Aurora

The betrayal I woke up scared. My mother is sitting up in bed, her eyes closed, moaning softly in pain. I jump to my feet, and I know my eyes are wide. I’m worried, visibly lost, not knowing what to do.

“Mom, is everything okay?”

“I’m in a lot of pain, Aurora” I can see that she’s crying “it’s almost unbearable”.

“What do I do?” I look away, lost in the room. I look at the clock, and it’s almost six. "Wait just a minute, Mom, I’m going to call for help”.

I hurried down the hall, not knowing exactly where to look. Furthermore, I remember how well she was yesterday, smiling, happy. She didn’t even look sick, and now, she’s lying there crying in pain. I spot a nurse a few feet away and run towards her.

“My mother is in a lot of pain” I can hardly pronounce these words “please help her”.

“Calm down,” she’s kind, drops what she’s doing to talk to me “what’s your mother’s name and what room is she in?”

“Desiree, room 08,” I try to calm down, but I can’t.

The nurse goes there, and I follow her. It is inevitable not to feel this way. My heart pounds in my chest so hard, my breathing gets heavy. I wonder if it’s possible for gallstones to turn into a more serious condition. I watch as the nurse administers morphine to her and asks her to lie down and try to relax, promising that the pains will soon stop. My heart ached to see my mother like this.

“She’s going to be fine,” the nurse says, smiling at me, but that doesn’t reassure me.

I stayed for several minutes, sitting and motionless, watching my mother. The expression on her face gradually relaxed, and a few minutes later the moans ceased, turning into sighs of relief.

“Are you all right now?” I get up, approaching the bed.

“It was like taking it with the hand,” she smiles, and now I know she’s fine “go home and rest a little and when it’s time to change, you’ll come back”.

“I don’t want to leave you here alone,” I balk at the idea.

“I’m not alone, Aurora” she holds one of my hands. "Anything, I’ll call you”.

I gave some thought to the idea of ​​leaving her for a few hours, but the headache I’m feeling right now makes me accept the idea.

“Okay” I turn around, pick up my bag and look back at her. "Maybe I can convince my father to come see you”.

“Do it,” she agrees, “but avoid unnecessary discussions with him”.

“Don’t worry”.

I kiss her forehead and leave the hospital. The sun had barely risen; the morning was cold, and my stomach was groaning with hunger. I walk home, because I don’t think the distance between the two places is too far. When I arrived, it was after eight o’clock. I opened the gate and found the women’s shoes at the entrance to the house strange.

“These aren’t my mother’s shoes” I

Whisper, as I lean over, pick up one foot and realize that in addition to a terrible taste in shoes, their owner has a pretty big shape. I make a face of disgust at the same time that the little warning light goes on inside me.

There’s something wrong.

The door is unlocked, which is strange at first. My father left very early to work. He wouldn’t be home at that time. Then I think about the possibility of being an invader, a thief, a stranger in my house. I open the door cautiously and survey the room. Nothing out of place. Absolute silence. I entered slowly to make as little noise as possible, and I immediately remembered the female voice on the other end of the line as she spoke to my father. My heart races. I try to think that this is crazy in my head. But the shoes on the front door, the unlocked door, make me pretty sure maybe I’m not that crazy. I don’t realize the minutes pass, because I’m too focused on trying to unravel this mystery, when I hear voices and footsteps coming towards me. It was Claudio and a woman. They were hugging each other and smiling, but that same smile disappeared like smoke as soon as they both laid eyes on mine. The woman was in her nightgown and barefoot. I wasn’t that crazy.

“What are you doing here?” Claudio widens his eyes in fright as he walks away from the woman.

“Who is this woman, Father?” I’m amazed, incredulous.

“You didn’t answer what I asked you, Aurora”.

“Stop running away from things,” I shout. "Who is this woman and what is she doing in my mother’s house?”

“This house isn’t just your mother’s”.

“Enough, father” I shout again and a tear runs down my face “at least once in your life be a man, and answer what I asked you”.

“I demand that you respect me, Aurora.” He points his finger at me.

“Respect you?” I face him without fear. "You bring your lover inside my mother’s house, while she is in the hospital, and you want me to respect you?”

