47. Athena
CHAPTER 47
Athena
MARCH 14TH
I t has been fourteen days since I last had an accident overnight. Or, for that matter, couldn’t sleep.
The boys have moved back into their own homes. Well, most of them. Scottie has all but officially moved into my apartment with me. Neither of us have labeled it, but he’s slept in my bed, curled around me like a loyal guard dog every night since the first one.
Despite my tendency for being a strong, independent woman, numerous conversations with my therapist are teaching me that I don’t have to be that strong, independent woman all the time. And that when someone offers to help, it’s even okay to accept it.
It’s weird. It feels like I’m weak, like I should be able to lie down in my bed and get some goddamn sleep by my big girl self, and I loathe feeling like a burden to Scottie, and my brothers. But something I’m learning through my recovery journey, is that sometimes I need to let people help me to let them feel a bit better about themselves as well.
My brothers are all beside themselves with worry about me. To their credit, they can still look me in the eyes, unlike a lot of students around campus who heard what happened to me. But their concern is so strong, I can feel it when they walk into a room.
They have been put at ease since I let Scott spend every night lying in bed with me.
The irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. In the beginning, I avoided dating Scottie because I was afraid my brothers would hand him his ass on a platter or stop talking to him altogether. And now, the only thing that keeps them away from my front door every night is the fact he’s here to take care of me.
Funny how things change over time.
I’m sitting in Sip Happens, a local coffee shop that specializes in coffee beans from Latin America. It’s a small, family-owned business that I’ve kept secret from my brothers because it makes buying their Christmas and Birthday presents easier on me.
I needed somewhere that wasn’t Bitches Brew.
The buzz about my attack hasn’t died yet, nor does it seem to be waning in the slightest. As much as my usual boss bitch demeanor doesn’t mind being stared at—in fact, I’m used to being the center of attention, given who my father is—I’m used to it and often invite it. But I don’t have the energy for it right now.
I don’t have the energy for much. And the conversation I’m about to have with Mamá is going to take up enough of my strength.
Scott and the boys told me I should wait, that I could wait, but it’s been weighing on my mind for long enough. I need to get it off my chest. And she needs to know.
It’s a matter of minutes before she opens the coffee shop door, making the overhead bell jingle. In her fifties, she looks amazingly well. I’d bet she could easily be mistaken as someone a decade younger.
She’s always been someone to take great care of herself and prides herself on her appearance. She’s wearing a knee- length, black jacket with a faux fur hood. She’s got a Dolce and Gabbana black purse dangling from a silver chain link handle that matches her black peep toe shoes. I bet they’re D&G as well.
She pulls off her shades, her thick black hair glossy and perfectly wavy. She gives new meaning to the word beach waves. I either get limp and flat or stuck my finger in a socket chic.
“Mija.” Her face doesn’t soften as I stand to greet her because she doesn’t believe in pity. She’s never been one for showing the world vulnerabilities for them to exploit, and while in private she’s empathetic and supportive, in public, it’s business as usual.
She’s been avoiding me this week, however, as though she knows I have something of importance to talk to her about. And any time I suggest coming over to visit, she dissuades me. I think Papá has perhaps told her not to be too eager to welcome me into the house. Either he’s still clueless about how to deal with the fact his eldest daughter, and apple of his eye has been raped, or he’s still pissed I yelled at him in his own office.
Either way, those are his problems.
Mine is the fact I’m about to tell his wife of more than thirty years that he’s a cheating piece of shit.
“Mamá.” I return her cheek kisses with some of my own. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
I go straight for the jugular. She’s not a beat-about-the-bush kind of woman. She’s direct in her approach in all things.
Thankfully, Sip Happens is small. Most people come here for to-go coffee for the surrounding businesses, or they buy the beans and merch. There are maybe ten to twelve tables, and as if by fate, the only other people in the place sit as far away from us as you can get without being out on the street.
She waves me off but says nothing. “At least let me get some cacao in my veins before you come out swinging, Mija. Your usual?”
