by Tara West
Thinking about Andrés makes me smile, which is strange because yesterday morning, the sight of his empty coffee cup made me weep.
I know I’m not smiling because I’m over him, because I’m definitely not. I’m smiling because this strange sense of joy washes over me. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m going to meet my mom this week. My real mom.
All I have to do is summon the nerve to call her. She left her phone number at the end of her message. I’m tempted to just text her, but I know that’s taking the easy way out, not to mention tacky.
Before I can make a decision, someone’s knocking on my door. I can tell by the way the whole door rattles from the heavy pounding, it must be Grace. Sure enough, she’s standing on the other side, wearing PJs and flip-flops, her hair pulled back in a messy bun. She holds up a white bag, waving it in my face. My senses are assailed by the smell of warm, buttery tortillas and spicy chorizo.
Bless her, she got breakfast tacos!
Without saying a word, she steps inside my apartment, looks around and then walks into my kitchen. She sets the bag on the counter.
Arching a brow, she looks me over. “You doing better today?”
I feel like a pressure cooker ready to burst. “Yes!” I squeal as I jump up on my toes.
I can’t wait to tell Grace about my new family, but as the hollow ache in my stomach makes a loud rumble, my hunger takes priority. I grab the bag off the counter and dump the contents onto the dining table. I’m famished. I’d hardly eaten anything since Andrés walked out. Now, I feel like I could down a dozen breakfast tacos, but Grace only brought two, so I’ll have to make do. I sit at the table and proceed to smother my tacos in pico de gallo.
Grace pulls up a seat across from me and eyes me pointedly. “You going to share?”
“No way!” I hunch over my tacos, laughing. “Back off of my breakfast.”
“Not the food.” She rolls her eyes. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“I think it’s best if you read it.” I pick up my phone and pull up my Facebook message. “Here.” I slide the phone toward her and eye her with bated breath.
Grace’s eyes widen, and she drops the phone on the table. “Oh my fucking God!”
I laugh. “Pretty amazing, right?”
“Are you going to call her?”
I know I need to, but I still haven’t totally committed to the idea. I mean, what am I supposed to say? I shrug as I take a bite of my taco. “I’m thinking maybe.”
“You have to call her!”
“All right,” I say, washing down my food with a huge swallow of coffee. Yuk! Creamer overload! I miss Andrés’s coffee. He always blended it just right. I look at Grace, who doesn’t seem to care my taste buds are about to go into anaphylactic shock.
I get up and dump half my coffee in the sink and top off the rest with hot water. I stir the liquid while looking out the back window at the little patch of dead grass in our compact backyard. Correction: my backyard. I keep forgetting Andrés walked out on me. It’s so hard to figure out what to do about my mom when I’ve got all these conflicting emotions about him swirling around in my brain. I take another sip of coffee, trying to clear my head. It’s weak, very weak, and I know I’ll need to brew another cup. I have a feeling I’ll be needing extra energy to get through the day.
I turn to Grace. She’s sitting at my table, as still as a statue, looking at me with an expectant grin. “I need to think what to say.” I worry my bottom lip while staring down into my empty mug. “Am I supposed to call her mom or Jenny?”
“You should start with Jenny,” Grace says. “She didn’t raise you.” And then she taps the screen on my phone and holds it out to me. I see the 210 number, and my heart hits the floor.
“What are you doing?” I rasp.
She flashes a sideways smile. “I dialed her for you.”
“No, wait!” I lurch forward and snatch the phone from her.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice projects from the receiver.
Shit!
Grace points at the phone. “Answer her,” she mouths.
My heart bangs out a loud drumbeat in my ears, and all the moisture in my throat dries up, like I’ve just swallowed a wad of cotton. “Hi.” The sound of my voice sounds foreign to me, and I feel weightless. It’s as if someone else is speaking through my mouth. “M—Jenny, this is Christina.”
I hear a deep sigh, and then she answers. “I was worried you wouldn’t call.”
