My mother cooked for a homeless man who lived behind our house for 20 years. The day after he fell, he took me by the hand and said something that changed my life.
I spent years thinking that my mother had been chosen over her own daughter by a destitute person. Even after her death, I only continued bringing food to Víctor because he had given me my word. But the moment I held the medallion I had lost in my hands, I discovered that my mother had never hidden her generosity from me.
She was hiding within her family.
The day after my mother’s funeral, the homeless man who lived behind our house disappeared.
For most of my childhood, Victor stayed in the back of our modest rented house, in a makeshift shelter built with tarpaulins and recycled wood. Every day, my mother brought him food.
When I returned to the food she had asked me to bring him, Victor was standing next to a black van, dressed in a pristine coat and holding my mother’s silver medallion.
The same thing, according to her, had disappeared when I was a few years older.
“I thought you couldn’t come, Fiona,” he said.
If the food container falls out of me.
“Victor? What?”
Without a beard, he looked like a mayor. His eyes were tired and reddened.
—He betrayed the scene—dije—. But what are you going through?
Press the medallion harder.
“Before I died”, he said, “you mother asked me to keep silent”.
A climber photographed the body for me.
“About?”
Víctor looked out the kitchen window, from where Mom only watched him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention.
“Accept who I am.”
Every afternoon, my mother prepared three meals.
From the permanent fixtures on our worn-out kitchen table.
The third one ended up in the plastic container that she had washed and saved for Víctor.
I hated it.
Odiaba saw how the spikes on my boots were covered with duct tape while Victor received the biggest piece of chicken. We were also in trouble.
There was a time, years ago, when I finally said what had been building up inside me.
“It comes better than yo, mom.”
Mom kept turning the greenhouse without looking up.
“Fiona, no parts. Please.”
“Mom, cut off our electricity sometimes this winter,” he said. “But Víctor eats every day as if he were part of the family.”
The spoon slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor with a thud.
—Don’t pronounce your name like that, Fiona. You need help.
