Fifty-Five

“MAMA!”
Before she could think, Yna had rushed to her mother and bent down on her knee in front of her. She tried to hold her close.
“Mama, please… whatever are you talking about? Don’t say it! Never say something like that, please!”
That was when her mother finally looked at her, her very eyes full of suffering and pain. “I have known… for a while. You two children always whisper to hide problems from me, but in the last few weeks, you two have been acting strangely. At first, I didn’t understand what the words I was able to hear meant, but eventually… as I eavesdrop more, it seemed like…” She frowned as she stopped abruptly, as if she was trying not to sob. She raised her face to Eric. “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t comprehend how something like that could happen to my daughter. But that day I caught you two in the kitchen kissing… I could believe it somehow.” She looked back at me. “That you have actually sold yourself to a man to pay for my bills in the hospital… and the man was the señorito.”
“Mama…” Tears were already falling down her face to drip down her chin. Tommy, on their mother’s side, was holding on to her for dear life as he also sobbed quietly. He buried his face in her shoulder when he felt the woman’s hold on him, too.
“In the hospital, I wanted to ask so many questions but when I was told you are in love with each other, and I could see how he attended to you, my daughter, I thought… maybe he realized my daughter isn’t a bad woman. That she did for her mama. She didn’t mean to sell her soul… and however hard I tried to look for duplicity, I can only see love and devotion. He is smitten with you, hija. And I can understand why. When even the señor accepted the relationship, my heart calmed down. I started to believe it all to be true. And I stopped thinking about it. You are happy, and I am doing well with the medicines, and we can work. Tommy can work and can go back to school…”
“It is all true, I love your daughter with all my heart, Mama Sienna. If you’ve ever felt love, you must know I am telling the truth. I didn’t know about the situation when she came to me. I only knew what I was told. I didn’t even… I was drunk. I never meant… I meant to make her go home but… when I saw her… the very first time I saw her…”
There was a snort from Tommy that made Eric stop and Yna feel more heat on her whole face.
But her mother asked him to continue. “Go on. Did you give her respect? Did you hurt her?”
“Mama!” Yna cried.
“I did. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t know she was a virgin. I only found out in the morning and since then, I’ve looked for her to make amends. I didn’t know she lives here in the hacienda. And I tried to do the best I can without showing myself—”
“So that’s why help started to rain down on us,” her mother cut in, lowering her face. Although her cheeks were still wet with tears, she noticed she had stopped crying. Tommy had the foresight to move and was already lowering down a tissue box on their mother’s lap.
“Yes. But it didn’t feel enough. I can’t stop thinking about her. I wanted to know her better, and I wanted her to stop being scared of me.”
Their mother sighed slowly and deeply after she used the tissue to wipe her tears away. “I think I can pick up the pieces of the events at that point. And now this… your mother found out, and brought your fiancée here, and—”
“She isn’t my fiancée, Mama Sienna. We dissolved the engagement months before I met your daughter and she has been with someone else. She has no business coming here and doing what she did along with my mother.”
“I told her why you have to do it, Ate. I told her about the money—”
As if compulsively, their mother pulled her son to him and hugged him close. She buried her face to the top of his head, and she started to cry again.
“Oh no… Mama…” Tommy cried. “Please, don’t cry. Please don’t cry…” he begged.
“If it happens again… my baby… don’t do anything like that. Never do anything like that for me again. I already know how much you love me… and you don’t know how much that is to a mother’s heart! I would much rather die than watch you go to jail because of me!”
Yna was crying again. And even Eric’s voice was rough when he spoke.
“It’s never going to happen again, Mama Sienna. You are family now. I regard Tommy as a young brother. I will take care of him.”
The older woman looked up at him as she wiped the new tears with another pad of tissue she handed to her. “What are we going to do now? It is all over the hacienda. If not, it will be in the morning. How my neighbors will look at my daughter now—”
“Why should they? If you give me your blessing, I will marry her as soon as possible.”
Yna slapped his thigh with a hand. “You really have to go there?” she asked him.
“Well…” He took a deep breath. “If this had been twenty years ago, you’d been married to me the moment I claim my right to your virginity. I—”
“Eric!”
“She is right. Fifty years ago, holding the hand of a betrothed constitutes a wedding ceremony,” her mother said. “That’s how my auntie got married.”
“See?” Eric agreed, backing her mother.
She and Tommy were both frowning.
“You forgot something. We weren’t betrothed when it happened,” Yna insisted.
And she found out, now that her mother had calmed down, that she led herself into a trap. “Let me ask you something, my daughter. Has it happened again after that first time?”
She opened her mouth, wanting to say no.
Except she couldn’t utter a word.
And now, Tommy was looking at her as if she had betrayed him big time.
“We’re getting married then,” Eric said with relish.
“I’m giving you my blessing, Eric,” her mother said, to her utter shock. Then she shook her head at her daughter. “You leave me no choice. The first time had a compelling reason—you were trying to save your brother, who tried to save my life. But it happened again when you both proclaimed you were in love…” She looked up at Eric as if to confirm. And she could only presume the idiot nodded. “Eric has to make a better woman out of you now. Otherwise, the neighbors will think the worse and you will not get your honor back.”
“Mama…” she whispered, almost speechless.
“I can’t have it any less,” she said with finality.
And she stared at her mother, her brain frantically thinking of a way out of this, and turning out none.