Sand Castle Way

By Jenny Contreras

Content warning: story mentions suicidal ideation

Most of what I remember from living in Stockton is going to flea markets on weekends and playing with my sister Lily in a parking lot of a church we didn’t go to, while Mom picked up the free groceries for that week.

From the times we went inside with her, I can remember Mom’s embarrassment as she rummaged through the piles of off-brand cereals and canned food along with the other women who held the same expression as her.

Lily and I would complain about the milk and bread being past the expiration date but Mom never showed that it bothered her, even though it did. There were times that ants made their way into our knock-off brand cereal, but Mom would just toast them in a pan and pick the dead ones out. We couldn’t afford to toss anything away, it was either fish out the remaining ant legs from the milk of our cereal, or skip meals. But again, Mom acted like it didn’t bother her, even though it did. Instead, she would scold us for being ungrateful, and while that was true since there was never a time we didn’t have food, it isn’t something a five-year-old would understand.

I wasn’t aware of the severity of it at the time but dad— along with 8.7 million other Americans— had just lost his job due to the Great Recession. So if it meant picking the mold off of bread, eating the same 3 meals we could afford everyday for two years, and relying on thrift stores and flea markets to put clothes on our back in order to keep us afloat, then so be it.

Before the house was even less than a wooden framework, we would make the trip up north to Stockton every two weeks to envision the start of our new life outside of San Jose. The skeleton of our new home alone was more than we could’ve ever imagined ourselves to have, and almost immediately once it became ours, it was stripped away from us. Had we known that our new life in Stockton would make the recession all the more difficult, we would’ve never imagined ourselves in that big empty house.

Dad, being a real estate agent at the time, got caught right in the middle of the mortgage crisis, a multinational financial setback that contributed to the recession. With everyone losing their jobs, my dad also lost his. He shares his experience as the unemployed breadwinner of his family:

Dad: “The recession was one of the most difficult times in— I would say in my life because I have five kids and I was trapped in the middle of the real estate crisis and I was depending on sales, on real estate. The market crashed and most of my clients were Latino people which were the ones who got more affected by the real estate recession and as a result I wasn't getting any sales done. I believe I only sold two houses, which was very low price. It wasn't even enough for— and we’re talking for the whole year, it wasn't even enough to bring food to my table for a month or a couple of months. I started looking for a job in the Bay area and it was very difficult because a lot of the people were unemployed, so as a result everytime I applied for a part time job, for a really low pay, I was competing with a lot people that were in the same position as me and so there was like 500 applications for one part time job.”

Being between the ages of 4 and 7, I was blissfully unaware of what my family was going through at the time and I didn’t understand just how much it was affecting my dad; to me it just meant he was home more often. In a conversation with my mom and my oldest sister Nancy, they go into detail about my dad’s struggle.

And by the way, the following portion of the story mentions suicide.

Jenny: “What was dad like when he lost his job?”

Mom: “I saw him feeling very insecure, worried, he was disoriented, it affected him so much. He was so stressed that he even lost so much of his hair. They were very, very difficult moments, you were a very little girl, you didn't know exactly what was happening, but I feel that Nancy and Lily were affected more than any everyone, especially Lily because she had to go through very difficult moments knowing that one of her friends lost her father for the reason that, due to the situation that was going on with the economy, her father committed suicide. And on one occasion Lily came crying with such anguish, with something so heartbreaking that it made me really see the situation we were going through.

According to the US National Library of Medicine, suicide rates and the proportion of alcohol-involved suicides rose during the 2008–2009 recession. My sister feared that my dad would succumb to the pressure he was feeling, a pressure so immense that many other families fell victim to it.

Mom: I could see your father as he was falling apart, he was letting himself be defeated, he did not want to try, and that was what Lily saw. And she was very affected by it because I remember this one time she came crying, and it broke my heart to hear my daughter cry like that, and she told me, “Mommy I don't want my dad to commit suicide like my friend's dad did.” And that's when I went and talked to my husband and told him, you have to do something, stop looking out the window, stop regretting what is happening and do something because you are not only affecting yourself, but the whole family. Especially your daughters because Lily can see what is happening and is afraid that you are going to commit suicide. And by saying those words to him, he reacted and he started to look for work. He started to do something.”

There’s a photograph of my dad in our family photo album that has become the one picture we all purposely overlook the times we occasionally flip through it and reminisce on the good aspects of our time in Stockton. My oldest sister Nancy took the photo; in it is my dad, standing where he always stood, in his makeshift office on the second floor of our house looking out of the window. He would spend countless hours there alone— expressionless, quietly thinking to himself.

