I didn’t want her to get mad. I hated when she shouted and broke things. It scared me, and I’d run off and hide, even though that only made her angrier.
“OK, I promise I’ll keep it secret.”
Grandpa looked slightly tense as he looked around at the crowd. Then he smirked and got emotional, eyes filling with tears. He let go of my hand and walked off a few steps, stopping in front of a person I couldn’t see well and throwing his arms open.
“Daria!”
“Hey, Dad.”
“It’s been so long, honey. And I missed you so much.”
“I did, too,” the woman said. “Thanks for doing this for me.”
“She’s your daughter. How could I not?”
Grandpa stepped aside and let me see who he was talking with: a tall, blond woman with gray eyes and thin lips. She walked over and crouched down in front of me, taking one of my hands in hers. She was trembling, I noticed. Then she looked up and my heart started racing, though I didn’t know why.
“Hello, Maya,” she said.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Do you know who I am?”
I shook my head, even though a part of me suspected, as if my body recognized hers and she awakened some buried memory within me. My mouth was almost too dry to talk.
“No,” I said.
“You don’t remember me? Maya, it’s me. I’m your mother.”
We spent the day together. We ate ice cream, rode around in a boat, and talked about all kinds of things. It was an amazing Saturday. I didn’t have to be a dancer. I was just a girl talking about girls’ stuff with her mother.
Grandpa stayed with us the whole time, looking overjoyed. I think it was the happiest I ever saw him.
Later that afternoon, we were sitting on the patio of a bar. Grandpa had gone to order lemon ices, and she and I were alone. I had my coloring book and markers she had bought me on the table and was flipping through the pages. Nearby there was another girl eating with her parents.
I couldn’t stop looking at them, even though it made me sad.
“Why don’t you live with us?” I asked my mother.
She forced a smile, though I could tell she was sad. “Because Grandma and I don’t get along very well,” I said.
“How come I don’t live with you, then? I want to live with you.”
“Because you’re much better off with them, I promise.”
“But kids usually live with their parents, I know because all the kids in my class live with their parents.”
She sighed. “Not all of them do, Maya. Sometimes it’s impossible and the kids have to go live with other people who love them as much as their parents do.”
“I don’t know if Grandma does love me, though,” I told her.
“Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to answer the question; it was just something I felt. My mother’s expression turned sad, and I went on, “Like sometimes I don’t even feel like dancing. I like it, but I also want to go to basketball with my friend Estrella, or to the park, or to birthday parties…and Grandma won’t let me.”
“I understand,” she said.
I looked back at the little girl, whose father had sat her in his lap and was giving her a bunch of kisses on the cheek. They laughed and laughed, and even I couldn’t help smiling when I saw them. A thought came into my head unexpectedly.
