College Relationships

Roxanne's Life in San Siesta

Then Roxanne told me about when she and her dad finally arrived in the place in Texas, which was a small town called San Siesta and somewhere in the Chihuahuan Desert. When they got there, the summer break had started so Roxanne was too late to go to a new school to finish the eleventh grade that year. They went to the biggest building, which was a vast mansion, with the biggest garden, which was like a giant oasis. It stood out from the rest of the small houses, the small shops and the other small buildings in the desert town of San Siesta. The way Roxanne described to me made me think it was like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon had moved to Texas.

The reason Roxanne and her dad were going to the mansion was because it was owned by one of her dad's best friends from high school called Roger Henkins. He was the owner of his business empire, which Roxanne still doesn't know the name of; all she could remember about it was that it was about energy and his empire owned more energy companies than anyone could shake a stick at.

After catching up and telling him what happened, Roxanne's dad begged Roger for a job so he could have shelter and food for himself and his daughter. Roger did offer him a job. Roxanne's dad became his gardener and his pay rate was twenty dollars per week in cash. He didn't offer them any food or shelter, but he did let them park their campervan on the driveway. Roxanne became her dad's assistant and would help him in the garden on days when she didn't have school and they would split the money between them.

Roxanne's life at school in San Siesta was very stressful for her. Not only did she have the stress of enrolling into a new high school, but out of the seven high schools in the town, there was the only one that could accept her due to it being the only one had an opening and it declared the worst one. As if that wasn't stressful enough, because there was no physical evidence of her education career in Spoonerville, not only could she not even finish the eleventh grade a year later, but she had to start from the ninth grade all over again and at the age where most students her age usually take the twelve grade and graduate. No matter how hard she worked and no matter how many good grades she kept getting, she just couldn't speed up and skip any grades she did before. And because of that, the other students bullied her for it. They called her names liked 'Granny', a 'late bloomer' and 'the Witch of San Siesta' and they 'offered to help her cross the street because she was an old lady' all because she was the oldest student in her school. Roxanne didn't have any friends there at all. Not even the other kids who were getting bullied empathized with her and wanted to be her friend. Even back in Spoonerville, Roxanne never cared about being popular in Spoonerville High School because she knew she was only popular because she was very beautiful and that she was the best friend of Stacey, the student body president and the most popular girl in Spoonerville High School for four years. She didn't miss the popularity even when she was a complete pariah in San Siesta, but she did miss her real friends in Spoonerville – Stacey, PJ, Bobby and me. The only thing she was glad about starting her high school career all over again was that she didn't had to go right back to kindergarten all over again as well.

The only person who would 'tolerate' Roxanne is San Siesta was Gavin and that was because he was the son of Roger who she and her dad worked for. He started the ninth grade at that school when she did. But even then he didn't tolerate her very much. Because he was so rich, he was very spoilt both at home, at school and in the whole of San Siesta. He believed that the whole world revolved around his ass and that everyone was his slave, especially Roxanne. On both the junior and senior prom at the school, he took Roxanne to the prom, but he didn't dance with her at all. He left her to be all alone and went to dance with the way more beautiful, more popular girls. As no one else would dance with her, she had to dance alone or – as she said in her own words – she imagined that she was dancing with me as I was there or if she remained in Spoonerville.

One thing that didn't change in Roxanne's school life in San Siesta was her dad refusing to let her try after school activities at all. It wasn't because they had so much work to do in Roger's garden; it was still because of his overprotectiveness. He had been overprotecting her ever since she was very young. The only reason he let her go to day care, elementary school, middle school and high school instead of being home-schooled by him was because her mother on her deathbed made him promise that he would before she died. And Roxanne knew she would never learn anything if her dad home-schooled her. Besides school and going to the shops to buy groceries, to the library to help with her homework and the hairdresser's to get her hair done, he never let her out of the house for anything else. Back in Spoonerville, when we went on dates, Roxanne had to lie to her dad by saying she was going to the library or the shops or the hairdressers. She felt bad about lying, but if she didn't, we wouldn't have had the wonderful high school relationship we had. One day Roxanne finally lost patience with her dad about it and demanded to know why he kept overprotecting her. He said it was because he didn't want to lose her the way he lost not only her mother in her car crash, but also her identical twin sister Emma, who died when she and Roxanne were both three. Ever since Roxanne found that she had a twin sister and she died before she could remember her at all, she felt very devastated about it. He didn't tell her about Emma the same time he told her that her mother died when she asked about her when she was very young because he thought telling her about losing Emma as well as losing her mother would upset her. It did upset Roxanne, but what upset her the most was her dad kept it a secret for all her life. She never forgot he meant well, but she was still upset that he didn't tell her sooner rather than later.

Then Roxanne told me about the time her dad died. One summer day, after she graduated high school in 2002 and at the age of 21, it was his day off and he went to the nearest bar to drink some well-earned beer after working very hard, but he got into a fight with some other men and he got accidentally got killed in the fight. During the trial, the man who killed him was very sorry and pleaded guilty to the manslaughter and was sentenced to twenty years in prison and paid Roxanne ten thousand dollars.

Since her high school graduation, Roxanne had been living alone in her motorhome and kept working not only in Roger's garden as a gardener, but also in the house as a maid, while Gavin went off to study at Rice University and went on the most expensive vacations ever and hosted parties to at the house so he could get drunk with his friends and he could have sex with as many women as he could, even married women. Even though Roger kept paying her twenty dollars a week, he never increased her pay wage when he and Gavin gave her more work to do. Even though she still got paid, she felt that they were treating her like a slave.

I felt very sorry for Roxanne as she told me her story. I was deeply scarred about what Mona did to me and all the other tough things I had to go through my life, but what I've been through was nothing compared to the hell she had to go through ever since she left Spoonerville.