Jimena couldn't have children. I knew that. What I didn't know was that, weeks before I gave birth, she had lost a baby. Almost at term. They didn't tell me so as not to worry me; I was alone, a widow, pregnant. Jimena was devastated. She didn't eat. She didn't speak.
"The night you got sick," my mom told me, "I arrived late to the clinic. When I got there, Jimena already had your baby in her arms. And she told me it was hers. That God had given it back to her."
She pressed her lips together.
—And I… —Her voice broke—. I saw you so alone, daughter. So broken. I thought he would be better off with her. With a father. With a home. I told myself it was best for everyone.
Twelve years old. My own mother left me to mourn a son who was alive, sleeping two blocks away.
"What's best for everyone, Mom?" was all I could manage to say. "For everyone?"
I went to see Jimena again. Not to ask questions anymore. To say goodbye to the sister I thought I had.
"You lost a baby," I told her. "I'm sorry. I really am. But the one you took was mine."
And that's when her victim act fell away. The one she'd been wearing since the party.
"You were going to put him in daycare so you could go to your detachments," she spat at me. "I sang to him every night. I took him to school. I am his mother."
—You stole it.
"I raised him. And I gave him things you never would have. Leave him where he is, and you'll both thank me for it."
read more in next page