Wow. Her voice is different than I expected, so unlike the unnerving nails-on-chalkboard tone of my adoptive mother.
“Me, too,” I answer with a nervous laugh. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m at a loss for words, too,” she says. “I always choke up when I’m nervous.” Though her voice is slightly deeper than mine, there’s something about the soft caress of her tone that makes me feel at ease.
“Me, too,” I say.
“Do you have plans for Thanksgiving, Christina?” she asks. I love the way she says Christina with such emotion, as if she’s wrapping my name in a warm embrace.
This is silly. She might be my birth mother, but that doesn’t mean she loves me. Maybe she’s only connecting with me because her conscience is telling her it’s the right thing to do. Maybe she’s being kind to me because she feels bad my adoptive mother and I aren’t speaking to each other.
Maybe she loves you.
I shake my head at the thought. If she loved me, it would be too good to be true, and after my parents and Andrés broke my heart, I don’t know if I should let myself believe in fairytales anymore. I don’t think I could handle another heartbreak.
But she’s waiting for an answer, so I finally summon the words. “Not really.”
“Oh, I would love it if you could spend time with us.” Her enthusiasm is almost palpable.
“Okay,” I answer, hesitant to say more.
Her squeal is so loud, I have to pull the phone away from my ear. “You will? Oh, Christina…when can you come down?”
“Any time,” I say. “I’m off all week.” Andrés and I had taken time off because were supposed to visit his cousin in Houston for a few days. Then I regret telling her I’d be free. I should have driven down for Thanksgiving and driven back that night, so if things don’t work out between us, I wouldn’t be subjected to an entire week of disappointment.
“Then come down now. Please,” she begs.
I’m hesitant to accept. “But Thanksgiving isn’t until the end of the week.”
“I know, but we need to catch up on a lifetime of missed memories.”
Gah, it pains my heart to hear her plead with me like this. She sounds like she genuinely wants to spend time with me, but I’ve been burned so many times. I hope she doesn’t have some ulterior motive, like maybe she needs a kidney donor. Nagging doubt plagues the back of my mind. I know she was a teen when she’d birthed me. I know she was too young to be a parent. But if she truly cares, why did she wait so long to contact me?
Grace is giving me the death stare. My shoulders fall as I exhale a shaky breath. “Okay. If you text me your address, I’ll drive down today.”
“Wonderful! I can’t wait to see you, sweetheart.”
I set my phone on the counter and look at Grace, startled to see her image is blurry. I guess I was so wrapped up in the moment, I had no idea I was crying.
Grace comes over to me and wraps me in a hug. “You have to do this,” she whispers in my ear.
“I know,” I say, but it won’t be easy.
Chapter Fifteen
Christina
Jenny’s house is pretty, a two-story with a semi-circular driveway, transom windows and a welcoming porch. I don’t notice until I get out of the car that she is sitting on a rocking chair outside the front door.
She rises and descends the steps, never taking her gaze from me. I’m standing by my car, unable to move, barely breathing as I watch my birth mother approach.
/> The closer she gets to me, the more I realize I’m staring at an older version of myself. As I look into her glossy green eyes, there’s no mistaking we’re related. We have to be. Not because she looks so much like me, but because I need her to be my real mom. Anyone other than that heartless shrew who raised me.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she says and holds out her arms. She stops a few feet short of me, and there is uncertainty in her eyes, like she’s afraid I won’t accept her. “I know I don’t deserve a hug, but I want one.” Tears spill over and run freely down her face.
“Hi.” It’s all I can manage before my throat constricts.
I take a shaky step forward. Then another. In the next moment, I’m wrapped in her embrace. My arms are like deadweights at my sides. I don’t think I could hug her back if I wanted to. The anxiety that consumed me during my two-hour drive to her house has finally taken its toll, and I feel emotionally and physically drained.
But it doesn’t seem to matter to this woman that I’m not hugging her. She’s holding me hard enough for the both of us, sobbing softly into my hair. “Not a day has gone by when I haven’t regretted giving you up. Not a single day.”
