I tried to tell her there was nothing shameful about being sick, but she wouldn’t hear it. I understood why Mom was so tight lipped about her condition. She was a woman in a man’s world, in an industry where if you showed weakness, they showed you the door. She couldn’t be vulnerable, because then all the men who said “a woman’s place is in the kitchen” would be right. And so she took great pains to hide her illness, and let her resentment leak out on everyone else.
Her tough-as-nails work ethic mirrored her parenting style. There was no complaining in our house growing up. I was not allowed to cry over bad grades, skinned knees, lost friendships, boys who betrayed me. I got no “atta girls” and very few hugs. If Mom had to be tough, we had to be tougher. I imagine she thought she was doing us a favor, but those bumps, bruises, and broken hearts still stung, so I did what I had to do to soothe myself.
I hadn’t been in Mom’s treatment room since the day I hired Silvia to replace me, a decision that probably saved my life. I did the job for three months—any more and my liver would be as pickled as those radishes in her cupboard. I was too afraid to tell Mom I couldn’t handle her nonstop shaming, so I made up something about having a job interview that I had to go back for. “The interview process might take several weeks,” I’d told her, “so we better find someone to help you while I’m gone.” That made-up job interview turned into a made-up job, and Silvia’s temporary hire turned into a permanent one, as I suspected she knew it would once she saw how eager I was to pass the baton.
“We should call Silvia,” I said as Charlie, Nathan, and I huddled in the doorway of Mom’s maid’s-room-turned-chamber-of-horrors. “If for no other reason than to thank her for all her years of service.”
“She sounded pretty broken up in her message,” Nathan said. “I imagine she and your mom got pretty close over the years.”
“I’m sure Mom was nicer to her than she was to us,” Charlie said. And I almost laughed.
“What, you don’t think she hit her up for a kidney?”
“Well, she stuck around,” Charlie said, by way of an answer.
“What did she say when she called you?” I asked my cousin. “Do you still have the message?”
Nathan nodded and took out his phone. “It’s kind of upsetting,” he warned. “You sure you want to hear it?”
“I think we hit the pinnacle of upsetting already,” Charlie said. “Bring it on.”
Nathan put the phone on the console table and pressed “Play.”
“Hello. This is Silvia Hernandez,” the voice on the recording said. I flashed back to the first time I’d spoken to Silvia. I’d known from the confident way she’d answered the phone （“Hello, Silvia speaking!”） that she was someone who could handle Mom’s particular brand of belligerence. That she had five kids had sealed the deal, because I knew she needed the money and wouldn’t quit too capriciously. Which seemed an important quality in my mother’s caregiver.
“I am very sorry to have to tell you this,” the voice continued, “but I have some very sad news. Very sad.”
She kept talking, something in Spanish . . . then something about calling the funeral home, but I couldn’t hear her. Because my internal panic siren was drowning her out.
“Win? You OK?” Nathan asked. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t make words.
“Win, what is it?” Charlie echoed.
I looked at my brother and told him something too strange not to be true. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said, barely believing it myself, “but that’s not Silvia.”
And both my brother and my cousin looked at me like I was crazy.
“What are you talking about?” Charlie said. “She said, This is Silvia Hernandez—”
“I know what she said!” I snapped back. “But I’m telling you that’s not her. Silvia is older, her voice is raspy, her accent is way heavier.”
“If that’s not Silvia—” Nathan started.
And Charlie finished his thought. “Then who the fuck left that message?”
CHAPTER 39
* * *
NATHAN
“Play it again,” Winnie said, closing her eyes, then motioning for me to replay the message.
“I am very sorry to have to tell you this,” the voice said, “but I have some very sad news. Very sad.”
And as it turns out, the third time really is the charm. Because as I listened to the symmetrical cadence of words evenly spaced, the warm honey undertones, the musical lilt at the end of each sentence that third time, I knew who was on the other end of that message. What I felt was not shock, or outrage, or even fear. What I felt was disappointment: searing, aching, soul-crushing disappointment.