PART 1
Your sister and her husband keep your bedroom. You’re going to sleep in the garage.
That was the first thing my mom told me hours after I buried my husband.
He didn’t even look up from his cup of coffee. He just kept moving the spoon, like he was warning me that the next day it was going to rain. I stood in the corner of the kitchen, with the belly of eight months lasts for the fatigue and hands squeezing the green olive shirt of Diego, the last that I was left of him.
“Why the garage?” I asked, without air.
My mother, Elena, pointed the stairs with a perfectly painted nail.
“Ximena and Mauritius arrive today. They need your room. Mauricio works from home and wants to make his office there… and his playroom. You don’t take up so much space.
I felt something break inside me, but I didn’t cry. I had already cried everything I had since I was told that Diego would not return.
My dad, Rogelio, folded the paper and looked at me with that gesture that I always used when I wanted to make myself feel a burden.
“Since Diego died, you don’t bring anything. You lock yourself up with that computer all day. This house is not a hostel.
Listening to my husband’s name still hit me like a shot.
Diego Salazar, Special Forces Sergeant, was killed in an operation in the Sonora mountain range. His team asked for nighttime extraction, but an interference blocked communications and no one could locate it in time. For months there was no body, no goodbye, no nothing. Just that week Defense gave up his remains and we finally got to bury him. Diego never knew I was pregnant.
The front door opened and my sister came wrapped in expensive perfume, new boots and a smile of superiority that had always made me nauseous. Behind her came Mauricio, her new husband, with a ridiculously expensive clock and that way of walking of men who believe that the world owes them applause.
“Oh, Mariana, don’t go start with your scenes,” Ximena said, dropping into a chair. It’s temporary. Also, since you were widowed, you bring a very heavy energy. The house looks like a daily wake.
Mauricio let out a giggle.
“And the net, if it would be better if you didn’t spend crying near my video calls.
I looked at the three of them. I would have begged them a little humanity before. That version of me was over in Diego’s grave.
“Okay,” I said.
My mom smiled, satisfied.
“In the laundry room there is a folding bed. And pick up your things well. Mauricio is going to put the Audi in the center, I don’t want you to get in the way.
I went up the stairs without saying a word. I packed three maternity pants, several blouses, my work laptop and Diego’s plates, which I hung around my neck like armor. When I came down with my suitcase, no one helped me. No one felt bad. My family kept talking about the remodeling of my room as if I no longer existed.
The garage was freezing. It smelled of moisture, oil and abandonment. I sat on the campaign bed and put a hand on my belly. My daughter gave a kick, as if she knew that night we had been wanted to erase.
