“Alphonso, wake up. You have visitors.”
He opened his eyes, looked at her, then around to the strangers standing nearby. The sisters moved closer to him and Maribel stepped aside.
“Hello. My name is Sofia and this is my sister Isabella.”
“Hi,” said Isabella.
“Who are you?” he asked in raspy voice.
“We are Oliva’s daughters. We flew out here because we wanted to meet you.” Sofia reached out to hold his hand.
“Oliva? She still alive?”
“Yes, sir. You also have another granddaughter named Lourdes. She’s back in Georgia.”
“I always wondered what happened to Oliva. She’s got three kids, huh? Where is she?”
“She’s resting in a post-surgery facility.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She just had, uh, a light procedure done. It’s nothing serious.”
“Is she coming here?”
“I’m sorry but I don’t think so.”
“That’s too bad. Can you give her a message for me?”
“Sure, what is it?”
He tugged at her hand to pull her a little closer. Sofia then felt warm, tobacco-scented spit hit her face. She jerked back, stumbling into her sister. She hurriedly wiped away the saliva with the back of her hand.
“As far as I’m concerned I don’t have a daughter!” He paused to let out a cough rattled by phlegm. “I don’t want to have nothing to do with Oliva or her bastards!”
Sofia stood frozen. She didn’t know what startled her more, that her newly found grandfather spat in her face or seeing the rancor now emanating from him.
Isabella tugged at her sister’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
They both quickly left the room with Maribel close on their heels.
“You’ll have to forgive Alphonso. He gets crankier every day.”
Sofia turned to her. “He’s a hell of lot more than just cranky! I have never had anyone do that to me before! We came here with the best of intentions. We just wanted to know more about our family. After that,” she pointed toward the bedroom, “I don’t even care anymore. I’m starting to see why my mother left here and never looked back. After two minutes with that man I’m about to do the same thing!”
She and Isabella hurried out of the house and back to the car. They ignored Maribel when she called for them to come back. Disappointed, Maribel watched the car take off down the street. They left before she had the chance to ask for a little cash for helping out their grandfather.
Chapter 66
“Where have you two been?” demanded Olivia as Sofia and Isabella entered her room. “Neither of you have answered your phones. I’ve been trying for the last day to reach you. You know Lourdes is off gallivanting with God knows who. Sofia, where is the outfit I asked you to get for me?”
She looked on as her daughters took nearby seats and sat stone-faced.
“What is it? You look like you just left a funeral.”
“You want to know where we’ve been?” asked Sofia.
“I just asked that didn’t I?”
“We were in California.”
“What were you doing in California?”
“Trying to find out more about a woman named Oliva Magdalena Delgado.”
Olivia stiffened her body in an effort to quell the sudden involuntary trembles and she felt like fainting.
“What did you just say?” Her voice was shaking from emotion.
“You heard me, Mother. You have lied to us about everything our whole lives. I’m sitting here looking at you and it’s like you’re a stranger. You even lied to us about your name for God’s sake! Your parents didn’t perish in a plane crash. They’re both alive. Your father is bedridden. Your mother is living in San Diego. Now do you want to fill in the blanks for us or do we have to continue to do our own investigating?”
“How did you find out?” Though the initial shock of her past making a reappearance hadn’t worn off, her mind went into a whirlwind on how to get out of her predicament as unscathed as possible.
“That doesn’t matter. Start talking.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything, Mother! Everything! Why did you lie about your parents being dead?!”
“Because as far as I’m concerned they are dead! I’ll finally tell you two what you want to know but I’m not going to apologize for what I’ve done!” After a few moments of silence, Olivia continued. “What was it like meeting my parents?”
“We only met your father and let’s just say,” began Sofia. “I got a little hint of what you may have put up with.”
“What did he do?”
“He told me to come closer so he could give me a message to pass on to you. Then he spit in my face.”
Olivia smirked and shook her head.
“I see time hasn’t mellowed him. Not too long before I left home we had a falling out and he spat in my face. That’s one of the worst things you can do to a person.”
“Yeah,” said Sofia. “That and lie to them about the truth of who they are.”
“If you had my history you’d do everything in your power to change it too.” She leaned back into the pillows. “My parents never wanted me. My father longed for a boy and my mother only wanted pets. She had things in reverse. She treated her dogs like children and her child like a dog. The whole time I spent in that house I was beaten on a regular basis. Three or four times a week was the norm.” She looked at her daughters. “I know you both think I’m the worst mother in the world but I’ve never beat you—ever!” Olivia paused for a few moments. “Here are just a couple of examples of what I went through. My hair was once so long it came to my waist. I used to wear it up in a ponytail all the time. Then I started wearing in down. I looked better than those girls in the shampoo commercials. I guess it brought me too much attention from men because my mother attacked me with scissors and cut off all my hair. When she was done I was practically bald. Another instance, I worked my butt off in a sweat shop one summer to buy myself new clothes and she and my father took them and burned them in a trash can in the back yard.”
