Chapter 14-Fortitude
Alita arrived at her family home expecting the normal disarray and financial mismanagement of her father's poor judgement.
It saddened her to learn the money she'd been sending home for several years he was blowing at the local cantina, bragging about all the money his daughter was making on her job.
Twice, Ricardo Mendoza had been rolled and robbed in an alley, losing the money he'd received.
A year prior, she'd stopped sending the money to her father and gave the funds to her mother and brother in person.
When she completed her studies, she stopped giving altogether.
Although she was uncertain how she would be received, she still missed her family and longed for a hug from her mother and a bit of home cooking.
She exited the vehicle and stood in front of the old Casa Chorizo styled home; on her past visits, she had seen the stucco peeling.
The home desperately needed upgrading; much of the tiling in the patio was broken, and the wrought iron embellishments were bent or simply hanging on by a thread.
She felt as if her mother did as well. The home, gifted to Eliza Mendoza by her parents, had been in the family for many years, and after marriage to Ricardo, Eliza had prayed they could maintain the property.
Ricardo was a lazy man with high ambitions to marry his daughter off to a rich family and live on easy street.
Instead, Eliza worked her fingers to the bone to keep the lights on and put food on the table.
Alita had accepted her job with Micah hoping to ease the burden on her mother and to provide stability to her brother so he wouldn't end up living a hard life on the streets, robbing Peter to feed Paul's addictions.
She stopped, looking at the home. A three-bedroom home, which in reality was only two, and her brother Luis had basically slept in a closest until Alita had taken the job at Perona de la Mar.
Now the closet with the twin bed was hers when she stayed overnight at the place where she grew up but no longer considered home.
She stood at the door, noticing the new camera-styled doorbell.
Alita also didn't miss the amount of wrought iron that had been repaired on the windows or the chunks of stucco on the house no longer hanging like life regrets, but neatly fixed and painted.
In fact, the entire house was painted a creamy yellow and added distinction to the street versus the eyesore it had become in previous years.
She rang the doorbell to her brother opening the door happy to see her.
Luis, two years younger than she, was dressed casually, wearing neat pants, boots, and a button-down shirt. He grabbed her, giving a big hug as he dragged her inside the house.
“Hermana! So good to see you,” he offered, calling into the kitchen. “Mama, Alita esta aqui.”
Eliza came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron brandishing a logo of a Cocada candy with the face of Alita's grandmother, Lucia. She pointed at the apron. “Qué eso, Mama?”
Happy to show off the apron, she spun around in a circle. “Your friend, Micah! I now have a storefront at the market. No more tables outside in the heat! It is cool and the candy stays fresh. The shop is called Lucia's Cocadas and More. I'm fancy!”
“Excuse me? A storefront?” Alita said.
“And that is not all,” Eliza said, reaching for the light switch, and flipping it up. “No more shortages. We have consistent power.”
“What is going on here?” Alita asked, confused.
Luis spoke, “Micah got me a job at Perona de la Mar.”
“Like when? And doing what? A stable boy working with the herds?” Alita asked, since her brother hated school and ran from anything that resembled work, much like their father.
“Almost two years, but he told me not to tell you,” Luis said.
“I work with different tradesmen, learning their skills.
I spent four months with each one while I figured out what I was good at.
I'm going to work with solar panel installations. I put four on this house, and we have power and a working, up-to-date fridge to keep the food from spoiling.”
Alita dropped her book bag. She plopped down on the new sofa. The old one with the spring poking the sitter in the butt was gone. New rugs covered the floor, and the curtains, which were once dingy, were new and lacy.
“Explain it to me slowly,” Alita said.
“Well, I guess your Boss heard about Papa throwing money around and the state of our house,” Luis said.
“He showed up one night and offered me a job.
It has been great. I worked with a mason guy who taught me how to do stucco, so I fixed the house.
Alita, I worked with leather men, plumbers, electricians, and ironworkers.
I fixed the wrought iron myself. I know how to do a lot of stuff, but I'm going to school in September to get my license for solar panel installation. Your Boss has paid my tuition and everything.”