“You’re confusing things” he justifies, he’s more nervous now than before “don’t you dare tell your mother that”.

“Or what?” I get very close to him, looking right into his eyes “I’m not afraid of you anymore, dad”.

“Should have” he’s furious now.

“Take your mistress out of my mother’s house now”.

I watch the woman, who doesn’t seem scared or regretful about being caught in the act. Then I look at my father, who has apparently let his guard down.

“Get ready, so we can go, Rebeca,” he orders the woman, who turns her back and goes back to the room”.

“And you cheated on my mother, in her bed?” I continued the conversation. "Couldn’t you at least wait for her to leave the hospital?”

“You have to swear to me, Aurora, that you won’t tell your mother anything”.

“Just out of consideration for her, Father.” I felt disgusted with him. "If she weren’t so sick, I wouldn’t think twice about telling you everything I saw here”.

He is silent for a few moments. He turns his back and seems to think it over, but I can’t see any trace of remorse or regret in his expression.

“You could at least confess what you did, “I mean, with a revolt stuck in your throat”.

“How is she?” you mean my mother, but I know you’re only asking that to change the course of the conversation.

“Don’t pretend to care about her”.

“Just answer what I asked you”.

“If you’re really interested in knowing,” I grab my bag again, ready to leave him talking to himself, “go to the hospital and ask yourself. If you have time to cheat on her, you should make time to see her, too”.

I turned my back and walked towards my room. I push the door behind me so hard that the noise it makes reflects the scream lodged in my throat. He sat on the bed and let the cry that, minutes ago, I held, flow. I wonder how long Claudio has been doing this. How long has he been cheating on my mom? I remembered her moaning in pain, while he moaned with pleasure inside her house. It was absurd. Inadmissible, unforgivable. The revolt was increasing every second I thought about it. My mother deserved to know this, but I couldn’t count on it now, not with her in a hospital. I had no right to divert her focus from just taking care of her own health and recovering. And only later, who knows, reveal the whole truth to her. My head now aches uncontrollably when my cell phone rings again. It’s Gene.

“You come back and not even text me?”

I let out a smile as I wiped away the tears.

“I missed you too”.

“Is Aunt Desiree okay?”

She always referred to my mother that way.

“You have a crying voice, Aurora. Did something happen?”

“My mother is fine.”

I answer, but I don’t tell the rest.

“Are you sure everything is okay?”

I try to control the emotion. I swallow hard, take a deep breath before I continue talking.

“We can meet today. Before I have to go back to the hospital.

“We must. I have a lot of news to tell you, people to introduce.”

I find her excitement amusing.

“At two o’clock, in the same square as always”

“Combined.”

“I really need to talk to someone, but now I have a horrible migraine.”

“We’ll talk later, then. Rest up and see you later.

The call ends. Geane has always been understanding. Perhaps this is her most outstanding quality. If I said I wasn’t fine, she didn’t question it. Glad to know I’d see you in a few hours. I feel relieved to be able to get out of the chaos my life has become in the last twenty-four hours. I take an aspirin and lie down, trying to sleep. Not only that, but I don’t dare go outside, so I don’t have to find those two together again. I try to push those thoughts back, somewhere they can’t disturb me. My father’s time to pay for everything he’s doing to my mother will come, but that time is not now, and I myself will make sure that happens.

Almost a month later, I started to feel severe pain in my back, and I had pneumonia. If I died, I certainly wouldn’t miss my father, who didn’t care about me or worry about me. Magdalena, who wasn’t the worst of women, bought me a new mattress when she realized that the situation could get a lot worse.

I was the source of her wealth. If I died, how would she survive?

From caviar to fried egg, there were days when we didn’t even have an egg to eat. It was only after the second month that things started to change. Magdalena rescues all the money she earned from my father and bought clothes, furniture, food. The woman seemed to live in the clouds, but I saw absolutely no advantage in any of that. I was literally eating the bread that the devil had kneaded. When it rained, it leaked on top of me. There were days when the storm was so big that it flooded the whole house and I had to find a way to sleep on the small, worn sofa in the house. There was no running water, and I had to learn to live in cold showers. That was hell itself. While I enjoyed twenty-five years of my life living in luxury without ever having worked, these people lived like pigs in a sty, struggling daily to survive. I was feeling it on my skin, and it was way more unpleasant than anything I imagined going through in my entire life.

