Words Unspoken

Prologue

I sat there staring at the lake's black water slowly lapping over the white shore line. I grabbed the grainy sand between my fingertips and rubbed it together, god how I loved the feeling of sand between my toes and fingers.

The feeling took me back to when Victor and I eloped to his parent's cabin on Edisto Island a year ago. It was the first time that I had truly given myself to someone, not just physically, but mindfully and soulfully as well. I knew I shouldn't have, and I had considered on whether or not I should go back on my vow before we went, but in the end I chose Victor, a decision I regret terribly.

I laid back on the sand and stared up at the moon and stars. It was a full moon and the crickets trilled their melody that soothingly resounded through the crisp air. I grabbed fists full of wet sand and squeezed it through my hands transferring my sadness and stress into the grainy particles, but that couldn't help keep my tears at bay.

So I closed my eyes remembering when I was six years old laying out on the damp grass at night. Gamma's funeral service was that morning, it was the first time I had ever seen my mom cry. I remembered praying to God for the first time that night, hoping and praying that she had become the brightest and loveliest star in the sky. We'd always believed that once someone died they'd become a star in the sky, a fate way better than going to heaven or hell, in my opinion.

The day she died I knew that things would be different; my mother would be even more distant with me and that I would never experience love from someone who had shared the same flesh and blood with me ever again. I gazed at the stars for hours that night looking for Gamma, but somehow all the stars looked so different. None of them shined as bright, even the mystical man in the moon had disappeared.

It was strange to think that my mother was so much like Gamma when she was my age. Gamma who never said "no" to an adventure and my mother who turns down every single idea that sounds like fun. Of course, Gamma would tell me stories of my mother when she was sixteen. Vandalism, crude humor, and profanity was the norm in their household. Gamma would tell me stories of when mom punched Sophia Veledez for spreading rumors about her, when mom robbed the candy store with a couple of her friends, and the time she vandalized the Piggly Wiggly for racial discrimination against her friend.

Up until I was ten years old I had this tiny sliver of hope that perhaps I wasn't the reason that my mother had become the way she was,but the thought crashed and burned on the night that my father left. I had blamed my dad for turning my mother into the lifeless inhibited woman that she was and he was partially the reason but I was the majority of it.

After he left her behavior got worse, she avoided me throughout the day, gave me chores and put me in school events to keep me busy, and spent more time at work rather than with me. In the end I did all things that a typical teenager would do to get the attention of her mother, I turned to partying and drugs, something that a thirteen year old girl shouldn't have done.

I grew up secluding myself from anyone who had the possibility of yielding a dagger that could fatally break my heart, a promise to myself, due to my mother's heart break, I pursued thoroughly until I met Victor. Of course I had a few friends that gave me the love and support that I lacked from my mother.

Yet here I was laying on the beach with a tear stained-face with nothing and no one. I had become everything everyone expected me to be; the town's cliche. I became the primitive child when my mother wouldn't give me the time of day and now I'll be considered the reckless pregnant teenager. I couldn't decide which hurt the most, the fact that Victor had left or that I have become my own disappointment.

"What's done is done. There's nothing you can do to bring back time," Gamma used to say. With that thought in mind I opened my eyes for the first time in what seemed forever. My eyes were blurry from crying but I got up from the beach and brushed all the sand off of my jeans and sweater.

No longer would I feel sorry for myself, I now have the responsibility of caring for a baby in my midst. I would raise this baby with the love and attention that I never received from my mother, I'm not going to cower down anymore, not from anyone or anything. I've fucked-up in the past but that doesn't make me a complete one, and for the sake of this baby I would get my shit together because one thing was for certain I wasn't going to be like my mother.

I took a deep breath, wiped the last tear from my face, and gathered my things. Before reaching my car I turned around and looked back at the moon. It was as beautiful as it had ever been and the stars somehow shined a little brighter, then I knew that Gamma was proud of me.