“You worked in a sweat shop?” Sofia asked with skepticism. Her mother was the sort who would pay someone to come over to change a light bulb.
“Yes, I did. I wanted to have nice things and that was the only way I’d get them. My parents certainly wouldn’t provide them, even if they could. I wanted to die when I saw my clothes that I worked so hard for be destroyed. But that’s just the kind of people they are.”
“Do you remember Maribel?” inquired Isabella.
Olivia pressed her lips together to a tight line. “I remember that trouble maker. Why?”
“She said the same night your father was rushed to the hospital, you ran away. He sounds like a terrible man and we certainly got a glimpse of that, but wasn’t there a little part of you that still cared for him as your father and as a human being? He could’ve died for all you knew.”
“The reason I ran away that night…” She closed her eyes and worked on bringing the tears. “God help me. He beat me horribly. He was upset because I didn’t finish my chores. I was sick of getting beaten for the least little thing. When he was attacking me, something in me snapped, and I decided to fight back. I guess struggling with me put too much strain on his heart. He began clutching his chest and fell to the floor. I shouted for my mother who was asleep in her bedroom. She finally came in and called for the ambulance. When they went to the hospital, I gathered my few things and left. And I never looked back. Believe it or not but I did feel guilty that I’d helped bring on the attack. If I’d just done all my chores he wouldn’t have gotten so riled up.” The tears began to leak through her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes to fully release them. Through her blurred vision she was pleased to see the dismayed looks of her daughters.
Olivia leaned over and retrieved tissues from the box on the night table to dab her nose but not her eyes.
&n
bsp; “Mom, I’m so sorry you went through that. No one should endure that kind of abuse.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“But why would you lie about our heritage, though?” asked Isabella. “Were you ashamed of it?”
“I just wanted to become a new person and live a new life. I didn’t want any connections to the past. There was nothing in my old life to be proud of.”
“Who we are isn’t anything to be ashamed about,” Sofia retorted.
“It wasn’t like that for me. There was no sense of pride about our racial identity. My mother never even associated with her family much once she got married and I think it was because they reminded her of who she was. I remember overhearing her tell a friend of hers how the kids used to call her Memìn. That was a monkey-looking cartoon character back in Mexico. From what I gathered, most of the Mexican kids in her neighborhood made her life miserable because she was Black and the Black kids made fun of her family’s Mexican heritage and the fact they spoke Spanish. And my father never talked much about his background. Another thing is, I was harassed constantly at school by the white kids. Every single day I went to school I was called a spic.”
“But, when we went to your old neighborhood it looked to be all minorities,” said Isabella.
“Well, back then the neighborhood was mostly white—poor whites. Even though we all were in the same boat, they still looked down on me.”
“What made you choose Portuguese?” Isabella asked.
“Lourdes’s father was Portuguese and before your father he was the only person that was good to me. I guess I latched on to his identity.”
“You guess?” Sofia was finding it hard to contain her annoyance. “I don’t think you understand exactly what you’ve done. I know you and Lourdes couldn’t care less but Isabella and I have always felt strongly about celebrating our heritages. Now we’ve found out we’ve been celebrating one that’s not even ours! My God, I even learned to speak Portuguese because I thought it was a part of our ancestry.”
“I’m sorry! I know this is terrible news for you and I wish I could say you came from a better bloodline—”
Sofia held up her hand. “Whoa! Let’s get on the same page here. I’m not angry with you because of who we really are. I’m angry with you for not telling us the truth! Unlike you, I’m not the least bit ashamed!”
Olivia struggled to maintain her composure and not say what she really wanted to her daughter. In an instant she thought of a new twist to put on the story.
“I’m sorry but being ashamed was a seed that was planted in me from the time I was a child. And it was further reinforced by your father.”
“Our father?” Sofia and Isabella inquired in unison.
Olivia hung her head. “It’s the real reason your father left me. He found out about me.”
Sofia furiously shook her head and pointed at her mother.
“No, no. You had an affair. Right before Father died, I asked him why you two divorced and he finally told me because he thought I was mature enough to handle it.”
“I never cheated on your father, Sofia. He was the only man I ever loved, not including Lourdes’s father. Even after he turned on me, I never stopped loving him. Someone who used to live in the old neighborhood moved to LA and began working at Valente Construction a few years after we were married. I went to visit Gino at the office and this person recognized me and told your father who I was. After he confronted me, I admitted the truth. He had his lawyers draw up the divorce papers. Next thing I knew, he moved out here with you with two. He had more money and power. There was no way I could fight him.”
“If he had such a problem with your ethnicity why did he keep us?”
“Because Isabella, you were still a part of him.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Sofia. “He was very open-hearted and open-minded. Mrs. Hopkins said back in California he actually turned his back on a business deal because the client didn’t want the architect, who was African-American, to work on the project. His firm had the most minorities of any non-minority run company in the state.”