Before six months passed, I met a girl called Geane. She was a beautiful brunette and completely fell for me. Lying to her about completely everything in my life. He said that I was a civil servant, and that I was here, living with my aunt, to fulfill a dream. There was something about my story that almost nobody knew. I was also a writer, and that’s why we met. I had two novels kept in a drawer which I never dared show to anyone. In fact, I kept this secret under lock and key and Geane was the first to know. During the months we met, she introduced me to Naldo and Anne. I liked the fact that I was making new friends. Those people were able to pull me out of the reality my father had forced me into and around them. I could be whoever I wanted.

I bullied Geane for four long months, because I still wasn’t able to sustain my own lies. I wore old rags, and I didn’t have a presentable shoe to go out with. In fact, my appearance was detestable. My hair was long and my beard showed how careless I was. I had lost weight. I was thinner than usual. Every time I looked in the mirror, I hated Gonzalo even more for doing that to me.

But I had to behave if I wanted to win anything from him again, and when the six months had finally passed, he remembered me again and sent what he had promised. When Magdalena handed me the card, saying that was where he would deposit my money, I almost set off fireworks. When I pulled it out, there were only five hundred reals.

“Who can survive on five hundred reads?” I questioned Magdalena.

“You can’t do it,” she answered me,” but you’ll survive. He has no home to maintain, no children to support”.

Thinking about it that way, she was absolutely right. When Magdalena offered me a day off, I went to the city’s shops and bought a pair of new clothes, some sneakers from the market and a pair of prescription glasses. In fact, it was counterfeit, but I needed to make a good impression on Geane on our first date. I paid to have my hair cut and shaved. There was almost no real left. I knew her, but I didn’t have the money to buy any candy on our first date.

He remembered the bath he had taken in the open air, while the thermometer had read fifteen degrees. I’ve never shaken so much in my life. I left under a strong wind and met her in the central square of the city. Not only that, but I had already walked through those streets so much that I knew that city like the back of my hand. It was a paradise compared to the chaos of Rio de Janeiro. Geane really was beautiful and smart, but the chemistry didn’t happen. Maybe because she offered too much and broke the spell of conquest.

“I have a friend to introduce you to.” She kept talking. “Aurora has just returned to the city and needs to meet new people. What do you say?

Another date, I thought.

“Of course, “I replied, even without knowing how I could manage to do that, ” but I can only do it in another week”.

“Oh, of course,” she answered. “Aurora is also a writer. You will like her a lot”.

“Certainly”, I replied.

“You just can’t like it better than me.”

I let out a fake smile, pretending to enjoy the conversation.

“I need to go, Geane” I said goodbye “I have an appointment with my aunt later, you understand, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he replied smiling, “we talked via messages”.

I hugged her and managed to get out of there as quickly as possible. I wasn’t the type of guy who didn’t want to go on a date, even more so with a woman as beautiful as Geane, but I was so focused on getting revenge on my own father that nothing else could hold my attention. Furthermore, I went back to Magdalena’s house thinking about it. The six months had already passed and from that moment on, whatever I earned from Gonzalo, I would need to save a part and put it together to return to Rio de Janeiro. How long would that take? Two years, three, five, ten years? With the little he sent, I might never get out of there, but I needed to find a solution, any solution, to get more money. I didn’t graduate from anything other than high school. He could speak a little English, but that was all. My biggest stupidity, perhaps, was believing that I would never need to study, because I was rich. My father supported me. I also never imagined that Gonzalo would be able to do that to me. Throw me through hell and walk away without looking back. If there was anyone I missed deeply, it was my mother. How would Olivia be? What was Gonzalo up to with her? I could call just to say hi, but I’d rather keep my distance to focus solely on the revenge plan. Certainly Olivia was in better shape than I was, that I wouldn’t doubt.

While thinking about my escape plan that cold night, I received a message from Geane.

“See you tomorrow? At the same place and at the same time as the last meeting. I look forward to meeting Aurora.”

I just hoped that Aurora would make a difference in my life. Because deep down, that’s exactly what I needed.