Page 40 of Morena
And suddenly, I understood. That was why Carmen lived alone, why no man was by her side. She already had someone. But Lucía was married, forbidden. A love forbidden by law and people, but still alive, still burning.
A smile tugged at my lips. Carmen was happy. In love. She had lost once, and somehow found again.
I wanted that. I wanted to believe I could let go of my own pain, just as she had, and find something worth holding onto.
But all I could do was dream.
I closed my eyes, the whisper of their kiss still hanging in the air, and sleep finally took me.
It was around six when Carmen woke me. Her hands were trembling, and her face was wet from tears. I sat up slowly, still confused in a state of half-dream. She took my hand, pressed her lips to it, and whispered with a voice that broke my world apart:
“Your mamá, mi vida… she died last night.”
The words didn’t fit. They couldn’t.
“No.” My throat seized, the tears burning before they even fell. “No, she was okay... she was okay...” My body shook, my head refusing to believe. “She can’t... she can’t...”
The scream ripped out of me. I stumbled from the bed, shoving Carmen aside in blind panic. My bare feet slapped against the wooden stairs, and my hands slammed against the front door, which burst open, and I ran. I ran home.
But she was already gone.
The house was crowded with neighbors, carrying plates of food as if casseroles could replace a heartbeat. My father sat slumped with another bottle of whiskey in his fist, his knuckles still bruised from the blows from last night. My sister was crying in the corner with her friends, but the moment she saw me, her grief twisted to rage.
“It’s all your fault!” she screamed, tearing herself free to shove me hard against the doorway. “Where were you, huh? Where were you while she was dying?”
Her words cut.
I stared at my father, at those bruised hands, and no sound came from me but the rasp of my breath.
“You left her to die,” my sister spat. “I wish it were you instead.”
And the cruelest part was, I wished that too.
I turned away, numb, and slid down against the wall outside. I had never been my mother’s favorite. That bond had always been my sister’s. But still, I knew her pain, lived it through hereyes. I had seen the bruises, heard the insults, felt the silence that was louder each day.
She was mymamátoo. And he had broken her until she couldn’t bear it anymore.
She gave her life away one beating at a time, and I had known, deep inside,that one day she wouldn’t survive. And still I hadn’t stopped it.
People like to say time heals. But how can time heal a wound that never closed in the first place? I was already bleeding, and now the cut went too deep.
“Mi vida,” Carmen whispered, her arms sliding under mine, lifting me before I collapsed completely.
She held me like she always did, like a second mother.
“You’ll come live with me,” she murmured into my hair. “Both of you will.”
I nodded, too broken to speak. I couldn’t look at my father again, not when all I saw was the man who killed her, now sitting with crocodile tears and playing the grieving husband.
Carmen was right when she told me there’s a thin line between love and hate. People we love can turn quickly into people we hate.
1. What's up, little one?
2. Nothing
3. Women with dark features
4. My life, what happened?
