Logan Kahler

Writing example

Pregnancy to Perseverance

Clouds filled the sky as a light-tan-skinned teenager’s eyes brimmed with tears. She clutched a

white piece of plastic and waited. Two red lines appeared, triggering waterfalls to flow from her

eyes. Countless thoughts permeated her mind.

“My life is over. What is my mom going to say? How will I ever raise it?” Genesis Aguilar

said the moment she discovered she was pregnant at age 13.

The oldest of four children, Aguilar recalled her childhood being the most difficult time of her

life. The hot summers in Santa Ana and the cold winters in Mason City still resonate today.

The temperature was trivial compared with the upbringing she experienced as a young Latina in

America.

Born to two immigrant parents, a Mexican father and a Salvadoran mother, she faced emotional

hardship growing up.

“It wasn’t necessarily the fact that we didn’t have money. It’s that we didn’t have a dad,” Aguilar

muttered, with tears in her eyes.

She remembered a green gym bag, with a broken zipper resting on an old oak
entertainment center. Stained button-up shirts, ripped Wrangler carpenter jeans and an

assortment of tools and brushes were stuffed inside.

A dark-skinned man with a receding hairline mumbled words in Spanish and grasped the

shoulder strap of the old bag as he slowly walked out of the bedroom, down the hall of the

apartment and out of her life.

Three-year-old, fear-stricken Aguilar gripped her Tasmanian devil stuffed animal tight as her

father gave her one more look before he disappeared and was never heard from again.

Aguilar claimed the last words she remembers her father saying to her came after he was in a

fight with her mother. He told her, “Lo siento” which in English translates to, “I am sorry,”

before he stormed out of the apartment, the day before he left for good.

“Sometimes I wondered what life would have been like with him, but I think we were better off

without him,” she said.

Many years passed, and homes and friends changed while her immigrant mother struggled to

find and keep a job to support her growing family.

After working temporary, under-the-counter-paying jobs, she was forced to pack up her family

and relocate to find employment. After leaving Santa Ana, her family lived in Austin, Texas,

with her grandmother, then in Des Moines, Iowa, in the garage of a family friend.
The walls leaked insulation and filled the empty garage with a foul odor. She recalled one humid

evening when her mother brought home food from the restaurant where she worked for Aguilar

and her brother and sisters. Black take-out boxes filled with old pizza and cold fried chicken

always brought joy to the young, starving children.

After eating, they would go to sleep, but they would be awakened by the sound of rats scurrying

across the garage floor, searching for scraps of food.

Borther of Genesis, Sam Aguilar said, “It was gross, I was scared they were going to hurt me in

my sleep and sometimes I didn’t sleep.”

By the time Aguilar was 12, she had gotten a paper route. With the money she made, she was

able to purchase groceries for her family. While she shopped at the grocery store, she struggled

to reach items on the higher shelves.

One day a boy from school who towered over her helped her get ketchup from the top shelf. She

never expected this boy to help her, since he came from a rich family and different social group.

The boy looked at her and said, “I got it,” and with a big smile on his face said, “What’s your

name?”

Shaking in her steel-toed boots that had belonged to her father, she told him her name and

thanked him.
The boy said his father owned the movie theater in town and asked if she would like to go see the

showing of “Austin Powers” that night.

A mixture of anxiety and joy flushed through her body as she agreed to the offer. She never

expected this boy would change her life forever.

After the movie, the couple went back to his home, but she didn’t k

now his parents were out of the state. He looked at her and kissed her on the lips telling her,

“I love you” and started to undo her clothing.

Three weeks later, Aguilar became worried she might be pregnant. She remembered going to

Walgreens and stealing a pregnancy test out of embarrassment, returning home and finding out

the test came up positive.

After making the discovery, she approached the boy at school to tell him, but he denied ever

doing anything with her. Instead, the boy spread rumors about her, telling his friends he wasn’t

the only boy she had been intimate with.

Throughout middle school, Aguilar was teased and harassed by her peers for being pregnant.

“They would say really hurtful things but never took into consideration how I felt. I thought after

middle school, everything would be OK, but it got worse,” she said. “In high school, the

comments were terrible. I cried every time there was a dance. I mean, who wanted to go to a
dance with a teenage mom?”

She remembered an evening after she got out of class, walking to her car and finding the air had

been let out of her tires.

“Someone wrote swear words on the windows of my car and stole things from my center

console,” she said. “I got inside my car to find the title and insurance had been ripped up.”

Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, in late December of her senior year of high

school, two Child Protective Services officials

showed up at her family’s apartment.

They told her the living situation she was in was unfit for a child of her son,

Geovanni’s, age. They told her she had a week to turn over her parental rights to her child.

Afraid she would lose her son, she picked up extra shifts at her job at the town Pizza Hut. She

had to skip class and work on Christmas, but her paycheck wasn’t going to be issued for nine

days. She let her son live with her cousin for a week while she collected enough money to put a

deposit on an apartment.

“I wasn’t going to give Geo up for anything. I would go without eating, if it meant that he

could,” Aguilar said.

One week later, she was able to pool money with her mother and put a deposit down on an
apartment and inform the CPS she was in a different residence.

In the spring of 2012, Aguilar received two letters. The first was from Iowa State University

awarding her acceptance into the school. The second was an anonymous letter saying a

benefactor had been watching her grow up and wanted to help her with her finances to support

her son.

“I thought I was going to pass out,” she said. “I cried for hours with Geo in my arms, telling him

that it’s going to be all right.”

After the roller coaster of a life she has had so far, Aguilar has custody of her son, Geovanni, and

is attending Iowa State, studying graphic design and intends to become a graphic design artist for

a magazine publisher once she graduates.

Genesis Aguilar: (515) 269-3392

Sam Aguilar: (515) 269-8980

Beat sources:

ISD:

Ellen Bombela

Jenna Hrdlicka

Nik Heftman

Emily Schroer

Dani Gehr

Jake Dalbey

David Perrin

Tisa Tollenaar

Emily Clement

Alex Connor

Keaton Lane

Dalton Gackle

Isa Cournoyer

Thomas Nelson

Megan Gilbert

AHS:
Bella Anderson

Sam Stuve

Madi Franco

Tynan Shahidi

Tyler gross

UI:

Elianna Novitch

Karsa Zarei

Molly Hunter

Travis Coltrain

DMR:

Kim Norvell

Aaron Young

Tressa Glass

Susan Stapleton