PROLOGUE
This is a story in three parts about Mateo and Adelita, but they are not the same people in each story. Instead, think of them as Jane and John Does—unknown Latines that remind us of people in our lives, of strangers still to society. Adelita’s name comes from one of the nicknames given to the soldaderas (female warriors) of the Mexican Revolution; Mateo’s name means “gift of God.”
This is a tale of judgment and assumptions. . . primarily, judgment on us Latinos, as a community, for the danger we put the girls in our culture in every time we react with fear of chismes, fear of the unknown. This tale is meant to shame us for our own judgment that condemns these girls to unhappy marriages, abuse, and repression.
All of this in the name of family.
PART 1.
A.
Mateo and Adelita met at the car dealership they both worked at; she was a receptionist, and he was the new salesman. During his first week working at the dealership, Adelita bumped into him as she rushed toward the elevator for her half-hour break, and she would later hear Mateo tell anyone who met the pair that it was love at first sight for him. How he would stare at her as she passed his desk every day, her long wavy hair trailing behind her as she made her way to the elevator, her laugh echoing throughout the small office. He would go on and on about how he was the main character of every telenovela his mom had ever played on their television—memorized and all-consumed by thoughts of her. Thoughts of the ojo rojo necklace that clung to her neck, of the black platforms she wore, of the red lipstick she’d apply every few hours, and of the colorful blazers she’d wear.
Unknown to him at the time, Adelita was also smitten with him. She adored how Mateo could go from the charismatic man everyone in the office knew him as to the rambling mess who may or may not have known how to use a printer. She spent weeks flirting with him as she helped him fix the “jammed” printer, order materials he “forgot” to do, and pick up papers he dropped when she all but pushed him to the ground every time she bumped into him. The sight of him messing up his brown hair every ten minutes attracted her to him. The sight of the two dimples that would appear any time he smiled made her fall for him just a smidge. But the softness of his voice every time he spoke to her made her believe he could talk her into trouble if he could ever get up the nerve to ask her out.
She was coming back from break one day and decided to take fate into her own hands.
“Tenga.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “Call me after 5.”
And he did.
_
They went to the cantinas for their first date where they played the arcade games the bar had in the corner of the room and put fifty cents in the jukeboxes to listen to their favorite songs for hours.
“Yo me voy?” he questioned when it was her turn to pick the song.
The sound of her pressing the buttons reverberated around them. “My mom used to play it when I helped her cook tamales during Navidad and Cuatro de Julio,” she answered as the victory tone rang from the machine. She faced him with her hands on her hips and a raised eyebrow, wordlessly challenging him to another round.
“Americana,” he teased as he put two coins into the slot.
When it was his turn to pick the song, he selected “Pedro y Pablo” by Los Tigres del Norte, followed by an off-key grito she hadn’t expected.
She hadn’t had so much fun on a date in years, hadn’t anticipated the amount of butterflies beating against her chest. Tequila came out her nose from snorting at his impression. Composing herself as much as she was able to, she asked: “Did your dad never teach you how to do that properly?”
“Oi, my grito is excellent!”
“Whatever you say, tesoro.” She laughed as he played another song, doing the grito as patrons around them turned to glare at the pair. She didn’t mind.
She would later tell everyone that this was the moment she fell in love with him, in love with the way out-of-tune singing and the playlists he would always have ready for her by their next date, written out in his illegible penmanship.
–
The pair was lying on top of his bed, the smell of the Axe spray intoxicating the room.
“I couldn’t stop think about you,” Mateo told her two months into dating. He spoke to her with the soft yet husky voice he always had after waking up. “I knew I had to meet you, had to know you, had to love you forever.”
She laughed, the same laugh that had him telling her cringey jokes just to hear it.
Her heart pounded against her chest at the words no one else had ever told her. “Don’t be an idiot.” She bumped her shoulder against his but looked at him with adoration; her eyes begging him to continue.
A mischievous twinkle arose in his brown eyes as his eyes met hers. “No te recuerdas all the times I tried convincing you the printer was broken just so you’d come over and help me.”
She rolled her eyes at the memory. “Stubborn man.” Smiling up at him, she said: “And all it needed was more paper. Pero no, you’d swear up and down that we needed more ink or que estaba atascada.”
He laughed with her. “Well, how else would I have gotten you to let me take you out?”
Pressing a hand to his cheek, she brought his lips down to hers, letting them linger for a moment. “Do I have to remind you that I was the one who gave you my number,” she whispered before kissing him.
