She raised her hand as if to smack me, but dropped it back down at her side as she took a step away from me. We were both shaking by then, my awful words hanging like a dark cloud above our heads.
“I loved your mother, Calliope. As if she were my own child,” she told me quietly, her words thick with tears. “When your father brought her home, I couldn’t help but love her.”
She sniffed quietly and started messing with the sink again as I leaned heavily against the counter.
“She told me that my boys deserved what they got,” she whispered, never looking away from the bottom of the sink. “I knew she was hurting. We all were. But I couldn’t look at her after that. Every time I saw her, that’s what I thought of—those awful words she said to me after the funeral.”
She was quiet for a few more moments before saying something that was so quiet, I had to strain to hear her. “I loved your mother, and I refused to see her for years. That’s my cross to bear.”
My anger fled in a puff of smoke and remorse instantly took its place. I walked up behind her, wrapped my arms around her middle, and rested my chin lightly on her shoulder.
“What do you mean, when dad brought her home?” I asked, giving her a little squeeze and teasing to lighten the mood. “Did you guys live together? One big happy family?”
I’d been joking, so when she nodded her head, I was stunned.
“What? Why?” I asked, my voice high in surprise.
“Well, she was young. Just eighteen when your dad found her—”
“Found her?” I squeaked, my voice growing even higher.
“Ugh. Sit down, Callie, before you hurt yourself,” she said in exasperation, all traces of our argument absent from her tone. She pushed me toward one of the stools and slapped a wet washcloth on the counter, nodding her head at it as if to tell me to get started.
As I started cleaning off dried juice and what looked like Easy-Mac off the counter, she told me my parents’ story.
“Your dad was… eh, about twenty-three when he brought her home. Poor thing was black and blue, and your dad wasn’t much better.” She shook her head at the memory. “I cleaned ‘em both up and put your mama to bed. I’ll never forget the look on your dad’s face when he informed me quite strongly that she was staying with me. He didn’t have his own place back then, but he was rarely at my place, either.”
She paused to search for the broom, then once she started sweeping, continued with the story.
“Well, I wasn’t having none of that!” she chuckled quietly in her throat. “Made your dad explain as much as he was willing—which wasn’t much. But from what I pried out of him—your mama was from a little town in Mexico. She was real smart, so her parents were hoping to send her to a college up here in the States, you know, give her more opportunities than she would have had back home.”
“So my dad met her while she was in college?” I asked her, becoming impatient by the slow way she gave me the facts.
“Stop interrupting me if you want me to finish!” she warned, as she lifted the broom off the floor and swatted my legs with it from across the room.
“Okay, fine!” I giggled back, pulling my legs up in front of me.
“Well, her parents made a deal with some boys from up here, promising that they’d get her into a school and whatnot.” She glanced at me, giving a small shake of her head. “They didn’t. The Jimenez brothers—”
“Jimenez!” I gasped, dropping the wash cloth onto the floor.
“Yup, same ones. Pick up that washcloth and get a new one. This floor is filthy,” she ordered, brushing dirt into a dustpan I didn’t even know I owned.
“Anyway, they brought her up here, didn’t plan on helping her do anything, and that’s where your dad came in. He took one look at that girl and had to have her. I’m not sure what happened, but your uncles backed him up and he took her home with him.”
“Why didn’t he send her home?” I asked, fascinated by this story that I’d never heard before.
“Couldn’t send her home—then she’d be right back where she started,” she told me offhandedly, as if it was a simple thing to understand.
I finished up the counter, which was pretty much spotless at that point, and started washing down the front of my cabinets quietly. I needed a few minutes to process the new information I’d been given. I never asked my parents how they’d met, it hadn’t seemed important, but I suddenly wished that I had.
“It’s history repeating itself,” I murmured to myself.
“What?” Gram called out from the corner of the kitchen where she’d started to mop the floor.
“It’s history repeating itself,” I said again, my voice carrying across the kitchen.
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s repeating itself, but it does seem pretty similar,” she answered distractedly as she scrubbed a stubborn spot on the floor with her foot pushing on the head of the mop.
“Is that why you let me move with Asa?” I asked as I stood, stretching my back.
“Your Asa looks at you the same way my boy looked at your mother,” she told me seriously, pausing in her mopping to look me directly in the eye. “And your father would have never let anything happen to your mother if he could stop it.”
My throat burned with tears I refused to let fall, but instead of acknowledging her words, I bent down and started cleaning the front of the oven.