Upside Down

La Historia

The History

"Your mom was the first person I ever loved," Martin said as they sat in the car outside his house. He had told her to wait until they got home so they could talk comfortably. He also didn't want the nosy ass people from the restaurant hearing all of his business. The people in el barrio were notorious for being chismosos as fuck.

"Your grandma, Dona Liliana, didn't like me. She thought I was a bad influence on your mom because she was a good girl before she met me. And then all of a sudden her daughter was coming home late, talking back, and hanging around a bunch of desmadrosos y delincuentes, as she called us." He sighed thinking back into his memories that he did his best to push away. All the time he would drop her off at home only to hear her mother start to yell at her for coming home at 11 at night. Paloma would cry to him about how unfair she was because her brother was allowed to come back home the next day without being yelled at. "Your mom didn't care, she was in love with the idea of finally being free, una rebelde. She would purposefully come home late to piss your grandma off, and Dona Liliana would say she was giving her canas verdes." 

"I remember my mom saying she was strict." Valeria said.

"Strict? Your grandma was fucking crazy. She gave her kids machista views. Your uncle Octavio could come home whenever the fuck he wanted, and Paloma would get yelled at when she got home at 10." Martin said shaking his head as the anger raged through him. Because of women like Dona Liliana, future generations still have the machista point of view installed in their heads and there was no way the world could progress if they had the current generation thinking like that.

"Did she love you?" Valeria asked because he mentioned that she was his love but never said that he was hers. He would have said that they were in love, no he was in love with her.

Martin sighed, not knowing how to tell her without getting his daughter angry at her mother. "I'd like to think she did. But one day, she didn't come to school and I was worried because I thought she was sick. I went to her house to ask her if she wanted me to bring her anything, and I found her packing." Martin thought back to that memory and how painful it was to watch another woman in his life leave running, not wanting to be near him. He only hoped it wouldn't happen to Valeria. He was sick of having the women in his life leaving him. He didn't know what he would do if she ever left him. He'd be beyond heartbroken.

"Did she leave because she found out she was pregnant?" Valeria asked but she knew the answer to that.

"I think so, I'm pretty sure." Martin nodded. "I asked her why she was leaving and she told me that I was stopping her from succeeding in life. I was the reason why she hadn't been accepted into any colleges, I was a bad influence for her. And she needed to get me out of her system. I was poisoning her." Martin was angry at how much her words sounded like Dona Liliana's, she most certainly brainwashed her.

"I didn't know that," Valeria said now even angrier at her mother. She knew she was pregnant but decided to keep her daughter away from her father because she wanted a better future. The only reason they had a chance at surviving was because her mother married a man from a wealthy family. Her dad was an old money family that had money invested in multiple companies, but the most important were real estate and five star hotels and restaurants. She was now sure that her mother was a gold digger.

"I'm not mad anymore," Martin said noticing his daughter's expression in deep thought with a frown on her pretty face. "I was mad because she kept you from me, but now that I have you, nothing else matters."

"That was super cursi."  Valeria said teasing her dad not knowing how to handle his adorable words.

When he was about to respond, he received a call from Victor knowing that he never called unless it was an emergency, he only texted.