A cocky grin donned his face, one that was always difficult to wipe off. “Well, it took you long enough to catch on.”
She pushed him off her and attempted to get up, only for his hands to circle her waist, pressing her closer to him.
“Mateo!” she half-shouted, half-giggled as his finger rose to her stomach.
–
“Era la mujer más hermosa que he conocido en toda mi vida,” he later said at their wedding, “Yo me voy” playing in the background.
_
They had two kids, and everything was fine for a while. They had a good marriage for a decade, but they fell out of love.
_
He stopped making her playlists . . .
Adelita used the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the five-year-old clinging to her hips and gave Mateo the playlist she had spent all day making him—in-between caring for the kids, cooking, and cleaning.
She smiled despite the bags under her eyes, which went unnoticed by him. “I made you a playlist, tesoro.”
He glanced at the slip of paper for a second before placing it on the table. “That’s nice—I’ll listen to it later.” He moved past her toward the bathroom. The playlist stayed on the table for weeks until she threw It away.
_
He no longer told her about his days . . .
“How was work?” she’d ask as he got inside the house.
“Busy,” he’d say, ruffling their daughter’s hair as he made his way to the living room to watch TV. She’d sit in their bedroom, listening to songs he introduced her to, wishing he was next to her.
The notes with the playlists he wrote her years ago sat in a box in their closet. One, that like her, hadn’t been touched in years.
_
“I want to get a divorce,” she confided in her mother. “I’m just not happy—our marriage is stale.”
Her mom scoffed. “That’s what marriage is like, Adelita. Mateo is a hardworker and provides for you and the kids. What more do you want from him?”
She wanted the love and passion that highlighted their earlier relationship. Marriages lose their passion after the honeymoon stage, she reminded herself anytime this doubt would creep in.
B.
Mateo and Adelita met when she was four and he was seven. He was the boy next door, and she was his best friend’s younger sister.
“They should get married one day,” his mom told her parents when they were over for game night one evening. “To help him get his papers.”
Despite talking about her, no one paid attention to the confused look on her face as she glanced up at her parents. Adelita wasn’t sure what papers had to do with anything (not yet at least).
_
“Aren’t you excited to be sisters one day?” his mom asked her as she played with Mateo’s younger sister who was only a year younger than Adelita herself. As a now seven-year-old, Adelita wasn’t sure what to say, so she said nothing.
“No digas pendejadas,” her dad told his mom this time, irritation shutting down the conversation. But it was too late for her father’s intervention, the message had already sunken in.
_
Despite how much time she spent at his house, playing with his younger sister, Adelita hardly knew Mateo. They never dated . . .they weren’t in love, but when she turned nineteen, they got married. It’s what was always expected of her, so did she really ever have a choice?
When she turned twenty, they had their first kid.
She spent all day feeding the baby . . . putting the baby to sleep . . . rocking the baby . . . changing the baby . . . cleaning up after the baby. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be a mother; she never really had the time to consider it, always just moving along with whatever those around her told her to do. But she didn’t have time to think about that as she rushed to pick up groceries from the store while the baby cried on the way to and from, cried as she swept and mopped the entire house, cried as she rushed to make dinner before Mateo got home.
Cried as she leant against the bathroom door, sitting in a fetal position on the floor. Five more minutes, just five more minutes, she begged as a migraine began thumping against her skull. For the first time since the baby’s birth, she cried.
_
A year later, a second one arrived, and it only got worse.
She spent all day feeding baby 2 . . . feeding baby 1 . . . putting baby 2 to sleep . . . putting baby 1 to sleep . . . rocking baby 2 . . . rocking baby 1 . . . putting baby 2 back to sleep as baby 1 screams . . . changing baby 2. . . changing baby 1 . . . crying . . . cleaning up after baby 2.
Both babies cried as she swept and mopped the entire house, cried as she rushed to make dinner before Mateo got home. Cried as she leant against the bathroom door, sitting in a fetal position on the floor. One more minute, just one more minute, she begged (too exhausted even for the tears she begged to shed).
Mateo got home from his factory job in the evening, went outside to drink beer, and went to bed without so much as a hello. He hadn’t seen the kids in three weeks, but they made ends meet.
_
“How was work?” she asked him as she settled into bed, wishing he’d ask her how her day went.
“De la fregada,” he replied before turning his back toward her.