Sip Happens has not one but two different brands of coffee from the Dominican Republic, which makes my Mamá both inordinately happy and homesick at the same time.
Given the choice, she’ll always order a Café Santo Domingo medio pollo—espresso with a little bit of milk served in a small cup. And apparently, I’ve been here with Mamá often enough to have a ‘usual’ of my own. La Tacita café amargo—black coffee with no sugar.
“Sí, por favor.”
She disappears and comes back with a tray of sweet treats. I shouldn’t be surprised, the woman doesn’t just have one sweet tooth, she has thirty.
I can’t blame her. This place doesn’t only serve Dominican coffees and desserts, but it’s what she’ll pick every time because they’re as close to ‘home’ as she can get without going back to the DR.
Abuelita makes trés leches for them every now and then, because she makes the best in the land. And everyone knows it.
There are four plates on the tray, but no coffee. When I lift a questioning eyebrow to her, she shrugs. “They’ll bring the coffee.”
She’s selected arroz con dulce, a sweet rice pudding, a Dominican corn pudding called majarete, and a sweet pastry we call pastelitos she’s got two flavors, guava-filled and pineapple-filled.
As we remove the plates from the tray she looks me dead in the eye. “We need to tell your brothers about this place.”
I shake my head. “No, they’ll only share it with the whole team, and it won’t be this quiet and delightful to visit anymore.” I wrinkle my nose. “It’ll smell of hockey boy.”
She slides the tray onto a neighboring table, not standing on ceremony as she digs straight into the rice pudding.
“Mamá.” I rearrange the dishes to try to make space for the coffees. “Why are there four?”
She shrugs. “They’re small.”
They aren’t small. Portions in this place are anything but small. But I won’t argue.
Once the coffees are placed in front of us and the empty plate where the guava pastelitos used to live is removed, Mamá takes a deep inhale of the coffee. “Aaaahhh. Just like home.” She winks at me over the rim of the mug as she takes her first, sacred sip.
She reaches over the table, tucking loose hair behind my ear. “Don’t hide your beautiful face from the world, Athena.” She regards my features with an intense stare. It takes all my focus not to shift in my seat under her assessing gaze. There are still bruises on my face, they’re faint, but I see them every time I let myself look in the mirror.
“How are you feeling?” She pierces my eyes with her own. “How is therapy?”
“Exhausting.” I blow out a huff of air. “Who knew that trying to get better, that trying to be healthy would take so much energy?”
She smiles. “It’s a long road, but it’s worth it. I know you know this, but if you don’t click with your therapist, there are others.”
I nod. “I’m giving this guy a chance. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I don’t hate him.”
She takes another sip from her dinky cup. “That’s high praise for a therapist. I hate mine. He’s awful and makes me want to strangle him. But he’s exceptional at his job.”
If I knew Mamá was in therapy, I’d forgotten, because this news surprises me in all the right ways.
“It’s healthy to have an outlet to talk to someone, Athena.” She shakes her head with a motherly smile on her face. “Kids think that because their parents are grown, we don’t need help anymore.” She taps a manicured fingernail off the side of her cup. “And yet, we need it more than ever.”
I want to push her to talk about what she means but she’s already moved back to me. She squeezes my hand. “You’ll get through this. It’s hard, awful, and some days you’ll feel like you want to curl up and die. But you mustn’t let them win, Mija. Do you hear me?”
A lump appears in my throat, and I’m blinking back tears.
“You must dig into the reserve pool of strength so deep inside that you forgot it was even there. And lean on us, of course, your brothers, Scott…”
My face heats at the mention of my Scottie.
“We’re together, Mamá. I choose him.”
She nods like she’s been expecting it. “I had my suspicions. He has loved you for a long time, and he is a fine choice. Your brothers have told me how much he’s been there for you since your attack. I knew even before that he was good for you.”
I quirk a brow.
