The Daughter of Early Dew Drops

My favorite part about visiting my mother is leaving her.

It's the dew on the grass, the fresh wind of an early spring day just an hour before the crack of dawn, just in time to go to the airport.

“Mija” I hear her cry behind me.

She stumbles out of the front door in her shirt dress and chanclas stomping loudly on the payment.

“Porque no me despertaste?” Why didn't you wake me?, she asked.

“I didn't want to wake you”, I said in English.

“Qusge” She scoffs and gently pushes my shoulder.

“Quedate un poco mas. Te hago algo para comer.” Stay a little longer. I will make you something to eat.

“No, Mami. No puedo. Me tengo que ir.”

“Que?” she asked. Squinting at me like that will help her understand my marbled Spanish.

“I can't. I have to go. My flight leaves in 2 hours.”

Her understanding of English is leagues better than my ability to speak Spanish.

She scoffs again in her titular “Qshhe” sound that she makes through her gap teeth.

A sound that is a combo of the Spanish words for ‘Shutup’ and 'what?’ but with a violence that feels like a precursor to being spat in the face. It is always a start for new people who are not used to her constant disappointment. If she ever noticed how random strangers will flinch at the sound she never shows it.

But at my ripe age of 40, I no longer flinch.

I wait as she shakes her head. Her bouffant hair barely makes it to my nose but her rose shampoo starts competing with the morning dew under my nose.

“Voy con vos.” she said suddenly animated. Her pointer finger up in the air like an invisibly lightbulb was just turned on above her 5’1 frame.

“No. no, no Mami, it's fine. You don't have to do that.”

“Qsshe” she said, waving her hand.

Before I can protest further she turns back and gingerly walks back inside yelling in a voice stronger than her 90 year old body that she will be right back and I am to stay there.

I roll my eyes and stomp my foot and then immediately feel like a stupid teenager with a mother too old and too strict for a 16 year old.

I let go of my carry on and sat on the long driveway that sits on the hill. My back is to the house that I grew up in.

I staunchly avoid a full frontal view of the house as much as I can. From the inside nothing seems wrong, but on the outside you can tell there is a hazardous left leaning tilt where the frame of the house looks like one rainstorm away from sliding down the hill.

Yet, I swear it's the tall grass that surrounds us that I believe has prevented my mother from dying in a mudslide.

From where I sit I see the hints of purple peaking up just above the horizon promising another hot day in Texas. Thankfully, my mother's rose perfume has now left my air and the gentle dew drops of grass and the flap of dragon fly wings waft back to me. The smell of dew getting stronger and stronger with each degree of warmth.

I take a deep breath.

My last one before I am back under the roses.

—-

Her small frame barely makes it over the dash board. If you were to cross in front of our car you will see a middle aged woman and the top of a frizzy poodle head and not know it was a woman.

One of these days, she will be told to sit on a booster seat. A remark where I can confidently see flying spit after she scoffs.

She sits with her tattered fur coat in the chilly morning air with oversized sunglasses.

I have seen teenagers gawk at her tiny frame and bold appearance with the murmurings of “woah, what an icon” or “I want to be her when I am old.”

A stark contrast of the whispers I heard of her when I was younger.

“Bruja.”

Witch.

“Maldita puta”

Damned slut.

Whispers that have become more and more infrequent as her peers in this once small town have either died off or been bullied out by the mob of new strip malls and franchises.

If the rumors are true, then whatever magic my mother used to protect our land, was one that she refused to share with the town.

I guess outliving your haters is iconic. I cringe inwardly at my inner dialogue. But sometimes the jargon of pre-teen (one I should have by now) fills my thoughts. Sometimes I wonder if my desire for having a child is what has been making me feel like a child.

I crack open a window to let the breeze dilute the intoxication of roses.

After two weeks of staying at her home under the guise of helping her take care of it in her old age and not my pending divorce- I have not had a moment alone since.

Her scratchy bachata vinyles waking me up before she yells that breakfast is ready.

