Free When I Knew You by Desireé Prosapio

He looked away for a moment, gazing at something beyond the photos on the adobe walls of the office.
    "I was pretty young when it happened," I said. Young, but not so young that I forgot a single detail. Not the coolness of the hospital bed rail, the sickly green glow of the machines, or the tangle of cords going into the wall like hungry snakes. Those memories collided with the piles of pennies, the counting, the reading of Dr. Seuss. Go, Dog, Go!
    There was, somewhere deep inside the shell of Antonia, there lived another Antonia, my Mom. She woke up and spoke, and all I wanted was to meet her again, somehow.  
    I leaned toward Father Vincent. "What was she like?"
    He took a deep breath. Come on, Father. Tell me. What's the harm?  
    "Antonia Perez. I tell you what, she was tough. And smart. Much smarter than she let on. She kept everyone on their toes. We didn't think anything could slow her down in this world, let alone stop her."
    He leaned back in his chair, his small frame fading into the dimness of the room. "I think after the accident your grandmother wanted to protect you and your mother. Most of the people your mother knew came around, but your grandmother kept saying the specialists said it was better for Antonia to just start fresh." He shrugged. "Personally, I think she just was glad to be rid of us all."  
    "Why do you say that?"
      "We all thought she'd come back. Antonia, I mean. The one we knew. Some of the old crew really kept pushing, sending names of specialists from all over the country, calling over and over. But your grandmother accepted the reality of the situation much faster. She wanted to move on, to help you and Antonia, I imagine."
    Father Vincent hesitated. He rubbed his chin and took a deep breath before continuing. "Did your grandmother tell you about Sylvia?"
    "Not that I can remember," I said.
    "No? It was such a big deal, I thought she might have." He shook his head.  
    "Why, were they friends?" I asked.
    A tense laugh caught before he could stop it, a slip of priestly diplomacy. "No. Not at all. Antonia didn't have friends like Sylvia."  
    Silence stretched between us as he sat there, considering me.
    "I really would like to know," I said. "I'd like to know something about ... the other Antonia."
    "You know what? You should." He gently pounded his fist on the desk. "Antonia, she was worth knowing. When I say she didn't have friends like Sylvia, it's not that she actively disliked her. It's that Antonia was always beyond us. She didn't connect with things most of us were focused on in high school. She didn't date, didn't have the patience for all the little dramas. Antonia was distant in a way. But let me tell you, she was a force." He leaned forward on his desk. "She did not believe in tolerating things that were clearly and fundamentally immoral.  
    "So no, Sylvia wasn't her friend. Sylvia was a girl in our high school who got pregnant our senior year. It was the kind of thing that happened a lot in those days. But this was different. Sylvia ... she took matters in her own hands and attempted to terminate the pregnancy herself."
    My stomach clenched. "Oh, no."
    Father Vincent nodded. "Antonia found her in the girls' dressing room off the gym, but it was too late. She'd lost too much blood. It was bad enough, and it would have ended there..." He hopped off his chair abruptly, and walked to the window, swaying side to side with each step to handle the curve of his legs. He parted the curtain a hands width and light streamed in creating a long slash across his face. A potted plant with spires of blue flowers was on the window sill, stretching up for the sun.
    "What happened?"
    "She died, maybe while Antonia was there, I was never sure. But Antonia knew what all of us knew: Sylvia had been sexually abused by her stepfather for years. Benny Duran. He was a county commissioner. He was powerful back then. We were more rural, more dependent on cotton, the dairy, that kind of thing. He pretty