La India

For the three weeks things kept going that way. It was an understatement to say I was happy.

My stomach still gave me these fits but I learned to ignore it. Even my thoughts about Venecia were getting easier to suppress.

Just my luck, though. At my happiest life always takes me by surprise with some kind of messed up turn of fate.

One morning before school, I woke up to the wailing of my grandmother. I ran to the kitchen where she was bawling while holding a crumpled piece of paper in her hand.

“Abuela?” I stood next to her.

She looked up at me, cried out my name, and hugged me only as tight as a grandmother could. I honestly couldn’t breath.

“it’s horrible!” She cried and held me tighter.

We stayed like this for a while. I kept myself busy with staring out the windows. All I saw was Rosana sitting on a little stool in the courtyard. What was she doing?

“Abuela, what happened?” I almost snapped out of exasperation.

“Ay, hijo!” she wailed. “Manzanita is gone! My daughter is gone!”

I froze. I’m sure my heart stopped. I stopped breathing. If it wasn’t for my grandmother’s wailing I would have thought the world had stopped.

Mi India was gone. Where could she have gone? She had no family that we knew of. Did she really think someone like my grandmother lived everywhere?

“Why?” I managed to ask, my voice raspy.

She handed me the crumpled piece of paper. My hands were shaking as I read it. Manzanita never wrote much in letters. She never gave reasons.

I gave one last hug to my grandmother and walked out to the courtyard. Looking up to Manazanita’s house I could see she left all the windows open. Her door was swinging in the wind.

Rosana came to me. Giving me one of the most meaningful hugs she would ever give me.

My heart felt like it had been punctured. I could feel it slowly bleeding, slowly burning.