n as she hung up, she came into the room with that sharp expression she always wore when it came to my sister.
“Your sister is coming this afternoon with the baby,” she said. “
She needs this room more than you do.”
I thought it was a cruel joke.
My sister Daniela, two years younger than me, had just had a baby and had been the center of the house all her life.
Even so, I thought that not even my mother would be able to say that in front of a woman who had just had surgery.
“Mom, I can barely get up,” I told her. “
At least let me rest until Mateo gets back. Then we’ll figure something out.”
She didn’t even blink.
—You’re moving perfectly.
Start putting your things away.
My father, José, was leaning against the living room door, not looking at my face.
When I tried to stand up with Valeria in my arms and the pain bent my waist, I muttered that it was inhuman.
That’s when my mother lost control.
He came closer, grabbed my hair with one hand and pulled me towards the edge of the bed.
“Stop whining,” he yelled at me. “
Pack your bags and get out.”
I let out a groan because I felt a lash on the wound.
My father snorted, annoyed, as if I were making a scene on a whim.
“Get her out of here now,” he said. “
She’s making me uncomfortable.”
Daniela arrived ten minutes later with her stroller, a huge bag, and that usual half-smile.
She looked at my swollen eyes, the stained nightgown, the poorly closed suitcase by the door, and blurted out:
—Finally I’m going to have the room to myself,
without your drama.
I don’t remember exactly how I got downstairs. I only know that Valeria started crying, that I could barely see through my tears, and that the cold air outside cut my skin when I crossed the gate with one hand on my stomach and the other holding the bassinet.
Then Mateo’s car turned the corner.
He braked sharply when he saw me standing on the sidewalk, pale, disheveled, trembling.
She got out, left the pharmacy bag on the seat and looked first at my hands, then at my disheveled hair, then at the blood that was peeking out from under the fabric of my nightgown.
I told him just one sentence:
—They fired me.
Mateo looked up at my parents and my sister, who were still in the doorway. He didn’t shout. He didn’t make a fuss.
He reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a blue folder and his cell phone, and said in a voice so cold that even my mother took a step back:
—Nobody move.
They’ve just ruined their lives.
What was in that blue folder…
and why was that phrase the beginning of something that no one could stop?
Mateo didn’t waste a second arguing.
He helped me into the car with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the severe trembling in my jaw.
He fastened Valeria’s bassinet and, before starting the engine, took three photos.
One to my hair pulled out at my temple.
Another to the bag lying on the sidewalk.
And a third to my parents and Daniela at the building’s entrance.
My mother started yelling that he had no right.
But Mateo didn’t even look at her.
He drove straight to the emergency room of the hospital where I had been discharged the previous morning.