She turned up the radio next to their bed and began to fall asleep as the chorus to “Yo me voy” played.
She wasn’t in love—she wasn’t happy. “You could have it worse,” her mother reminded her.
PART 2.
C.
Adelita fell in love with Mateo when she was fifteen and he was twenty-two. He went to the same college as her older brother, a small university only a block away from her high school. She was sitting in the university’s Starbucks, waiting for her brother to get out of class and drive her home, when a boy in light jeans and a dark blue long sleeve sat down beside her.
“I like your stickers,” he said, gesturing to The Marías sticker on her laptop. “I actually saw the band play a show a few months ago.”
“They’re my favorite band,” she said and began rambling about all her favorite songs and her theories about their latest release.
A few minutes passed before he noticed the logo on her school vest. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” she said, the pride evident in her tone.
He smiled down at her. “I never would have guessed,” he said. “You seem so mature for your age.”
She glanced around the room for a moment as the heat made its way to her cheeks. Looking up, she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and attempted to ignore the faint scarlet color still on her face.
She straightened her back and tried to mimic the sensuous tone she had often heard Araceli, her sister, use when she was on the phone with her boyfriend. “I’m Adelita.”
Unlike Araceli’s voice, the shakiness in Adelita’s words made her sound whiny, not seductive. But he didn’t seem to mind.
“I’m Mateo.” His grin showed off dimples resembling the images of angels her mother often carried around with her.
_
The next day, Adelita told all her friends about the college boy who drove her home, and how she was already in love with him. But she didn’t know what love was, didn’t realize there was something wrong with a person who dated someone who just had her quinceañera, but no one said anything, so how was she to know?
Her parents liked him and invited him to all the carne asadas where he sat with her dad and tíos, drinking beer and talking about his college classes and how he’s studying to be an engineer.
“Es muy carismático,” her mom said. “And muy guapo,” she added with a knowing look as she made her way to where Adelita’s younger cousins were fawning over him.
“He’s so mature,” her dad said as he watches Mateo take his sixth shot of tequila.
_
She got sick one morning and missed school. The next day, she threw up before math class and the day after in gym. “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant,” her best friend joked as they walked to biology class later that week.
Adelita forced a laugh, “Of course not.”
After school, instead of walking to the college, she walked to the CVS. The cashier had an unsure look on her face as she scanned the test. “Are you okay?”
Adelita slid her the money she saved up from skipping lunch. “I’m fine,” she insisted, not convincing anyone.
Not wanting to let the cashier know what she was doing, Adelita hurried toward the convenience store across the street. Greeting the cashier, she made her way to the back of the store where she knew the bathrooms were located. After three minutes, she turned the test around and saw two red lines. Positive.
She was only fifteen.
_
A few weeks went by before she decided to tell her parents. As she waited for her dad to get back from his job at the egg factory, she paced around the room with her mother throwing her irritated looks every four minutes.
The sound of flipping a tortilla echoed off the walls as her mother yelled, “You’re going to ruin the tile!”
Her dad finally arrived fifteen minutes later.
“I need to talk to you,” she begged for the third time since he walked inside.
Ignoring her, he began moving past her and toward the bathroom. He threw an exasperated “What’s so important, Adela? Quiero meterme a bañar” over his shoulder as he walked past.
He came out half an hour later.
“She’s been acting weird all day,” her mom said, setting down another tortilla on his plate.
“I’m pregnant,” Adelita blurted out. Her dad looked up at her, hitting his chest to prevent choking on the mouthful of frijoles he had just swallowed.
“Embarazada!” he shouted. “¿Eres estupida, o qué? What were you thinking?”
“Que verguenza,” her mom said, persignandose.
Closing his eyes, he began rubbing his temple. “Go to your room,” he yelled.
She stayed in her room all night, going straight to bed. Yet she lied awake. Through the thin walls, she heard the sound of her mom crying and her dad whisper-yelling all the curse words she was sure he wanted to say to her face.
“You’re keeping the baby,” her dad told her the next morning.
Her mother stood next to him; her hands crossed as she looked down at Adelita in disgust. “It’s against the Bible otherwise.” Her mom said it as if she was doing Adelita a favor.
“Don’t worry,” her father said. For a moment, Adelita thought he was going to tell her everything was going to be okay, to hug her. Instead, he said, “I’ll take to Mateo, and your tía will help arrange the wedding.” He picked up his jacket and headed out the door.