Nancy: “I always remember him standing there and looking really sad, it never crossed my mind that he was thinking about committing suicide, but having conversations with him as an adult and constantly talking about it after the fact, we all know that he was contemplating suicide at some points and he would always tell me, “I just hope that I would close my eyes and not wake up the next day,” and as a kid you don’t really understand that, at 13-14 years old. At that age I didn’t notice that he was going through such a hard time.”

Dad had always been the only source of income in our family of seven. Besides himself, there were six other mouths to feed, six other backs to clothe, six other people to worry about. I can’t even imagine the pressure he was feeling, the pressure he still feels.

***

A story I grew up hearing about from when we lived in Stockton was of the time dad bought Nancy a pair of knock-off Jordans. At the time my sister had to go through the normal trials and tribulations of being a teenage girl at a new school, with the added struggle of being poor but wanting to keep up appearances. Owning just one pair of shoes that everyone else in her grade had would have sufficed. But for my dad— who had finally landed a job that paid only two hundred seventy dollars every two weeks— $145 shoes were out of the question.

Nancy: “I asked dad one time and he was like, “What? Why do you want those shoes? Those are so expensive!” He got mad at me for even wanting a pair of shoes that cost that much money and I kept insisting, and insisting, and insisting that I wanted a pair of Jordans and so at one point, dad comes home from the flea market, really really excited with a box of shoes and he's like, “mija, I got you your Jordans!” And so I opened them and I was so excited I was like, “oh my god! Where did you get them?” and he's like, “en la pulga, at the flea market!” And I didn think anything of it and so I was hella excited. I put them on the next day for school, everything was fine, maybe like a week or two later this group of three guys— the main guy who said this— he slams his foot on my desk and he’s like, “Your shoes are fake. These are real jordans. Yours doesn’t have the seal.''And then all the other guys start laughing and I was so embarrassed. I was just so angry at the fact that that person did that, I was confused. Even if they are fake, why make fun of someone who you don't know what they're going through, what their financial situation is? Like you're not making fun of me, you're making fun of my whole family basically. And so I was really hurt and embarrassed so I stopped wearing them and dad noticed and I know that hurt him a lot. Looking back at it, it hurts me more that I hurt dad because I stopped wearing them.”

Embarrassment is a feeling we know all too well. And even though being called out for owning a pair of knock off shoes seems trivial, it wasn’t at the time for Nancy and my dad. His intentions were good. He would give us the world if he could. But even twenty dollar shoes from the flea market was a lot of money for us back then, when there were four other kids to put shoes on.

Dad: “Since we were having financial problems at that time— and I feel terrible because at that time the kids at that teenager age, they get bullied, they make her feel uncomfortable and I feel so bad and I wish I can buy all my kids whatever they want. So, I saw a nice pair of Jordans, brand spanking new, and I just said, “oh this is for my daughter,” because she was at that age where you wanna be wearing nice clothes, nice shoes to show off to your friends. But, unfortunately I wasn't in that situation that I was able to afford that but I felt kind of sad when they told her that they were not real. I didn't even know that they were not real, I didn't care. I just got them because I just wanted to make my daughter feel good, that was the main reason.”

***

In fall of 2010, we lost our house. We packed up our few belongings into cardboard boxes and said goodbye to our short lived home on Sand Castle Way. I remember the U-Haul truck we rented had a zebra on one side and was small, since there wasn’t much to take back to San Jose considering how empty the house was when we lived in it. The day we moved out, my seven-year-old self took an elephant stamp and paraded the house, leaving green ink on the white walls for the new family moving in to clean up. I was angry, I didn’t understand why we had to leave our nice big house for a smaller one that I had no memory of living in before moving to Stockton.

Six years ago my dad finished paying off our house in San Jose, making him a homeowner in one of the most expensive cities in the country. And although we lost to Stockton, my dad put up a good fight. He has a good paying job and we’re lucky enough to not have to worry about whether there will be food at home or if the bills will get paid. We can tease him now about being frugal— after all it’s understandable— but his efforts to save money and teach us to make conscious decisions have gotten us where we can stand now.

Now that I’m older and can understand what we were going through, I have a deeper admiration for my parents and the sacrifices they have made to raise all five of us. I am forever grateful and immensely proud of my dad for all the work he has put in for us to have a better life, and I’m proud of him for making it through the most difficult times of his life.

If you or someone you know is having a hard time or contemplating suicide, please reach out for support by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or visiting suicidepreventionlifeline.org.