A Private Family Matter by Victor Rivas Rivers

Author:Victor Rivas Rivers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Two weeks into practice, I stepped off the late bus that brought me home each day, which stopped on Red Road a few blocks from our house. The doors of the bus closed behind me and the roar of the engine muffled any other sound and left a trail of black oily smoke. As the smoke cleared I was about to turn to begin the short walk home when my attention was caught by a sight across the street, on the other side of Red Road.

Across the four lanes of busy Miami traffic, I saw a woman pushing a baby carriage. The woman reminded me instantly of my mother. But this happened all the time. Obviously, the tall Latina lady just coincidentally looked like Mami, or did so because of my desire for it to be her. Still, when the woman saw me looking in her direction, her face lit up with a brilliant smile. Then she waved at me. Was this a mirage? A fantasy?

My first impulse was to turn around to see if she was waving at someone behind me. No, I guessed not. I looked back and saw her motioning for me to cross the street toward her. Zigzagging across Red Road’s busy four lanes, I never took my eyes off her, and by the time I was standing on the yellow dividing line, I knew that it was her. It was Mami!

Once on the other sidewalk, I ran to her, afraid she might disappear like an apparition in the movies. Inexperience be damned, I grabbed her and hugged her on the spot, clumsily leaning down to give her a peck on the cheek. Careful not to squeeze too hard, I just wanted to hold on and never let go.

Mami knew that she couldn’t keep me long and hurried to fill in the gaps of what had happened since the day she disappeared seven months earlier, a version of which she eventually put into written form. She recalled that the day my father threw her out of the house in the early morning hours, July 24, 1970, happened to mark the date of her seventeenth wedding anniversary. She was four months pregnant by then and Dad threatened her and us if she dared make a scene, ordering her to get her things.

He shoved me out the back door and I left with a small box of items and my Saint Barbara statue and a few dollars in my purse. He dropped me off in a small motel…. I went to a local market and bought bread with strawberry jelly and that is what I had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Next to me was a hamburger stand and the smell drove me crazy. Plus, being pregnant, I was hungrier than normal. I called several friends asking for help but they all turned me down, saying that it was too much responsibility to take on. I became very anxious in that small room not knowing what I would do next.

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