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Diary 37

Dear Diary,

I’m beginning to realize that Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, and I have a lot in common. We all seem to be trapped in some sort of a cage. Anne’s cage was the secret annex she and her family hid in, and the attic where she spent most of her time. Zlata’s cage was the basement she had to use for shelter, away from bombs. My cage is my own house.

Like Anne and Zlata, I have an enemy who is gung-ho for dictatorship: my father. He doesn’t truly fit the role of a father in my perspective, so I refer to him as my sperm donor. James doesn’t allow us to call him “dad” or “father” or any of those other sentimental, lovey-dovey names. He says the titles aren’t his name so we can’t call him that.

Unfortunately, I can’t relate with Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic on the subject of their fathers. From what I’ve read, their fathers seemed to really love them. I can, however, commiserate with them on the situations they were forced to endure. For example, I can easily put James in Hitler’s shoes, and our family in the roles of the Jews. Although not quite like the war Hitler started, the war in my house was also created by ignorance and stupidity. Like all wars, there is an enemy. There are innocent victims, destruction, senseless violence, displacement, and a winner and a loser.

I’ve read about the monstrous things that were done in the concentration camps in WWII. I’ve read about how they would torture, starve, and mutilate people’s bodies to something that was not recognizable as a human being. I watched my mother being beaten half to death by James and watched as blood and tears streamed down her face, which was also unrecognizable. I felt useless and scared, furious at the same time knowing that I could do nothing to help her. I watched him steal money from my mother’s purse and sell our belongings for drugs.

I’m sad to say he is the person I’m supposed to look up to for good solid fatherly advice. I can still feel the sting from the belt on my back and legs as he violently lashed me in his usual drunken state of mind. It’s not likely that I’ll be asking him for advice any time soon.

I can relate to Anne and Zlata. Like them, I have a diary, I write about how it feels to have disgust and hatred centered directly on you because of who you are. All I can do is wait for my mother to get rid of him. I’m surprised she hasn’t already. She can be a strong woman if she puts her mind to it. I know that I will never let a man put his hands on me, won’t ever tolerate that kind of abuse from anyone. I guess I’ll have to wait for the war to end like Anne and Zlata did, except I won’t die or get taken advantage of. I’m going to be strong.

Diary 38

Dear Diary,

We’ve been talking about the war in Bosnia and how similar some of the events are to the Holocaust. We have been reading about a young girl named Zlata, who many call the modern-day Anne Frank. Zlata and I seem to have a lot in common because while Zlata was living though a war in Sarajevo, I was living through a different kind of war—the L.A. riots. Ironically, Zlata and I were both eleven years old when our city was under siege. I can understand how afraid and scared she was to see her city go up in flames, because my city was on fire, too.

The problem in Sarajevo began when a sniper fired a gun into a crowd at a peace rally. People panicked and war broke out. In Los Angeles, several policemen beat on a man named Rodney King and had to go to trial. The “not guilty” verdict caused people to go crazy. People started looting, fighting, and crashing cars into one another.

Zlata and I both had to hide for our safety. This made us very frightened. Zlata was trapped in her basement while she heard bombs going off and people screaming. I was trapped inside my church while people were shooting, breaking windows, and screaming for their lives.

Zlata and I lost our childhood innocence because we were denied the right to do childlike things, like