Bona Fide Baby

Chapter 15 - The Curse

"I'm here," she said.

"Are you crying?"

She touched her face, and yup her fingertips were wet with tears. "Of course. That is the most offending thing you have ever said to me. Like ever."

Carolina cleared her throat. "Mi Amor, I didn't say it to offend. It's just that this Omar figure came out of nowhere and I thought just maybe there were others."

Another stream of tears came flowing down to the side of her eyes, the liquid warm as it ran pass her ears to hit the pillow or trickle onto her hair. "Really, mama. I thought you knew me better than that."

"That's what I thought, but lately I'm not so sure. Are you a surrogate?"

Wait, what? "That's outrageous."

"People do a lot for money these days."

"Speak for yourself, mama. I am not you." As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to swallow them back.

Too late. They were now echoing off into oblivion across the vast galaxy, pass a bazillion stars - and all of that in less than o.1 second - straight into her mother's ears.

Carolina's gasp confirmed her fear that she had indeed spoken the words out loud. Holy crap.

"Xiomara! What has gotten into you?" A mixture of disbelief, maybe even shock came across the connection.

"You're stressing me out, okay." Once more, hot tears spilled. "Look, mama, I can't do this right now. I have to go."

"Mi amor!"

"Goodbye, mama."

Grabbing a black shawl from her suitcase, Xiomara hopped off of the bed and streaked out of the room, jogging down the stairs and then making a u-turn to dodge Francois in the kitchen on her way out to the backyard that just so happened to be the size of a giant plantation. The back of this villa was bigger and greener than the one on St. Maarten. The grass rolled on forever it seemed. Although there were way less flowers here than in Filo's garden.

Still, that didn't diminish the beauty of the vast landscape or the fig trees standing sturdy in the night air while the half full moon casted its bluish glow up from above, bathing everything it touched in whimsical beauty.

Even through her tear stained eyes, it was hard to deny the beauty of the night sky and the unspoiled nature around her. She took a left and strolled pass the pool and unto a path dully illuminated by a few foot lamps.

The footpath, made out of stone similar to the one on the driveway in St. Maarten led her to a gazebo perched high up on a grassy knoll. The wooden gazebo, painted white and octagonal in shape with its double straight roof was every little girl's dream hiding spot.

And right now she felt like a little girl running away from her mama. From her mistakes. But she hadn't been running fast enough it seemed, because the sins of the mother - in others words, the generational 'bullshit' curse - had caught up to her.

Although her mother had started at a much younger age, the curse had gotten to her too.

In the span of ten years, Carolina had given birth to seven children. Her grandmother before that had had twelve children, of which four had died early due to violence, two were locked up for life for human trafficking, three were prostitutes and one was homeless. The remaining two were somewhere in the United States. Last she'd heard, one was a lawyer and the other a dental hygienist.