Page 2 of Falling for You

“Wait. I thought that happened when you got pregnant with me?”

“Oh it did. I’d gotten back on their good side, then “didn’t learn my lesson,” in their words, obviously, when I got pregnant again. And the fact that it was once again by a “white guy” put them over the edge. They’d forgiven me once, but wouldn’t do it a second time. So I once again came to the states, pregnant but this time completely alone.”

She pauses, another coughing fit causing her to need to sit up farther. A nurse comes in, checks her monitors and refills her water. I take the moment to collect myself and walk to the window in her room, looking out over the beautiful gardens. I wrap my arms around my chest, giving myself a hug. It’s too much for me to deal with right now. Between knowing my mother is in her last days on this earth and finding out I have an older brother somewhere, my brain can’t keep up.

“Doing okay, Valeria? Can I get you anything else?”

“I’m fine,” Mom says, waving away the nurse’s concern. She nods and leaves, quietly shutting the door behind her.

“Do you know how many questions I have for you?”

“Yes. And I’ll answer anything you ask me.”

“With honesty?” I ask and know it’s a bitchy thing to say considering these are the last moments I’ll have with her.

“Of course. I shouldn’t have waited this long to tell you, Chloe, and I know that. You deserved to know a long time ago. You deserved to have more of a family than just me.”

Her words break my heart for both of us. I did deserve that, but so did she. Still, I never felt like I was missing anything because she was always enough. “Mom, you are all I need. Always have been.”

“You say that, but you don’t know what I stole from you.”

“Explain it to me, then,” I try not to snap at her. She hasn’t spoken this many words, or been this awake, in weeks and I’m soaking up every syllable that comes from her lips. “Tell me why. When you moved back here to have me, why didn’t you go find your son? Damn, Mom. How could you just abandon him that way?”

“I looked up Paul and your brother when I got back to the U.S., found out they were still living in the same place and I could go to them easily. But… I had nothing to offer them.”

I pound on my chest as tears well up in my eyes. “Me. You had me to offer them, Mom!”

She looks down at her lap and nods. “I know that now, Chloe. But at the time, I only saw me as the girl who abandoned my baby with a guy I barely knew. And here I was, in the exact same situation I had been in years before. I was a mess and needed to get my life together.”

“But you did get your life together,” I argue, because she did. She’s the reason I’m a hair stylist in the first place. She worked her butt off, got her cosmetology license and eventually was able to open her own salon. My love for the business was ingrained in me from a young age.

“And once I did, I realized how good things were with just us. When I moved back to Mexico, I had accepted the fact that I gave up any rights to that little boy. You were my second chance, Chloe. I’m not strong like you, or brave. I don’t have much to give and I made the choice, right or wrong, to focus all my energy on raising you.”

“So why tell me all this now?”

“Because you know how this ends, sweetie. And I can’t leave you without telling you that you have more family than just me.”

“How is he my family? I don’t know him.”

“But you could,” she reminds me, quietly.

“Why would I?”

“I thought…” she stops talking, lays her head back against her pillow and gazes to the ceiling. Swallowing hard, she squeezes her eyes tight, a tear escapes the corner and she doesn’t wipe it away. “I thought if I told you that you have a brother, you’d be able to have a family after I’m gone.”

“I don’t want anyone else, Mom. And stop talking about being gone. You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Chloe,” she says on a long exhale. “Yes, we do.”

“You don’t,” I snap, instantly regretting my tone. “I’m sorry, Mom. But I can’t think that way. I can’t. A life without you doesn’t exist in my world.”

I throw myself onto her bed, wrapping my arms around her legs as we both break down weeping. I don’t know how long I lie there, holding onto what I know are the last few moments I’ll share with my mother, but it’s dark outside when I wake up. My eyes burn from crying, my throat is scratchy and I reach for her cup and sip on some water to try to ease the irritation.

She’s gazing at me, holding an envelope with the name Paul on it. There’s a sticky note attached with a phone number.

“Please, sweetie. I need this. Need you to call him.”

I grip the envelope tightly with both hands, my body trembling. From fear or sadness, I don’t know. Probably both.

---