Jungle Princess ✔

Chapter 10: Herstory

"So tell me, Mother, who are you?"

It was a simple question, really. OK, maybe not. But Amarissa was doing homework, so of course it required a non-simple answer.

Bonita leaned her elbow on the edge of the couch, her hands tangled in her silky cocoa brown hair as a million thoughts flew through her mind.

"Querida, what do you want me to say? My name, my age or my personality?" she asked finally.

Amarissa shrugged. "Say it all. Tell me everything, from the beginning. Where were you born?"

Bonita let out a stream of air from her pale pink lips. "Well, my mama tells me I was born in Granada, Spain..."

Amarissa scribbled this down in her history book just as Ricardo flops onto the couch beside their Mom. "Hey, Momma Bear, Rissy, what's the haps?" he said, spreading his arms on the back of the couch and planting a heel on the coffee table.

Bonita removed that heel and said, "We are doing homework."

Ricardo scrunched up his face. "Homework? Gross, I'm outta here." And he was.

Bonita laughed. "He is exactly like Julio - no work, all play. That's why I married him."

"Should I write that down?" Amarissa joked.

Bonita, as usual, took everything seriously, so she shrugged and said, "If you want, but really, I married Julio because he can play guitar. And he cooks a mean paella - better than mine, actually. Don't write that down, by the way."

Amarissa rolled her eyes. She had a feeling this homework task wasn't going to be the most straightforward.

Bonita's eyes lit up. "Hey, I know. How about I get the family photo album and you can use some of your adorable baby photos?"

Before Amarissa could protest, she was already out the room and rummaging in her bedroom. Amarissa slumped against the couch, tapping her pen against her book. Maybe she should've asked her father. Oh, no. that would be worse. He'd break into a song and probably tell her about what he and his cousins in Mexico used to get up to as teenagers. Amarissa shuddered. In that case, she was glad she asked her mom, who now returned with a couple bulging photo albums.

"These are both filled with your baby photos, so feel free to use a few from there," Bonita said. "Now let me just get the photos of me and your father when we got married. You have to use those - I look stunning."

Amarissa rolled her eyes. Of course her mother wanted to expose her Spanish beauty in her assignment. However, Amarissa was glad to. Her mother really was stunning. Sometimes so stunning that Amarissa couldn't believe it was her real mother.

When Bonita returned, the coffee table was stacked with albums, one of which Amarissa flipped through. It contained pictures of her when she was only days old, all pink and scrunched up. Bonita smiled as she sat beside her on the couch.

"Aw, that one's my favourite. It was the first time you smiled at the camera. You were such a serious baby. It took us seven months to get you to laugh," Bonita said.

They reached the end of that album, and moved on to the next, which was set on a boat.

"Hey, why didn't you tell me we went on a cruise?" Amarissa asked as she took in the beautiful sunsets and shots of her mother holding her in front of the ocean.

Bonita's smile faded form her features as Amarissa flipped deeper into the album. The scenery of the photos changed to a jungle, where her Dad held her in front of a palm tree, sunglasses perched on his sandy brown hair. There was another photo, this time with Mom holding her, but in the trees behind them Amarissa swore she could see...a person.