Antonio longed to hold his brother and the rest of his family in his arms.
He learned that, since he had been in jail, the rent for the house had gone up. Apparently, the landlord charged a higher price for families with convicted felons in prison. They had run out of the money that Antonio had saved up, and Rico and Maria were forced to go begging on the streets. Rico sold newspapers for 3 Pesos each, and Maria ended up working in a bar for 20 Pesos an hour. Rico waited for Maria every night and walked home with her. One night, Maria had been late coming out of the bar, and after ten minutes without seeing her, Rico had gone inside to check out what was taking her so long. When he got inside, he had heard Maria screaming and crying, so he followed the sounds to a back room, and witnessed the owner of the bar smack her roughly across her mouth and knock her to the floor. He had run back to the bar and desperately searched for something with which to help her.
There was nothing he could reach without making any noise. Terrified that if he made any noise, his sister might get killed, he had ran outside and searched in the pitch blackness for anything big enough to cause serious damage to the man who was hurting his sister. He encountered a small wooden bat that some kid had left outside , grabbed it up and quickly ran back inside the bar. He gripped the bat tightly in both hands, silently creeping along until he reached the room. The owner had ripped Maria's clothes and had climbed on top of her. Maria was screaming and fighting the owner, as he slid his hand slowly down her back and roughly pushed her legs open with his other hand.
Without warning, another man suddenly appeared from the shadows, grabbed Rico from behind and had dragged him away. Rico was thrown into the bar, then staggered back to his feet. There was no light on in the bar, aside from the few flickering candles in the room that Maria was in. The terrified cries from his sister scared him, and Rico desperately searched for the man who had interrupted him trying to save her. He collapsed again, as the man slugged him, and then vanished.
Knowing Maria was in trouble, and guessing that she had been raped angered him. He quickly scrambled to his feet and ran away from the counter, all the while keeping a desperate look-out for the second man. He ducked as soon as he felt a breeze, and slammed his fist into the darkness. He heard the man let out a groan, and quickly kicked the man in his stomach hard enough to bring the guy down to his knees. The moon was out, eminating a small ghostly glow. Rico saw that the man was smirking and breathing heavily. Rico kicked the man again in the arm. He heard the bones break and saw the man's arm go limp.
Rico rushed to the other room and ripped the owner off of his sister. He heard her scream, as the boss was yanked roughly off of her. Without looking at his sister, he drew back his fist and slammed it into the owner's head, hard enough to put him into a coma. He turned toward his sister and could see blood from where she had been raped. His eyes scanned her body, and what he saw sickened him. Maria had obviously been pummeled, so instantaneously covered in bruises and could barely move. Her clothes had been literally ripped apart. He pulled his shirt off and covered her with it, and then took her home.
Antonio's face hardened as he heard the story. He made Rico go home, and promised to get out of jail as soon as possible. The festering knowledge that his sister had been raped and the anger that the rent on his home had been raised made his head throb. Antonio went back to his cell and started thinking of some way to protect his family from further suffering. He blamed himself for letting his mom work, and he blamed himself for getting thrown in jail. He was determined that Rico wouldn't end up behind bars like he had.
When he was released in September, Antonio went back to his old job. His boss was willing to give him a second chance, providing he didn't get into any more trouble. Antonio assured his boss that he wouldn't. He cut back on his hours and arranged to take Saturdays off, so he would have some time with his family. Then he went home to see how everyone was. He vowed to make a change for the better and do everything in his power to protect his family and support them.
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zadaconnaway
Five Star Member
Five Star Member
zadaconnaway


Number of posts : 4017
Registration date : 2008-01-16
Age : 76
Location : Washington, USA

Broken Borders 1st chapter Empty
PostSubject: Re: Broken Borders 1st chapter   Broken Borders 1st chapter EmptySun Jun 15, 2008 8:52 am

This is a very sad tale of woe. It seems like a good story line, but it doesn't seem to flow. Maybe it's just not written the way I am used to reading. I also see repetitions that could be changed and a few sentences that are puzzling. "obviously been pummeled, so instantaneously covered in bruises and could barely move" is one example.

I am neither an editor nor a critic, so it is just some musings on my part, don't take it personally.
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