We barely spoke in the two weeks, just two phantoms drifting by each other cleaning, letting the music fill what I don't want to admit but I know she knows.

My mother sits quietly with her hands tucked neatly over her purse while soft techno music plays over the radio.

“Qshe” she hisses. She tries to reach over the sound button to turn off the music.

I forgot how much she dislikes the tejano music of the region. It didn't help that it was one of the oldies that her previous living clients had singing from their cars when they came by the house.

I see the frown lines appear in between her eyes brows and I know instinctively she is back in her memories.

“¿Estás bien, mami?” are you okay, Mami?

“Qshe” she scoffs angrily now.

We have never talked much but the past two weeks I have seen the same frown she’s made growing up when she heard whispers about her. When the same people who side eyed her at church, will come to our doorstep seeking her herbs- the hurt, the loneliness he never admits to having manifested in two deep creases between her eye brows.

I would know since I inherited them.

“Mom.” I said sharply.

I can feel her eyes roll.

“Mami” she corrects in kind.

“Mom.” I repeated. Forcibly now.

She crosses her arms as if she knows the teenager in the car.

“Are you okay?” I asked gently.

I look over to her facing out the window. And in the subtlest movements in shadow I see her chin wobble.

I immediately press the blinker and start to merge right toward the exit.

“Mija” my mom responds startled.

“Que estas haciendo? ¡Vas a a pedir tu vuelo!”What are you doing? You are going to miss your flight! she screams. Her shrills engulf my tiny sedan and escape out of the crack in my window with the other buzzing bugs.

I ignore her and finally do what I've been avoiding for the past month and park the car on the side of a blue bonnet field and turn off the engine.

“Bernard and I are getting a divorce.” I finally say.

“I know.” she replies meekly.

My head snaps to her tiny frame in the passenger seat.

“Una mama sabe.” a mother knows. She shrugs.

I look back at her in shock.

“You spoke English.”

“Hablo ingles!”

“Not to me!”

I yell back.

She looks down.

“Mija, porque veniste a casa. Porque no me hablaste sobre el divorcio. Te puedo ayudar. Necesitas dinero? Bernard no era malo hombre. Boludo, si pero malo no.- te hice algo mal? Te pego?”

“Oh god, no mom! He didn't hit me! And no, I don't need money!”

“Y bueno, ¡no grites! Entonces, ¿Por qué le estás divorciando?” Well, don't yell. Then why are you divorcing him?

At this my hands slam down on the steering wheel startling me and her.

“Are you kidding me?” I cry out.

“I am not the only one who has barely spoken these past two weeks. This is the first time you even asked.”

“Qdshe!” she scoffs and now indignantly turns to the window. Arms crossed again.

“No! No, you can't do that. You can't ignore me again when you have been doing that to me every time I have asked you a question.”

“Not true. You ignore me. You very sensitive. I didn't want to see you cry,”

“What is up with the English?!”

“Parre de gritar!”

“No! No, mom I won't. Okay, yes. Yes, me and Bernard are getting a divorce. But that's not why I came. I came to help you get into the house and to talk to you about moving out-”

“Qshe!”

My fingers press the door lock right as her hands try to pry the door open.

“¡Abrir la puerta!”

“No!”

“Abrijla AHORA!”

“No! No! Enough. Basta! I want answers okay. Okay, I came home to talk to you about senior assisted living- stop doing that! I wont open the door!”

“Mentira!” Lies

“What? I cry. What am I lying about?”

She pulls on the door handle one last time and then slumps angrily in her seat.

She looks at me from the corner of her eye.

“Beranrdo.”

“I am not lying about Bernard. We are getting a di-

“No. No. No we. Bernardo divorcing you. I know it.”

My mouth hangs as angry acid boils in my diaphragm.

I lean against the side window. Trying to get a better picture of my mother. Trying to escape her clouds of roses.

Gasping I try to reach for words but she stuns me into silence again when she speaks with her accent laying heaving on each word with humidity.

“I know about the divorce. Bernardo called me.”

The acid has made its way to my ribs.

