After Michael kicked me out of the house, I got a job as a cook in a small diner downtown. Every day when I left work, I saw the same old lady sitting on the corner asking for spare change. She was older than me, with a face marked by the sun and trembling hands.
Something in her eyes reminded me of my own mother.
I started stopping in front of her. I would give her some coins or sometimes some bread left over from the kitchen.
We never spoke much, just a gesture, a tired smile, and then I would continue my way to the boarding house where I now lived alone. I was sixty-nine years old when my son told me there was no longer room for me in that house.
He didn’t raise his voice.
There was no scene. He simply looked at me from across the table in his neat little house in the Arizona suburbs and said it was time for me to find my own space. He said he had his life and his plans and that I had to understand—words whose real meaning I wouldn’t fully know until much later.
I remember packing my things in an old bag: clothes, some documents, a photo of when Michael was little.
Nothing else. I didn’t have much.
I had lived my whole life taking care of that house, that son, that family that was now closing the door on me with a cold courtesy that hurt more than any insult. I didn’t cry in front of him.
I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction.
I left with my head held high, although inside I felt like something was breaking. It was like walking on glass barefoot without letting anyone notice the pain. The boarding house where I found a room was small and dark, a tired building not far from downtown Phoenix.
The walls had water stains and the mattress creaked every time I moved.
But it was what I could afford with what was left of my Social Security check. Michael had given me nothing.
He didn’t even offer to help me with the first month of rent. I spent the first night sleepless, staring at the ceiling, wondering at what moment everything had gone wrong.
I had been a good mother.
I had given him everything. I had worked until my body could give no more. I had given up my own dreams and desires so he would have what I never had.
And now I was here: old, invisible, and alone in the United States of America, a country where I had believed hard work always paid off.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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