_
Her parents decided on a small wedding at the church they had attended since she was three. The wedding date was set for two weeks after her announcement.
“Before you begin to show,” her mom said. The scornful tone in her voice indicating that there was no room for objections.
Dread overcame her as her father walked her down the aisle. Walking her toward the place her three best friends stood, wearing the same dresses they wore months prior as the damas in her quinceañera. Opposite to the girls, Mateo stood with his two groomsman and best man; all four of them wearing what she assumed were the outfits they picked out for their college graduation later that year. She saw the pastor’s mouth move and heard ringing in her ears as he uttered, “Do you, Adelita, take Mateo to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“I don’t know,” she wanted to say. “Yes,” she said instead. “I do.” What choice did she have?
She wanted to be a lawyer and help those like her tía who didn’t have papers. She wanted to go away for college, and go prom dress shopping, but all she had now is her parents’ blessing and a shiny new ring. This, she knew, was not a future that would make her happy. She wasn’t even really sure she loved him anymore . . . Mateo or the baby.
I’m only fifteen, she thought as Mateo held out a hand for their first dance. He held her close as “Yo me voy” echoes around the room.
_
Soon after the wedding, she moved in with him and dropped out of school, but everything was fine for a while. Soon, they had another baby (a girl). Mateo became stressed trying to make ends meet, and they began fighting.
It started with simple name calling—calling her ungrateful, a whore, a disgrace. Eventually, they began throwing things at one another. It became routine to fight, throwing things as the kids sat in front of the TV, not realizing the gravity of the situation around them. Or at least, that was what she hoped.
He pushed her into the broken faucet, “I’m the only one making money around here, tu sinvergüenza.”
Adelita grabbed a glass from the sink, throwing it to crack at his feet. “And you’re the only one spending it, too. I bet you’re wasting it all on your cualquieras.”
They hit one another in front of the frightened children, hitting hard enough for bruises to form the next day, which too becomes routine. Adelita told her parents about the fighting and her desire to leave; they convinced her it was normal.
“You need a father figure for your son,” her dad said. “Qué hiciste para provocarlo,” her mom asked.
Their daughter became pregnant in high school to a man ten years her senior. Adelita went to confession the day she found out. “It’s all my fault,” she told the priest. “It’s all my fault.”
D.
The abuse continued as in C. One night, Mateo grabbed Adelita, pulling her by the hair.
“Let go of me!” she shouted.
She pushed him off her. “Ya me cansastes—yo me voy, and I’m taking the kids.”
He grabbed her again, slamming her head into the nightstand repeatedly. “No me amenazes, Adelita.”
Blood began dripping onto the carpet. She didn’t wake up this time.
_
They played “Yo me voy” at her funeral. “It was her favorite song,” her mom recalled during her speech. “The one she’d sing and dance along to since she was three.”
“Poor husband,” the guests whispered as they watched him standing by the casket, a dying rose in his hand. “To be left with two kids and no wife.”
E.
Everything started as in C: Adelita and Mateo met . . . Adelita got pregnant . . . she was forced to marry him . . . she dropped out of school . . . she got pregnant again . . . and they began fighting (verbally).
Except, this time he began cheating.
It started with excuses about working late or spending time with his friends.
Adelita was driving home from her parents’ house one night when she noticed his beat-up pickup truck parked outside her best friend’s house. Her face turned red as she noticed the truck moving up and down. She parked her car next to his and got out of her car. She began banging on his car window until her hand went numb.
“Come out,” she shouted again and again until they finally did, half-dressed and disheveled. They didn’t try to hide what they had been doing.
Adelita started yelling at them, calling them every maldición she could think of. After every curse word was out, her anger began to diminish and all that was left was disappointment.
She turned to her “friend” first. Adelita rubbed at her temple, wanting to just be done with the entire situation. “Really, Jennifer? With my husband. Why, just why . . .”
“What do you want me to say?” Jennifer said, her voice carrying that hint of annoyance Adelita had often seen Jennifer use with her mother. The now-stranger pushed her long hair behind her back and gave Adelita a knowing look. “You told me you didn’t even like him anymore. I figured you wouldn’t mind.” There was no emotion behind the voice of the girl who had been her maid of honor during the worst mistake of her life.
Adelita closed her eyes and turned to him. “My best friend—do you have any verguenza?”
With no emotion in his voice, he ignored her question and said, “Vete a la casa.”