Olivia gave her daughter the most sincere look she could muster.
“I promise you, I never cheated on your father. He left me because he found out the truth about me. And obviously he had an issue with it or else he would have told you two about your true background long before he died. But he didn’t do that, did he?”
Neither of the girls responded.
“It was much easier to make up some non-existent affair than to tell you or the world who I really was. It’s funny because right before I was going to tell him, he found out. And that’s the honest truth. My conscience was getting the best of me and I decided to confess. I was just looking for the right time. But before I could do it…after seeing his reaction, I’ve never wanted to come clean again. I felt if the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with could treat me like that then I would continue the charade.”
Sofia didn’t believe a word that was coming from her mother’s mouth.
“Mom, I have to ask this,” began Isabella. “Maribel told us about your relationship with a young woman who lived down the street from you. She made it sound as if you two were—well, you know.”
“Lovers? Is that it? Maribel was the biggest liar on the block. She was forever on the hunt for some dirt. Somehow, she saw my friend and me hugging and ran to my parents, blowing everything out of proportion. I received the worst beating ever because of her lies. The lady in question was a few years older than me and was my only friend. And we were never anything more than that. After all these years, Maribel should stop spreading dirt like that, especially to my children.”
“You must’ve thought a great deal of her since Lourdes’s middle name is the same as hers,” said Isabella.
“Yes, I did think a great deal of her. She was my best and only friend.”
“What about Lourdes’s father?” asked Sofia. “Maribel said you became pregnant by Pilar’s brother but you’ve always said Lourdes’s father was an orphan like you claimed to be and he didn’t have any siblings.”
“No, her father was not Pilar’s brother. That’s another lie Maribel is spreading. She didn’t even know Lourdes’s father Ric. I may have lied about my life but what I said about Lourdes’s father is the God’s honest truth. He was Portuguese, an orphan and was killed in a motorcycle accident. By the way, how did you find out about everything?”
“Your little box in your closet,” Sofia answered. “It’s the same one I remember seeing when I was kid. I had no idea such a little box could contain something so huge.”
Olivia began crying again.
“What’s wrong?” asked Isabella.
“All the terrible memories are rushing back. I need to be alone for a while, okay?”
Sofia and Isabella both stood up. Isabella went to her mother and planted a kiss on her cheek.
“And I guess you should know we found out you have a half-brother,” said Sofia. “His name is David Stevens and you may actually want to have something to do with him since we hear he’s pretty well off.” Sofia walked out the door, not bothering to say good-bye.
Olivia listened for the sound of the elevator bell, letting her know they had left her floor. As soon as she heard it she began pounding the bed with fists in a blind fury. Her anger was at such a peak she all but forgot about any pain from her surgery.
That bitch, Sofia! How dare she ramble through my things like that? I should have put all that stuff away in a safety deposit box. Damn it, on second thought I should’ve just burned it! Why did I keep that stuff for so long? After all these years it all comes out. Damn you, Sofia! Damn you to hell!
Isabella stared blankly at the road ahead as Sofia drove. She was still reeling from the confrontation with their mother. She looked over at Sofia’s whose face was frowned up as it always did when she was deep in thought. Sofia glanced over at her as they were stopped at a light.
“I cannot believe you.
”
“What?”
“Why did you kiss her? You treated her as if everything she did was okay.”
“I know it’s not okay. But I feel sorry for her.”
“Feel sorry for her? Why would you feel sorry for her when she’s the one whose lied to us?! Colossal lies at that! You act as if she only lied about Santa Claus.”
“Just put yourself in her shoes for a minute. Imagine being made fun of and put down by other people for your racial background. And let’s not forget about Dad. He didn’t help the situation.”
“Oh no,” Sofia retorted. “I don’t believe it not for one solitary minute. After all, he isn’t here to defend himself now is he? All we have is her word and that’s not exactly worth its weight in gold. This is so typical of her, to get caught up in her own bull yet somehow makes herself the victim.”
“I do wish there was some truth to what Maribel said about our mother and that woman. It would give me the courage to tell her about me.”
“As I’ve already said, I don’t believe anything she says. Therefore it’s still possible that there was some truth to that as well. In any case you should want to tell her about you no matter what. And if Lourdes knew what was good for her she’d better check into what our mother has told her.”
Chapter 67
Sofia waited for a response from Mrs. Hopkins to the story she just told her. She retired a few years back and lived in a condo Gino left to her in his will. She kept in touch with Sofia and Isabella, speaking to and seeing them often.
“Sofia, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say something. Please. What are your thoughts? And you know you can be perfectly blunt with me. I can take it.”
Mrs. Hopkins took another sip of tea. After a few moments she continued.
“I hate to say this, I really do. I don’t want your relationship with your mother to be any more strained, but she’s not being truthful, at least about everything. I don’t know about her life growing up, but I do know she’s lying about your father.”
Sofia sighed in relief. She was glad it wasn’t just her who didn’t buy her mother’s story.
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