Later, I imagined she might be waiting to gather several weeks together to pay me all at once.
Eventually, I understood the truth: she simply had nothing to pay me with.
One afternoon, while I was making her some chicken broth, I gathered the courage and said,
“Doña Carmen, don’t worry about the money. You can pay me whenever you can.”
She set the spoon down on the plate and looked at me with a strange sadness.
“You always talk as if there will still be a ‘later.’”
I didn’t know how to respond.
Over the months, my routine became part of her life, and she slowly became part of mine.
I would bring her fruit when I had a little extra money.
I bought her medicine if I noticed she couldn’t afford
Sometimes, after finishing the cleaning, I would sit with her for a while and listen to stories about her youth, about a husband who had already passed away, and about some children who, according to her, “had their own lives.”
She never spoke badly of them.
That impressed me.
She would only say,
“A mother never stops being a mother, even when her children forget how to be children.”
One day I found, in a half-closed drawer, several old letters returned by the mail.
All addressed to the same place in Monterrey.
All with the same last name.
None opened.
I said nothing.
Neither did she.
But that night, for the first time, when I was leaving, she asked,
“Could you come back tomorrow?”
I did.
And the next day as well.
Her health began to worsen quickly.
She could hardly get up by herself.
Her breathing came in small, struggling efforts.
One morning the doctor at the community clinic pulled me aside and told me bluntly,
“She’s very weak. I don’t think she has much time left.”
That afternoon, leaving the clinic, I helped her slowly into a taxi. Doña Carmen stayed quiet, looking out the window as if she were seeing a city that no longer belonged to her.
Before getting out in front of her house, she said,
“Diego… when I die, don’t let them throw away my things without checking the wardrobe.”
I felt a blow in my chest.
“Don’t say that.”
“Promise me.”
That word again.
And again, I nodded.
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