Free The Ladies of Managua by Eleni N. Gage Page A

out of my seat until my mom comes to get me.” I asked why not, but she just looked down at her desk. And that’s when I saw something dripping from the back of her seat. I did what she said, but I couldn’t believe it. Not that she’d peed her pants; it had happened to Kimberly Nosewicz in Brownies the week before. But that she wasn’t embarrassed to let her mother know she’d had an accident. When Madre came to visit, my Bela dressed me in my cutest clothes and let me stay up late talking to her, singing all the songs I’d learned in school, reading the Spanish picture books she’d brought me. But even though I got all the songs right, Madre never stayed past Three Kings Day.
    It wasn’t until fifth grade that I realized no matter how good I was, it wouldn’t make Madre stay. Plenty of kids were picked up from school by their grandparents, and with Tía Celia around, I still had two people I could give a flower to after the Mother’s Day assembly, her and my Bela. I didn’t walk around all the time feeling I was different, or missing something because Madre didn’t live with us. But this was the first year she was going to be in Miami in time for the Christmas assembly at school, and I was counting the days until everyone got to see how beautiful and cool my mother was. And that she really existed. When I gave my book report on A Little Princess, Maribel Guzman asked me if I chose the book because it was about an orphan, like me. I explained that I had a mother, she was just busy “helping Nicaragua.” That’s what my Bela taught me to say when people asked where my mother was; with so many Nicaraguans in Miami fleeing the conflict, you never knew who hated the Sandinistas or loved them. If I said Madre was helping Nicaragua, my Bela told me, they’d just assume she fought for whatever side they supported. And most of the time, she was right. Still, Maribel Guzman didn’t seem convinced that Madre existed. But we were both in choir together and I knew she’d see Madre watching me and clapping after I did my solo. I convinced the teacher to let me sing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” instead of “Silent Night” because I thought Madre would understand it was a personal message to her. When the day came, Madre was there, watching me sing, with tears in her eyes. And she was as beautiful as ever. But Maribel wasn’t impressed at all. She was whispering to Dave Gonzalez during my entire solo. And I became convinced that they were talking about me, that they were making fun of me, laughing about what I had just realized: the mother of the little princess, and the blond kid on Silver Spoons, and the black boys on Diff’rent Strokes —all of those orphans, their mothers died, and they couldn’t be with them. But my mother chose to leave me, year after year.
    If it didn’t matter back then when Madre saw how good I could be, maybe it doesn’t matter now when she sees how cruel I can be. Or, more likely, she doesn’t care either way; the amount of time she spends thinking about my behavior must take up a total of five minutes on her overfilled calendar. And after the way I behaved tonight, that’s probably a good thing. Maybe Madre didn’t hear me, or at least didn’t notice what I said. She’s got plenty of other things on her mind, other people to worry about. T í a Celia has arrived and she and Madre are hugging each other and rocking back and forth a little bit. They’re the unlikeliest of sisters, but now they have one more thing in common, they share the same loss. Madre is clinging to T í a Celia’s warm, fleshy body as if she has no intention of letting go any time soon. It’s not quite a fair trade, this hug; Madre’s so thin and fit, all bone and muscle. But T í a Celia doesn’t seem to mind. That’s what it is to have a sister, I suppose.
    And my