AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It feels as if I’ve gone through all of the motions these last couple of months, and definitely pretending through a lot of them.
But most of the time I feel numb. The numbness is when I feel the best. Because when I’m not numb, I feel everything. And everything feels shitty.
I’ve been back to work for a month now, I put on enough of a show to not get fired, but I still feel empty inside. Evan, the intern I started with, tries his best to make me smile each day. I try to entertain it but he knows the truth. So he lets me be what I need to be and he offers his friendship anyway. He makes me feel a tiny bit of normalcy during my work hours.
I do my work, I smile at the bosses, I speak when spoken to and then I go back to my apartment. A small one bedroom apartment I found through an ad on social media. I called about it about a month ago and told the woman on the phone that I would pay for it that same day if she’d let me. She did.
My first night there I cried myself to sleep and then cried again in my morning shower. Everything is a trigger. The sound of the coffee machine in the morning. My phone's ringtone. The first notes of any song. The tiny bit of static when someone plugs their phone into the car.
Everything reminds me of him, and everything reminds me that he’s not here.
I tried to call his family a few times a week, just longing for some kind of connection to him. Haven answered sometimes but then it got less and less, until no one picked up at all. No one returned my texts. So I stopped trying.
My phone rings and I immediately tense up. Triggered. I pick it up off the bathroom counter and see my moms name and face light up my screen. I answer, “Hey Mama.”
“Mí carina, how are you this morning?” she asks tenderly, cautiously.
“Okay,” I say, my voice falling flat and lifeless.
“That’s what I thought you would say.” Then I hear a knock on the door. “It’s me, open.”
I furrow my brows in confusion but walk to my front door and open it. Sure enough, my mother is standing there with her phone against her ear. She gives me a look before she hangs up.
“Tell me how I can help you, my Ana,” she whispers, coming in and closing the door behind her.
“I’ll be okay, Mama,” I say and feel the lie covering each word. She does too.
“This might be overstepping but I won’t apologize for it. I googled Latina grief counselor in your area, and I made an appointment for tonight.”
“You did what?” I ask, my voice raising slightly.
“I made it weeks ago, but the appointment is tonight. I will drive you there myself.”
“I don’t want that,” I choke. “How dare you,” I say, tears already starting to build.
“I don’t care what you want, mi carina. I care about what you need,” she says, tears filling her eyes. She continues in Spanish, “You’re wasting away and I won’t stand here and watch and not do anything. You are going tonight. You will try it out, and if it doesn’t help, we’ll try something else. But you will not sit alone in this small place,” she gestures around my barely furnished apartment, “and slowly let yourself fade away.”
I glare at her. “I don’t wa?—“
“Niña, you don’t see what we see,” she whispers. “We’re terrified. We don’t know what to do. We don’t know what to say. So try to talk to someone who knows how to navigate this.”
I roll my eyes. “You are completely out of line.”
“I’m your mother, Ana, there is no line.”
“That’s not true and that’s a terribly toxic mindset,” I argue but she waves me off.
“When it comes to your children needing help, there is no line, cariña. Nothing that will keep me from making sure that you will be okay again. If I can’t do it myself, I’m going to find someone to help me. I’ll pick you up from work.” Without giving me a chance to answer, she kisses my cheek and leaves.
I was angrier all day than I normally am. But when I pack my stuff up and walk outside, my mother’s car is parked right next to mine in the parking lot. She’s chronically late to everything so it’s a miracle that she is on time right now.
I glower at her as I open the passenger door and lower myself into her car. I turn the radio off and then put my seatbelt on. We drive in silence for a while before she pulls up to a building I’ve never been to.
She parks and opens her door, walks around the car to open my door and I step out, avoiding eye contact with her. She walks with me inside, up the elevator and down a hallway before she knocks on the door at the end of it.
It’s opened by an older Latina woman, dark hair pulled back and sprinkled with gray, big glasses perched on her nose. She has a kind face and bright eyes, and she smiles as I walk in.
“I’ll be here when you’re done, niña,” my mom says and closes the door behind me.