“He has?”
“Si,” Eliza said. “I have my own bank account in my own name. Your Papa does not have access to any of the money I make at the store. It is all mine. The taxes are caught up on the house, and we are doing so good. My darling daughter, are you okay? Is the family treating you well?”
“Very much so, Mama,” she said.
She spoke with them both about life in Colombia.
Alita spoke fondly of Ryanne, telling her mother how the Lady of the Lands treated her as if she were one of her own children.
She told her mother and brother how she took meals at the table with the family and only needed to eat with the servants when dignitaries visited.
Then she got to the part that she didn’t want to tell them, but it needed to be said.
“Well, you know, I got accepted into Uni in Bogotá,” Alita said. “The Boss has gotten a four-bedroom flat, and there is room for you guys when you come visit, which I hope will be often. I don't know how often I will get to come home, which is a concern for me.”
Eliza moved to sit next to her daughter. “Things have changed between you and the young man who employs you? He told your father, you were still whole. Has this changed?
“No Mama, it has not,” Alita said. “In the flat, I have a separate bedroom and bath apart from him. The scholarship is only covering a portion of the tuition, the rest I have to pay from my salary, but I can make do. Are you guys doing okay?”
Luis smiled, “I have a nice salary. I give Papa money each week from a little fund I put aside, so he has money to go to the cantina with his friends. He stays out of our way, and we are doing very well, Hermana. Your Boss took nice care of us.”
Alita sat for a moment and did what she'd been unable to do in four years.
She cried. It was more relief than anything.
It also left her in a green zone so that whatever happened between her and Micah Delgado going forward, she could make the decision based on where she stood, not where she would sink if she stepped backwards.
Wiping away her tears, she looked at her mother. “Okay, I am here until Friday midday. I have all day tomorrow to help you make cocadas for your new store.”
“Mija, I have new equipment to do that,” Eliza said, waving her hand. “As I said, I'm fancy now. Come eat. I made your favorite choripán, humita en chala and locro. You hungry? Come. Eat. Eat.”
Alita followed her mother and brother into the kitchen.
At the table, she filled them in on The Cranberry’s wedding, visiting different colleges in the States, and the trip to the UK, and she presented small gifts to her brother and mother.
Her father arrived smelling of rum, happy to see her, joining them at the table, and she passed him the gift she'd gotten in Kentucky, a nice bottle of Bourbon which he held like a small child.
Everything would be as it should be, and for the second time, Alita Mendoza cried, simply because she was happy.
****
MICAH DELGADO WASN'T happy. He was pissed.
Each day he seemed to get angrier and angrier, and by the time Alita arrived on Friday, he was nearly in a fighting mood.
She entered the kitchens to find him sitting at the table, abusing a plate of asada, seemingly angry at the beef, stabbing it with his fork.
“We have time to ride before the first guests begin to arrive,” Alita said. “I could use the fresh air. You game, Boss?”
“Sure, why not,” he said, rising slowly.
He followed her to the stable, grabbing his horse's lead and bringing the stallion out of the paddock.
The gentle mare Alita normally rode wasn't being gentle today, leaving her to choose another mount. They rode for an hour, saying nothing, returning to the house and their quarters to dress for the first guests’ arrival, two of whom would be Raj van Dijk and his daughter Zoe.
Suriname was one of the countries she'd never visited, and Alita was interested in the Dutch colony.
It was a silo, based on what Micah had said, and very few of the people spoke Spanish although the base language of the continent was Spanish outside of Brazil, which was Portuguese.
She dressed quickly in the green silk, a long-sleeved lacy wrap dress which came mid-calf.
She added simple earrings to her ears, and she wished she'd brought with her the string of pearls Ryanne had given her as a gift for her 18th birthday.
In the dressing area where she and Micah shared a space, she checked her hair and makeup in the mirror and attached her thigh holders for her knife and the small-caliber weapon.
“You won't need those tonight,” he said, asking her to remove the weapons. “You will need these, however.”