And she did. For half a second, she considered going to his brother’s house. His younger brother had always made passes at her whenever he came over. She wanted Mateo to go through the same disrespect at finding the two people he thought were loyal to him in bed, to process the humiliation forced upon him, but she decided against it with the little self-respect she had left for herself.
She wanted to leave him and take the kids away, but she didn’t. What would her parents think? What would those at her church think?
She stayed with him, and he continued cheating. “At least he doesn’t hit you,” her mother said. But she heard the whispers at every party she attended (with or without her husband), they all knew she was a fool who let her husband cheat on her. I stay for the kids, she prepared to say if anyone questioned her decision. No one ever did—they decided that talking behind her back was better. Maybe it was.
PART 3.
F.
Adelita was fourteen the first time she realized how pretty girls were, not that she’d say that aloud. She watched as all her friends got boyfriends, and she began wondering what was wrong with her.
“En nombre del padre, del hijo, de espíritu santo,” she began her prayer one night. This became routine, praying to God that her attraction to women would go away. Adelita began rationalizing it as an observation, and she did her best to repress the intrusive thoughts.
My parents can never find out, she vowed.
She began dating her friend’s cousin Mateo. He was cute, she supposed, with nice tan skin and a slight wave to his hair. He’d make dumb jokes that everyone around her thought were funny but that would leave her irritated at him. “He’s hot,” she’d hear other girls whisper whenever they went out together. She tried seeing in him what they did, but every kiss, every touch amplified the voice in her head that told her something was off. Every time he kissed her on the lips or neck or cheek, a new wave of nothingness coursed through her, and she wondered if her expectations were just too high. “En nombre del padre, del hijo, de espíritu santo, she prayed, Please let me have feelings for Mateo.”
God never answered.
_
“Don’t be a prude,” Mateo told her. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”
“Everyone knows that it hurts your first time,” her friends scoffed.
“Right,” Adelita replied in both cases, making sure to pray extra hard those nights just in case.
–
Mateo and Adelita graduated high school and college, and they got married. The two had a daughter together. Mateo worked an office job, and Adelita worked at a non-profit organization where she met Sarai.
She bumped into Sarai as the latter rushed toward the elevator for her half-hour break, and Adelita later told everyone who met them that it was love at first sight for her. She’d stare at Sarai as she passed her desk every day, her short curly hair bouncing up and down as she made her way to the elevator, her laugh echoing throughout the small office. Adelita considered herself the main male protagonist of every book she had ever read—mesmerized and all-consumed by thoughts of a woman Adelita would fight any beast for, travel to any land for, say anything for if it meant she got to be in her presence for even one moment.
She was in awe of everything about Sarai—the black obsidian that clung to her neck, the red seven-inch heels she somehow managed to walk in, the black lipstick only she could pull off, and the white trench coat that fit well against her every curve and that only someone truly chingona would have the courage to wear (wearing white was not for the faint of heart).
Adelita couldn’t stop thinking of her. She made excuses to bump into Sarai on her way to break every day when Sarai was coming back from hers. They began hanging out after work, listening to music as Sarai drove them around town, sitting around in the car talking or just enjoying each other’s company.
_
When she got home those nights, she made sure to be extra affectionate with Mateo as a form of repentance. She would seduce him, touch him, entertain the role of the dotting, submissive wife until he got off. She thought of Sarai the entire time she touched him, imagining it were Sarai in bed with her, that it was Sarai undressing her and kissing her. It helped alleviate the bile rising to her throat as his lips and hands roamed her body, and Adelita was almost able to get herself on the edge. Although, Mateo didn’t care to make sure she was taken care of after his own needs were fulfilled.
She would take care of herself in the bathroom with Sarai still on her mind. When she returned to the bedroom, Mateo was always asleep. She’d lie beside him and pray for forgiveness for the fantasies she’d have of Sarai. “I’m sorry,” she’d conclude her prayer. She wasn’t sure whether the apology was to God or Mateo or even herself. But it was there.
_
Sarai always insisted the last song had to play before she could stop the car; they’d make a game out of it with Adelita trying to stop the song during its last second.
“There’s six more seconds left,” Sarai’s smug tone echoed in the small car. “I guess we have to listen to one more.” Adelita thought she couldn’t be any more in love as a gleeful smile made its way onto Sarai’s lips.
Adelita was soon proven wrong as “Yo me voy” filled up the car.
“My grandmother used to play this song on her vinyl player,” she told Sarai. “Or that’s what my mom says.” Sarai’s face softened as Adelita told her about her theory regarding how her love of vinyls ran deep in her blood.