A wave of sorrow washes over me, and I struggle to fight back the tears, but a few slip out. I want so badly to ask her, “Then why did you do it?” but I bite my tongue. It’s too late for regrets, anyway. Besides, my heart has been stomped on so many times, and my soul is so weary, I don’t have the energy to wage a battle with her.
Finally, some of the strength returns to my arms, and I tentatively squeeze her back. Maybe this is a mistake, because she sobs even harder. We hold each other for several long moments, not speaking a word, just crying.
She finally pulls back and flashes a watery smile. “Are you ready to meet the rest of your family? Your brothers can’t wait to meet you.”
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “Sure.”
She entwines her fingers with mine. Such a simple gesture, but I feel an outpouring of love surge through me when she takes my hand.
“Come inside,” she says, leading me toward the house. “I’ll have Felix get your things.”
“Felix?”
“My husband.” Her eyes light up, making her look like a love-struck schoolgirl. “But I’m the only one who calls him that. Everyone else calls him Doc.” She laughs. “Even our sons call him that.”
I remember her husband’s pics from Facebook. She never wrote his name, just Doc. I assume he’s a doctor of some sort. In his pictures, he was usually holding my brothers.
I’m a little taken aback by what’s awaiting me inside Jenny’s house. Doc and the kids are standing in the foyer, all dressed up in slacks and sweaters.
Doc lets go of the boys’ hands and steps forward. He’s an average-sized man, with greying dark hair, wize eyes, and a slight paunch, but it’s his jovial smile that gets me, wide and unaffected, and it lights up his face.
“Christina, so nice to finally meet you.” He’s not as shy as Jenny about hugging. He grabs me before I get the chance to say “hello.”
He holds me at arm’s length while adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses that have fallen down his nose. “You’re the spitting image of your mother. So beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling the blush creep into my cheeks as I look at Jenny. It seems Doc’s smile is infectious, because she’s beaming at both of us.
Despite my resolve on the trip down I would not let my guard down, I feel that wall I built around my heart start to melt.
Damn. I don’t want to let them in. Not so fast, anyway, but they are so nice, and my stupid heart is quick to betray my better judgment.
The tallest of the boys, who looks to be no older than four, comes up to us and tugs on Doc’s pant leg. “I wanna hug,” he says.
Doc bends down and swoops him up, and my moth—Jenny picks up the other child.
“Gio.” Doc looks down at the boy in his arms before looking at his brother. “Manny, meet your sister.”
Gio and Manny are even cuter than their pictures. They could pass for twins, except Gio is about a head taller than Manny. They each have mops of dark brown hair, golden brown skin, and large green eyes. And as much as I love their eyes, it’s their smiles which get me, so full and luminescent, my heart fills with happiness just looking at them.
Gio points at me and says, “Did you bring me any toys?”
My jaw drops, and I look at Gio and then at Manny in stunned silence. Oh, crap. Was I supposed to bring toys?
“Gio!” Jenny says. “That’s not how you introduce yourself.”
Doc busts up laughing while bouncing Gio in his arms, and Jenny shakes her head, also laughing. Manny and Gio giggle, and I can’t help but join in as the last of the ice around my heart thaws.
* * *
“Boys! Boys! Settle down. She’s not your personal jungle-gym!” Jenny scolds my brothers for at least the tenth time. I’m sitting in an oversized leather chair in Jenny’s spacious living room, trying to take sips of lemonade, while two rambunctious boys crawl all over me.
Jenny and Doc sit on the sofa opposite me. Doc doesn’t seem to be bothered by their antics. Maybe it’s his easy nature, which is already rubbing off on me. His soothing aura permeates the room.
Looking at the way Jenny clutches his hand, I can tell Doc makes her happy, and I’m glad she found someone like him. So many times when I’ve been upset over an issue at school or work, Andrés was my calming presence, too. It pains me to think how much I miss him. I could have brought him here with me today. I bet Doc and Jenny would have loved him.
