La Buena Vida 4

[WP] An Orphan is looking for a home.

******

The woman froze as I uttered those words, but her features relaxed as she sipped on the wine in her glass and looked at Silva.

“It seems every girl you bring here is more deranged than the previous one.”

******

It was her alright.

Martina Velasquez.

The woman I called mother was an angel to me growing up. Family was more important than anything else. Our father Paulo was an engineer, and though we didn’t exactly live in luxury, we had what we needed, and what we didn’t, the laughs and happiness made up for it.

Dad would lift us up and carry us on his shoulders – even when I was 13. My mother would disapprove of it, or at least she spoke against it, but the smile on her face told another story. I felt on top of the world. I loved my siblings, the cute angels. They were so dear to me. I loved my parents, my house, and my friends at school.

I was still a happy teenager living in that fantasy world; the world were life is a bed of roses and nothing ever goes wrong. That’s why I was never prepared for what life truly was; what cancer was.

“Pancreatic cancer.”

I didn’t understand the big words.

All I knew was that father was in a wooden coffin, and the priest was uttering words that just flew above my ears. The tears in my eyes rolled down, highlighting the path my tear troughs had given them to roll down my face. But I wasn’t crying voluntarily – I had cried enough since I learned of his death two weeks before the burial.

But the emotional destruction I was not even aware of was affecting me. The shoulder rides, the trips to the amusement park, the tickles and the airplane tricks he used to make sure we ate our veggies – all of that was gone. It wasn’t like mom was a bad person to be with – she was kind, nice and fun to be around, sometimes, but she just couldn’t replace him.

And, as I found out later, she had no plans of doing that anyway.

After Dad’s death, it seemed my eyes opened, and I began to see how hard it was to make a living, and how hard life was going to be now. The economy was becoming more of a nightmare daily, and it wasn’t up to a month after Dad had died that I had to take a break from school to join my mom at the market and at our little garden. We could only manage to put food on the table and ensure that Gregorio and Maria got through junior school at least.

I didn’t particularly like it; I didn’t like to lose my friends or have them see me in the stall like that, but my mother told me that my fate was different from theirs, and that I should forget them and focus on how to help myself and my family.

That I’d meet them another day when things were better, and I was successful. For a moment, I believed her fanciful words. That I would one day be wealthy and look back on these times with a smile.

“Dear Mariela,’

I’m sorry about this, but I can’t handle it anymore. Paulo’s death, the situation of the family, it’s all too much. I cannot do this anymore. In this package is 300 dollars, which is about three-quarters of what your father left behind. Use it to take care of your siblings until I’m back. I’m going to America to do what I can. I will be back for you soon, I promise. I’ll come back and we’ll be happy again. Please don’t hate me. I’m doing this for us, so we can be happy. I know you’ll understand Mari, you’ve always been a bright child. Be good to them and to yourself, work hard and make sure everything’s okay while I try to find something better for us abroad.

Love, mom.”

The letter tore my heart apart in pieces. I didn’t need the money... I needed her. More than ever. In these trying times, in this moment of my desperation. How could she leave me? How could she leave us like this now?

Suicidal thoughts followed over the next few weeks as I struggled on my own to make ends meet, as I lied to my siblings about mother’s location, as heard the gossip flying around about me, about my mother, about my family. But I stayed in it for that letter, for my siblings, for all my dwindling hopes, believing that she would one day be back.

That we would one day meet again.

And here she was.

******

“W-what do you mean? Mom! Martina Velasquez? You’re my mother!”

Silva looked at her questioningly as though hoping for an explanation or a tearful moment of recognition. I secretly yearned for it too, to be in the embrace of someone who loved and cared for me, and not because he paid to own me for the next hour or two. But her icy gaze fixed on me told another story.

She then looked at Silva disdainfully. “Well, will you shut her up or do I have to do it myself?”

Silva turned to me, his face grim “I’ll do it myself. Now you, Mariela, I don’t know what happened since you left; it was a long while, I admit, but not too long for you to lose your senses. You’re still a gold mine for me.”

“You don’t own me anymore! I’ve paid my damn debts; let me go you bastard!”

He stood up, smiling as he poured a drink into a glass and approached me, offering me the drink. I refused, turning away, but he slapped me and kicked me, the fury in his eyes visible.

“Are you going to kill another one of them now?” the woman asked.

“Hmph,” he sighed, bending down and squeezing my chin. My mouth was forced open and he poured the drink in. “I’m trying to help you here. You look like sh!t, and you’ve sure passed through sh*t since you escaped. Why would you leave a perfectly peaceful life at the club?”

He walked back to the bottle, poured another glass and took out a tiny parcel from his pocket. Pouring a white powder from the parcel into the drink, he came back and forced it down my throat. “Things were good there, you were paid and treated right if you behaved. But not anymore now that you’re here.” He said, thrusting his hands into my bra and pulling out all the money I’d saved up plus Ginger’s.

“This was your escape fund, huh?” he said, scoffing while the woman laughed. Mother, help! I cursed in my mind, trying to snatch it away from him. “How long did it take to accumulate all this? And then you added poor Ginger’s money into it as well. Sneaky, I’ll give you that, Mariela. You’re a bright girl.” He said, picking up a lighter and igniting the bundle of money in his hands.

“No!” I screamed, trying to jump at him, but my body was weak. Whatever did he put in that drink?

“But, there’s no room for smartasses here. When you get sent here, you’ve signed away all your freedom. You’re just like a car in my garage – property used for my pleasure and occasionally, income generation. Here, you don’t get to keep any money – you don’t earn sh!t. You work, you work and you work again, until maybe when you die of AIDS.”

This is what it meant to be here?

“Of course, you could try committing suicide, but trust me, that won’t be allowed to happen. You’ll be monitored every hour of your life, so trust me to milk you as my cash cow for all you’re worth.”

I groaned as my head became light and the room became dark.

“Enjoy your stay here, Mariela. It’s a preparation for the hell you’ll go to when you die.”

All went blank.

******

I had no track of time, so I did not know what time it was or how long I had been unconscious. From the small, barred window in my room, I could see that it was still dark, and that there was someone in my room.

Mom.

“Mom?”

“Don’t call me that, Mari.”

“Mari… you’re my mother. It’s you! How could you sit there and…?”

“Shut the f*ck up before I knock you out again, you piece of sh!t. What are you trying to do, get me caught?”

“Get you caught?” I whispered. “Don’t tell me that…”

“I already did my best for you by preventing you from getting hit any further earlier and also convincing him to allow you rest today. He really wanted to put you to work already. Consider it a nice gesture, for old times’ sake.”

“Old times’ sake? I don’t understand you, mom. Why are you working with this man? Where have you been? Do you have the slightest idea of what I and the twins have been through? You’re our mother and you left us there to rot while you came and joined this…monster of a man. You watch him do things like this to girls, people’s daughters…your own f*cking daughter.”

“I do not have a daughter.”

I was stunned. “What?”

“You’re an orphan, Mariela. An orphan looking for a place to call home, for hope, for whatever it is you still believe in. The fanciful promises Martina Velasquez made were borne out of foolishness, a belief that life is a fair playing ground. You’ve been through a lot, surely you’ve grown up; surely you can see that life doesn’t work like that. The person you called mother; the person called Martina Velasquez, is gone. I am Nina da Silva. Get used to that reality.”

******

@Hanzell, @Leo_kitti, @gertu13, @Gwenie I guess this story will be one that draws out emotions 😭