Whole V

Absolutely nothing.

The grueling days and lonely nights passed in a blur, while her midsection ballooned.

Still, Lucy hoped that Jose would come back to them, for which reason she kept her share of the room, harboring the hope that Jose would walk in any day now. The days turned into weeks, and these into months during which her hopes deflated like a punctured balloon.

Her baby already had a distinctive personality and kicked whenever she went too long without eating, or when she listened to music, or when she occasionally succumbed to despair and broke down to cry. Her baby, (a boy), already seemed eager to console her and remind Lucy that she was not totally alone.
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Lucy worked full time until the day her water broke while standing on her feet for six hours at the fish plant; this was her only source of income now. On a cloudy October morning, her son Jose was born.

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Enjoying the time off from work for the following days, (she would return in three weeks), Lucy nursed her tiny son, while clutching his minute and perfectly shaped fingers. His nails were long; she would need to get new little scissors to trim his nails. Lucy also pondered what her next move would be.

For almost seven months now, she had not heard a word from Jose. She had gone to his job days following his departure, and there she had been told that he had simply quit and left on a Friday after getting paid. One of his co-workers said that he had talked about joining some cousins in Alabama, where he’d heard that there was a lot of work. Lucy asked if by chance he had left a telephone number where he might be reached, and the response was negative.

Lucy thanked the guy, while guarding her expression. She only allowed the dam of tears to flow freely, after she was a block away from the car wash.

Her job at the fish plant was still waiting for her; that job and Mario.

Mario was her roommate. He was a quiet man - a loner. He is the one who shared the other half of the room separated by the curtain. Many times she had sensed, or rather heard his jagged and labored breathing behind that curtain late at night, and she pretended to be asleep and oblivious to its implications.

Into her seventh month of pregnancy, as Lucy came home early now after she finished her shift at the fish packing plant, Mario started joining her at the kitchen table as she cooked her dinner and lunch for the following day. He also started bringing home extra groceries when before he would simply eat at a cheap taco place in the vicinity. One evening, emboldened by a few beers post work, Mario gathered the nerve to ask Lucy if she would be his woman.

Lucy had suspected that Mario was interested in her, well; at least the close proximity of the small room was too intimate to elude the obvious attraction he felt. She turned him down. In her mind, she still harbored the hope that Jose would send for her once he was established in Alabama. She adamantly refused his proposition.

While Lucy was busy preparing the milk formula for Jose who was three months old, Mario looked at Jose Junior’s resemblance of his father with hostility. His mother still refused his honorable advances - even marriage. She stupidly waited for the coward of Jose to show up, or to cough up some child support money.

-"Stupid woman. Stupid kid."

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He recalled that he had seen once on National Geographic that the female lions only mated every two years. This time lapse allowed her cubs to be nurtured and to grow independent.

If a new male lion wanted to mate, he had two options. He could wait for the female’s time to ovulate and be in heat again, or kill her cubs which would expedite the cycle of the female’s ovulating period. This would provoke the female - after a short mourning period - the need to mate again and seek to get impregnated.

Jose Jr. seemed to sense the hostility emanating from Mario. He started to fuss in his second-hand crib. As his little face wrinkled into a grimace with the intention of gathering steam, to bawl with gusto; Mario took hold of the baby pillow which was resting behind Jose Junior’s backside.



to be continued...