I nearly double over when Gio accidentally kicks me in the ribs as he claws up my side to whisper “a very important secret” in my ear.
The secret being that Manny still wears diapers to bed.
Manny isn’t too happy that Gio rats him out and proceeds to whack his brother on the head. The only problem is my head is between them.
So this is what it’s like to grow up with siblings. Andrés told me he and his cousins used to fight like this. My heart clenches at the memory of Andrés. I shake my head and try to clear dark thoughts. Today is supposed to be a happy day. I’m not going to let my broken heart ruin it.
Gio and Manny are at it again, whispering into my ears like little buzzing bees. This time, Manny tells me Gio was put in time-out for stealing cookies.
Ahhh. This explains it.
I was wondering what they fed these kids. Sugar topped with caffeine, no doubt. I get the feeling Manny and Gio probably snuck a few double-mocha lattes as well.
Doc gets up and comes over to me. “I’ll take them outside,” he says as he lifts Gio onto his shoulders.
“I don’t mind,” I say, looking up into Doc’s smiling eyes. “I love kids.” It’s true. Even though my brothers are literally being a pain in my side, I miss Gio almost instantly when Doc takes him away. Funny how it’s only taken a few moments of torture, and they’ve already grown on me.
“It’s okay.” Doc shrugs as he adjusts the glasses that have slipped down his nose again. “They need their vitamin D.”
“Hey, Doc, I wanna stay with Sissy!” Manny squeals as Doc lifts him off me.
“Not right now, mijo,” Doc says as Manny squirms in his arms.
My heart clenches again. Mijo is the masculine version of the Spanish endearment for “honey” or “child.” The term reminds me of the way Andrés called me his “mija.”
As Doc takes my brothers outside, I look away and struggle to get myself together. The wound from our breakup is too fresh, too raw, and I know it will take time for me to get over it, but here’s not the place for sulking.
I slowly release a pent-up breath as Jenny sits on the suede ottoman in front of my chair. She flashes a shaky grin before taking a sip of her lemonade.
I love Jenny’s furniture. The brown distressed suede and beautiful mahogany trim has a rustic, western look. It’s so comfy, so homey. It’s nothing at all like the stark white fur
niture in my adoptive mother’s home. The floors are a beautiful slate adorned with several western-style rugs, and the vaulted ceiling has huge oak beams running across it with three chandeliers made of distressed wood hanging from the center beam.
The huge bay windows at the back of the house offer a scenic view of the Texas Hill Country, reminding me of the landscape at Andrés’s uncle’s ranch. Andrés’s family would like my new family very much. A melancholy settles over me when I realize they’ll never meet.
The rest of the room is adorned with warm tapestries, many kinds of candles, and my digital artwork on her walls.
Oh, so that’s why she wanted them.
I wonder if she put them up before my visit, or if she really wanted them for her décor. I recognize one of the paintings I did for her, a landscape of the bluebonnets in full bloom in the Texas Hill Country. It hangs above the fireplace mantle, along with pictures of Jenny’s wedding, my brothers, and… omigod. My jaw drops as I rise on shaky legs and walk over to the mantle. The baby and kindergarten pictures Jenny had me paint of myself are framed on the mantle as well. I wonder if she put those there for my benefit, but I notice the pictures have a thin layer of dust on them, just like all the others.
Jenny appears beside me and points at my kindergarten picture. “That one’s my favorite,” she says.
I’ve got this big, goofy grin with two missing front teeth. I have to admit, I looked pretty cute, if it hadn’t been for that hideous pink bow The Spitting Cobra insisted I wear, or the starched, lacy collar that went all the way up my neck. I still remember how that thing itched the hell out of me.
Doc’s picture is beside mine. He’s wearing a white hospital coat and holding up a plaque. He’s got that same infectious grin that seems to be an extension of his character.
“So he’s a doctor?” I ask, and then I want to slap myself upside the head. Duh. But making conversation with the woman who gave me up twenty-one years ago isn’t exactly easy.
She smiles and nods. “A pediatrician.”