“He told you.”

“No. No, he didn't but he asked about you. He asked about your father?”

“What? My father? But you always-”

“I know. I know.”

She takes a deep breath and with two shaking hands she removes her wide sunglasses and turns to look at me.

The most direct gaze I have gotten from her since I visited.

“He asked about why you don't have a baby.”

I closed my eyes and steeled over the wave of nausea that overcame me.”

“Malcriado” spoiled brat.

“Thats why he called?” I said with my eyes still shut. Breathing through my nose.

“Si.”

“But wait, what does that have to do with Mr. Andreo? You said he asked about father?”

She takes a steading intake of breath. And slowly responds again in English. Each word with seconds in between as she is carefully picking her words.

“He wanted to know how I got pregnant.”

“What?!”

“Si. He wanted to know how Senor Andreo got me pregnant. But I told him! I told him that he didn't get me pregnant.”

I let out an exasperated laugh, drowning out what I knew she was going to say next.

“That no man got me pregnant.”

I keep laughing as I reach over to the ignition to turn on the car again.

Time to get the fuck out of her.

“It's true.” she says meekly.

I sigh again. Not turning off the car but not leaving the park. Her small voice floods me with guilt. I turn to look at her and I see a small woman avoiding looking at me.

“Mami,” I said.

“It's true!” she repeated. Her hands were shaking.

“No podria! No podria!”

“You couldn't?” I asked

“Have a baby,” she says.

“Like you.” This time she jabbed her finger not tauntingly but also not gentle into my arm.

“But mom-” I said again with an eye

“Basta con ‘mom’”, she says with her fingers a quotation mark.

“Yo soy tu mami. No tu’ Mother’ or tu ‘mom’”

“Okay, mom-mami, that's beside the point. You can't keep doing this to me. I am 45 years old and you never told me who my father is and everyone in town told me it was Señor Andreo but you always deny it.”

“Because it's true!”

“HOW?” I screamed.

The volume of my voice surprises me as much as the sob that breaks me. Tears flood out and the dam is broken. I hunch over and realize that my question was more desperation than frustration.

I feel soft fur tickle the bottom of my nose as small arms envelope me. So light and fragile as I return her hug. As if her bones were hollow like a bird's.

“Mija,” she murmurs.

I keep sobbing into her fur coat. My snot runs down and matting its surface as her delicate hands brush the hair on my head.

“Ssshhh” she says and starts to gently sing me a lullaby as we rock back and forth.

“Arrorró, mi niña

Arrorró, mi sol

Arrorró pedazo

De mi corazón”

We stayed like that long enough for me to realize that I will never catch my flight back to New York now.

Once my snobs subside I feel her hands lift my heavy head and brush out the tears.

“Mija. Do you want a baby?”

I nod my head because if I answered I would never stop crying.

“Mija. I never lie to you. You do not have a father-”

“But that’s imposs-”

“Shhh” she says again with her finger to my lips.

“Yes it is. I will show you.”

I snap my head so fast I feel a rush at my temples.

“You will?”

“Si Mija. Si.”

—-

An 15 minutes later we are in her garden. The sky is now lighting gup in lighter blues each minute. The soft dew smell is mingling with the Roses that line the fence and the perimeter.

Regardless of what anyone said about my mother, the witch rumors weren't helped by her mysteriously flourishing rose garden that grows all year around and in hard clay soil.

I stood there exhausted like all my crying was actually running a marathon.

“Venga” she says beckoning me to follow her. She barely passes the native wildflowers that mark the path, but I continue behind until we reach the edge of her property where a wild rose bush grows on rocks and cactuses.

She bends down and starts to remove heavy sand stones from underneath the thorny bush.

“Woah woah.” I cry. “Here let me”

She points at which rocks to move and despite how close I get to the thorns, none prick. At every chance the wind drifts and slightly changes the angle of vines to avoid hurting me.

“Ayi.” there. She says pointing right where the roots of the rose bush begin. She slaps my chest with a hand shovel.

“Dig,” she commands.