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In Maria, I had a passionate lover who was fun to be around, witty, sassy, and challenging the way I liked my girls. Graziella and I were still friends and hadn’t moved beyond the kissing stage. She was a virgin who would allow me to kiss her all over her lips, neck, breasts, and even her pretty pussy. She wouldn’t have sex with her so I remained with Maria.
By the time I turned nineteen, I was becoming more serious about Maria and Graziella and I spent less time together because we were attending two different universities. Maria wasn’t in school but always there waiting for my return.
My father couldn’t tolerate Maria. He said she was not good for my future and came from a weak family. They were good enough to be our servants but not good enough to hold a position of power.
I hated that my father thought about Maria, or anyone for that matter, in that way but there was little that I could do about it. While I stopped bringing her to the house, I didn’t stop sneaking around with her.
That continued for about a year and a half until she became pregnant when we were twenty-one. I had just returned to school in October when I found out about it, and I returned home a couple of months later during the Christmas holidays ready to do right by her and hoping to convince her to come and stay with me in my apartment at school.
When I returned home, I found Maria at her mother’s house and a shell of the girl she had been. I told her of my plans, excitement filling me with the prospect of starting my own family with a girl I cared about. I’d hoped that my excitement would be contagious.
Maria turned to look at me with tear-filled eyes.
“It’s too late, Marco,” she says softly.
Pressing my forehead against hers, I stare into her large, brown eyes. “What do you mean too late? You found another guy while I was away the last three weeks?”
I chuckle, hoping to lighten her mood.
“There will be no baby,” she says, pulling away from me.
I stare into her red-rimmed eyes, and I now know that she’s been crying. The swollen eyes and the red in them had nothing to do with her being tired as she’d initially said.
“What do you mean there will be no baby?”
“The baby is gone.”
“The baby is gone where?” I demand, panic filling my insides.
She turns away from me, but I cup her chin and turn her around to face me again.
“Gone where?”
“I took a trip. To America.”
“I don’t understand. You lost it?”
She shakes her head no. “I went to America to stay with my aunt for a couple of weeks.”
Maria breaks down on me, unable to finish her explanation. Confusion, anger, fear, and worry all swirl around in my brain, and I shake my head to clear it. She’s trying to tell me something, but my brain won’t accept it.
“Maria, you have to tell me,” I pleaded. “I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
She’s fucking scaring me.
“She aborted the baby,” a voice behind me says.
I see Maria’s mother standing in the doorway with one arm crossed over the other. She’s wearing a red scarf on her hair, matted in place with sweat. Over her yellow and brown dress is a white apron coated with flour. A cigarette dangles from the corner of her mouth.
“You did this?” I seethe.
“No. But it was for the best. No grandchild of mine will ever carry the DeLuca name. Crooks, extortioners, drug dealers, and murderers; that’s what all of you are.”
My eyes narrow, and my fists clench and unclench.
“He’s not like them, Mama,” Maria defends.
“You don’t have to defend me to her,” I say with my back to Maria. “What did you do with my child?” I demand.