Sarai laughed, but she paused as the end of the song neared. There was a tender silence as it switched to the next song. Sarai leant over and kissed her, and Adelita wasn’t sure how the stars aligned in such a way for them to have met, but as she kissed her back, she was glad they did.
She was wrong, Adelita reminded herself as she deepened the kiss. She could fall even more in love with Sarai.
_
Adelita came out to Mateo a month later after weeks of contemplation, weeks of fear, weeks of kissing Sarai.
Flipping through the TV channels, he motioned for Adelita to hand him his beer. “I cheated on you,” she said, ignoring his previous request.
He set the remote down as the sound of his teeth clenching echoed the room. “What?”
“I cheated on you,” she repeated. “With a girl.” Taking a deep breath, she said the words that invaded her thoughts since high school, the truth that followed her everywhere she went. “Soy lesbiana.”
“¿Qué fregadera es esto?” he yelled at her, shouting some of the things she was always scared to hear. Pinche this, pinche that.
He called her parents, asking them to talk her out of these tonterías.
Her mother wept. “Que locura—” Tears sounded on the call. “What will the rest of the family think?”
“Eso no es normal,” her dad voiced.
The rest of it sounded like a blur to her—a blur of slurs mixed with prayers, of advice mixed with disappointment.
“You’re a mother,” her mom’s words echoed the room as if the two realities—motherhood and queerness—couldn’t coexist.
Adelita would no longer pretend—no longer put her happiness on hold, no longer let herself be convinced they had a happy marriage just because she was scared of the change, scared of the possibility of regret, scared to be isolated.
“Yo me voy,” she told him as she packed her bags.
Making her way out of the place she had called home for ten years, she turned toward him, “I’m sorry, Mateo.”
“I never want to see your fucking face again, you fucking—” the sound of the slur was muffled by her departure.
–
She moved in with Sarai. They got married within a year, but the ever-present sadness in their relationship remained.
Adelita walked herself down the aisle, the absence of parents prominent as she passed the places they’d be seated, supporting her happiness, in another life.
Adelita took another step, looking at Sarai’s niece who stood in as the flower girl rather than Adelita’s own daughter. The distance to the aisle stretched as thoughts about her daughter raced inside her head. Adelita was only able to see her on weekends now because her ex-husband gained primary custody due to her affair. She missed the little girl who’d chase their cat around the house and lecture all the cousins for the smallest of infractions.
“A licenciada in the making,” Adelita’s dad used to tease.
“She has your bad temper,” her mother would add.
Now Adelita had none of that. The absence of her community, the one she thought would always support her hit her harder today. It’s supposed to be the best day of my life, she reminded herself as she saw some of her coworkers among the guests and a few of the newer friends they’d made in recent months.
But Adelita had never wanted a small wedding. She wanted a larger version of the one she had had with Mateo but with the person she should have always been allowed to marry.
The pastor stood before her as she finally reached the aisle. “Do you, Adelita, take Sarai to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Adelita nodded; her voice cracked as she uttered her “I do.” Tears began streaming down her face, and Sarai grabbed Adelia’s face in her palms, a big smile on her face as she misunderstood the reason for Adelita’s tears.
Her lovely Sarai whose parents sat in the front row would never understand this pain.
G.
She came out in high school, and her parents convinced her she was confused. They set her up with Mateo and talked the two of them into getting married right after graduation.
The two of them had children. Yet Adelita had to force herself into a state of numbness whenever they were intimate, letting him do whatever he wanted to her in hopes of speeding up the nauseating process that forced her to disassociate from her body in order to endure it.
“Do you think I like having sex with your dad?” her mother asked her on the phone one night. “It’s your obligation as his wife,” she continued. And so Adelita did.
They grew old together. She was miserable and would sit by the kitchen window every day listening to “Yo me voy,” wondering about the life she could have lived with a gorgeous wife who wore seven-inch heels and black lipstick, a wife she loved and who kissed her under the stars.
Maria Dorado is a first-year grad student in DePaul’s English Literature and Publishing program. During her leisure time, she loves writing random snippets that she’ll come back to years later, spending time researching all she can about her Latinx culture and taking up random hobbies. She’s a first-generation college student (FGCS) and aspires to provide more opportunities to other Latinx FGCS. Currently, she works at DePaul’s University Center for Writing-based Learning as a peer tutor and Events student leader.