\u00e9ctor and I had been in marriage for five years. From the very first day I became his wife, I got used to his cold words and his indifferent glances. H\u00e9ctor wasn\u2019t violent or loud, but his apathy made my heart wither a little more each day.<\/p>\n
After our wedding, we lived in his parents\u2019 house in a neighborhood in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
Every morning I woke up early to cook, do laundry, and clean.<\/p>\n
Every evening I sat and waited for him to come home, only to hear him say,<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I already ate.\u201d<\/p>\n
I often wondered if this marriage was any different from being a tenant. I tried to build, I tried to love, but all I got in return was an invisible void that I couldn\u2019t fill.<\/p>\n
Then one day, H\u00e9ctor came home with a cold, blank face.<\/p>\n
He sat down opposite me, handed me a divorce paper, and said in a dry voice: \u2013 Sign it. I don\u2019t want to waste either of our time anymore.<\/p>\n
I froze, but I wasn\u2019t surprised. With tears welling up, I took the pen with a trembling hand. All the memories of waiting for him at the dinner table, of the times I had stomachaches in the middle of the night that I endured alone, suddenly came flooding back like deep cuts.<\/p>\n
After signing, I packed my things.<\/p>\n
There was nothing in his house that belonged to me, except for a few clothes and the old pillow I always slept with.<\/p>\n
For illustrative purpose only
\nAs I was pulling my suitcase out the door, H\u00e9ctor threw the pillow at me, his voice full of sarcasm: \u2013 Take it and wash it. It\u2019s probably about to fall apart. I took the pillow, my heart constricting. It really was old; the pillowcase was faded, with yellowed stains and torn spots.<\/p>\n
It was the pillow I had brought from my mother\u2019s home in a small town in Oaxaca when I went to university in the city, and I kept it when I became his wife because I had trouble sleeping without it.<\/p>\n
He used to grumble about it, but I still kept it. I left that house in silence.<\/p>\n
Back in my rented room, I sat dazed, looking at the pillow. Thinking about his sarcastic words, I decided to take off the pillowcase to wash it, at least so it would be clean and I could sleep well tonight, without dreaming of painful memories.<\/p>\n
When I unzipped the pillowcase, I felt something strange. There was something lumpy inside the soft cotton fluff. I reached my hand in and stopped dead. A small paper bundle, wrapped very carefully in a nylon bag.<\/p>\n
I opened it with trembling hands. Inside was a stack of money, all 500-peso bills, and a piece of paper folded into four.<\/p>\n
I opened the paper. My mother\u2019s familiar handwriting appeared, shaky and wobbly: \u201cMy daughter, this is the money I saved for you in case of hardship. I hid it in the pillow because I was afraid you\u2019d be too proud to take it. No matter what, don\u2019t suffer for a man, my dear. I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
My tears fell heavily onto the yellowed paper. I remembered on my wedding day, my mother giving me the pillow, saying it was very soft, so I would sleep well.<\/p>\n
I laughed and said, \u201cYou\u2019re getting old, Mom, what a strange thing to think. H\u00e9ctor and I will be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother just smiled, with a distant, sad look in her eyes. I hugged the pillow to my chest, feeling as if my mother was sitting beside me, stroking my hair and comforting me.<\/p>\n
It turned out she always knew how much a daughter would suffer if she chose the wrong man. It turned out she had prepared a backup plan for me; not a wealthy one, but one that kept me from despair.<\/p>\n
That night, I lay on the hard bed in my small rented room, holding the pillow to my chest, my tears soaking the pillowcase.<\/p>\n
But this time, I wasn\u2019t crying because of H\u00e9ctor. I was crying because I loved my mother.<\/p>\n
Crying because I felt lucky, that at least I still had a place to go back to, a mother who loved me, and a big world out there waiting to welcome me.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I woke up early, folded the pillow carefully, and put it in my suitcase. I told myself I would rent a smaller room, closer to my job.<\/p>\n
I would send more money to my mother, and I would live a life where I no longer had to tremble or wait for a cold message from anyone.<\/p>\n
I smiled at myself in the mirror.<\/p>\n
This woman with swollen eyes, from today on, would live for herself, for her aging mother back home, and for all the unfinished dreams of her youth.<\/p>\n
That marriage, that old pillow, that sneer\u2026 all of it was just the end of a sad chapter. As for my life, there were still many new pages waiting to be written by my own resilient hands<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e9ctor and I had been in marriage for five years. From the very first day I became his wife, I got used to his cold words and his indifferent glances. H\u00e9ctor wasn\u2019t violent or loud, but his apathy made my heart wither a little more each day. After our wedding, we lived in his parents\u2019…<\/p>\n