Papi’s voice sounds like he’s talking underwater, like we do when we play at the pool. “Reyna, I wasn’t checking out. I was grieving our loss, and you treated it like a box to check off. I came to you, at least I tried to, but you never let me in. So I stopped trying.”
“Dios mio. So I guess it’s my fault. Is that right? Well, excuse me for not wallowing in self-pity while I tried to keep our family afloat. You know, the ones who are living and breathing,” she responds, breathing heavily from her nose. Mami takes a step back as she waves her hands in front of her in a crossing motion. I watch my father follow her steps, reaching his hand out to grab hers, but she snatches hers away as if his touch would burn her.
“It was hard for me too, Hector! I was trying to find a way to keep it together for Paloma’s sake. You didn’t give a shit about that. Talking wasn’t going to bring him back.” I don’t know what is happening, but Mami’s eyebrows are pointed in and scrunched up, her eyes wet from tears spilling down her cheeks.
“You’ve always been good at ignoring the problem simply because it won’t change the situation. It clearly didn’t help us. What about what we needed, you and I?” Papi says. And if I wasn’t supposed to be in bed fast asleep, I would beg her to please listen. He shakes his head. “You stopped seeing me a long time ago. Maybe this was your own way of ending it.”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare blame this all on me. You are the one who gave up on us. You were the one who stopped trying, and now you want to make me out to be the villain in your story.”
“Please, Reyna,” he scoffs. “There hasn't been an ‘us’ in years, and we both fucking know it.”
“Get out, Hector. Just go.”
“How could I have ever loved you when you’ve so easily forgotten I even existed!” Papi shouts.
“Go! I don’t want to see your face!” she screams as the door slams shut. My eyes follow her as she walks to lock the door, a sob overcoming her body. She yells out whatever it is she’s feeling just as her gaze lands on me. “Never trust a man with your heart, mija.”
That very moment presses in on me, reminding me why love isn’t in my future. It’s exactly why when I feel Cassidy’s soft hand rubbing my shoulder, I give her as much of a smile as I can work up. I didn’t fully realize the depth of hurt my parents were going through. How could an eight-year-old fully comprehend any of it? But now it’s all the reminder I need. There is no way I’m going to dump my souring mood on her plate right now, not when she is so over the moon with reconnecting with her teenage crush, knowing I have so much to work through. How can I begin to explain the issue fully when I don’t know how to walk myself through it?
“You okay, Lo?” she asks me, concern filling her eyes.
“Oh, you know, childhood trauma. I’m fine, babe!”
Her eyebrows shoot up, and she squints at me as if to check me over. “You do know you’re a terrible liar, right?” she says in a mocking tone.
“Yeah, I know. But I promise you, I’m fine.” I pull the towel off my shoulder and toss it into the bin beneath the counter so it's washed later. “Let’s save it for girls' night, okay? ‘Cause I gotta get out of here. You know my mom won’t let me hear the end of it if I’m late to lunch.”
She nods and begins to shoo me out of the bar. Swatting her away with a giggle, I grab my bag from the office and I’m pushing open the door to exit Shaken Tropes. Having that memory pop into my head, so clear like it was just yesterday, has turned my day upside down.
Pressing the start button in the car, I pull out of the parking lot with a silent thanks that I live close to my bar. I’ll be able to get home and thento Mami’s place in no time. I’ll never hear the end of it if I’m late. It’s been my mom and me since I was about nine. My parents having divorced, I chose to stay with Mami full-time when my dad slowly became a ghost in my life. He moved out of Cypress Lake and at first I hated it, but now, not running into him in such a small town makes it so much better. I don’t have to see him moving around the place I call home all while being a shell of a parent.
The tires crunch over the textured driveway. Gathering my bag and the water bottle I forgot in my car this morning, I jog up the drive and unlock my sunshine-yellow door.
My home is small, however, it has all the amenities I want, like the large primary bedroom and cozy kitchen. It was a model home and needed only a small amount of work to meet my standards. I’ve lived in this beauty for roughly five years.
The entire house has carpet aside from the maple-stained wood in the kitchen and bathrooms. An oversized two-seater orange sectional is set in the corner of the room with an old, round glass coffee table I found at a garage sale right in the center. The living room flows into the kitchen where a refinished, round dining table is tucked into the breakfast nook.
I drop my keys on top of the small island before heading down the hallway into my bedroom. My queen bed is set on a large, patterned rug where a round, wooden mandala headboard is displayed flush behind it. Another market steal, one that would need to be pulled from my cold, dead hands.
Waffles wraps around my legs. “Hey, mami’s boy,” I sing-song to my chunk of an orange cat.
Waffles meows from the floor, and I bend down to lift him into my arms, giving him a rub behind his ears. “If I don’t want to hearyour abuela’s mouth, I better hurry up, huh?” He answers me with a sandpaper lick across my hand before giving me a quick nibble.
“Loma, I thought you were going to be late,” Mami says the moment I open the door to Sweet Bean. With her getting up early to open the store and staying well past closing, she can’t always get away, so we make it a point to get together when we’re both available. It helps us stay connected.
“Bendición, mami.” Kissing her cheek, I push my sunglasses up headband style, my short magenta locks stick up like a cockatoo. I only know because my mom reaches over to tuck them out of the way. “You know if you are going to complain about mealmostbeing late, I could just be late,” laughing as she swats at me. I rush to say the rest, “I could just be late and you could complain about me really being late.” She swats at me again, whisper-yelling something motherly in Spanish.
She has everything ready at the table. “I saw the most handsome man come into the café yesterday, mija. I gave him your phone number.”
My head snaps in her direction. “You what?!” I am absolutely mortified. What poor man did my mother give my phone number to, and why can’t she be less meddlesome? “Mami! You can’t just give out my number to some random man. What if he’s a serial killer?”
She scoffs and stretches out the next word, “Nooo. He was a nice man. Handsome and a little older too, and he had beautiful hazel eyes, mija.He said he just moved back into town.”
My hopes soar at the thought of amber-hazel eyes staring back at me as I fluff his short dark curls. Before I let those memories take over, I stuff them back down where they belong.
“You are the most insufferable mother I have,” I say, breathless from embarrassment.
“I am the only mother you have.”
