Читать книгу Gabi, a Girl in Pieces - Isabel Quintero - Страница 18

August 10

Sebastian hasn’t really said anything since his parents dropped him off. They didn’t even come in, just dropped him off and threw his stuff on the sidewalk. Cindy came over that night, we watched Pride and Prejudice, and my mom ordered us some pizza. She wasn’t too happy that Cindy came over though, but she let her stay because she knew that Sebastian needed his friends. Earlier today she had gone on this whole spiel about Cindy’s pobrecita madre and the pain that she was going through because of her bad, bad daughter. It was really long. It was something like—

“You can’t hang out with her anymore. She is a bad influence. She’s a bad, bad girl. I knew that she would come to this. Always so desperate and siempre de ofrecida, no se daba a respetar. No respect for herself at all. What’s she gonna do? Quit school? Probably. She can’t do both. Maybe she should give up the baby. I don’t want you to talk to her anymore. She’ll give you bad advice and convince you to do the same thing she did, and then you’ll go and open your legs for everybody. You know who I feel sorry for? Her mom. How is Linda going to show her face at parties and church now? Didn’t that mensa think about what she would do to her madre? Claro que no! No mas abrio las piernas y ya. Que bonito! Of course not, how nice. But now that she opened her legs and had a good time, the one who is going to have to deal with everything is her mom. Que selfish. Don’t even think about calling her or going over there. Her mom is probably feeling really depressed and probably wants to be alone. I’ll have to call her and tell her I’m sorry to hear about what happened. Pobrecita Linda, I wonder what she did to deserve such a bad girl? Thank God, you’re not like that.”

She really has no idea what Cindy is going through. I would have thought that because I was born a bastard child, she would show more sympathy—that she would know how it feels to have your parents react so irrationally. But I guess as you grow older, you forget that you were ever young and that you may have been in love and may have forgotten (or didn’t think about) condoms and made mistakes. At least my mom has forgotten. And besides, it’s not like Cindy said, “I’m going to sleep with an asshole and get pregnant, just so that my mom can’t show her face at parties and my dad won’t talk to me. Why? Because I want to be seen as a horrible daughter! Ha, ha, ha!” It was something that happened. I told her that Cindy was not a bad influence, she just made a mistake and that she was my friend, and we had to be there for Sebastian. I argued and begged and she finally said, “Esta bien.”

I was surprised that she let Sebastian stay, surprised that she actually felt bad for him. She said that even though she hoped that her own son wouldn’t be gay, if he was she would still love him. And that only bad mothers abandon their children. Knowing that made me kind of proud of my mom.