“He pokes at you in ways your brothers don’t, in ways you need him to poke at you.” Her warm, motherly smile takes on a tinge of smugness. “And he makes you laugh.” Her eyes turn sad. “Hold onto the laughter, Athena. No matter what comes your way, find time to laugh together.”
She clears her throat as though she was getting emotional too. “What did you want to talk to me about, Mija?” She places the small cup onto the saucer before scooping some corn pudding into her mouth.
I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want to give voice to the truth because I know she’s going to be hurt. I don’t want to ruin her favorite place to have coffee with the memory of her daughter breaking the awful news that her husband is a cheater.
Shaking my head, I pick up my own cup. “It’s nothing. We can enjoy our coffee and talk about it later.”
She arches a perfectly sculpted brow in my direction, giving me a look I’ve seen too often throughout my life. She smells blood.
“Mija. If you have something to say, spit it out.”
I sigh, replacing my cup into the saucer before poking at the edge of the guava pastry.
She waits for a moment, then another, and as she regards me, she sips at her drink again. Does the silence not bother her? Is this an interrogation?
I shift in my seat which makes her laugh.
“Ever since you were a little girl, Mija. You get that face only for two things. Uno, when you’re constipated and have a sore tummy.”
My cheeks heat.
“And dos, when you’re upset at your Papá.”
My head snaps up. Our eyes meet. She smiles. “Aha.” She points at me. “What has he done this time?”
I shake my head, delaying the conversation a few more seconds by taking a long sip of my delicious java juice.
“Athena.” Her tone takes on that motherly edge that says she isn’t going to drop it. “Dime.”
How? How can I tell my mother her husband is a cheating cabrón?
She heaves out a sigh, drawing her fingertip around the edge of her saucer. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
It feels like I’m being led somewhere she already knows is the destination. Could she know?
“Mamá.” I twist my hands in my lap, hard to do when one of them is in a cast and yet, I persist. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Your father cheated on me.”
My eyes widen, and instead of being relieved, my stomach tenses. “You know?”
She nods.
Wait. Cheated. Past tense. I’m pretty sure Papá hasn’t given up his habit, but I have no proof.
“It’s more than that, Mamá. He’s had children with them.”
Her eye twitches. “Children… plural?”
It takes a few minutes for me to tell her everything I know. When I do, she’s quiet for another long stretch of time. A member of staff comes to clear our dishes, and two more people come in off the street and take a seat a few tables away from us.
“Do you remember when you were younger, when you saved up your allowance and bought Apollo a cow for his birthday?”
I don’t know where she’s going with this, but I nod. It wasn’t a real, live cow, but considering the story of Apollo and the cows from mythology, I felt like I kind of had to.
“Ares kept stealing it.”
“He left cow footprints in flour on Apollo’s wooden floor.”
“Just like in the story.” Still completely clueless as to where she’s headed with this trip down memory lane, I laugh. Because it really was a stroke of genius.
Ares stole the cow, just like Hermes, and left powdered, backward footprints so Apollo would be thrown off, believing his cattle actually went the other way.
“You want to steal Papá’s cattle?”
She shakes her head. “Papá is the cattle.”
It’s not what I expected from her. I expected her to do what so many Dominican women do and defend their husbands, to capitulate, or simply ignore the whole situation. But Mamá is very clearly pissed, despite her demure outward appearance. I can feel it coming off her in wave after wave. Plus, she has something of a homicidal glint in her eye.
“He convinced me he was done.” She picks at lint on her skirt. “He convinced me it was one woman, one time. He begged me to give him another chance, and promised he wouldn’t cheat anymore.”
She makes an animalistic noise. “Puta madre just wanted the picture-perfect life. A magazine cut-out kind of wife who would smile and stand by his side.”
I still don’t understand the correlation with the cows.
As if she can read my mind, she covers my hand with hers. “What happened to the cows, Mija?”
It takes me a hot minute to scroll through my memory to recount the details of the story in question.
She can tell the moment when I figure out what the punchline is and nods. “Sí, Mija. I want to kill him and make strings for the lyre from his gut.”