Chapter Twenty-two - Lu
Chapter Twenty-two
Lu
“L ualhati!”
She recognized the voice but was in no mood to respond. Her eyes were swollen, her nose red, and her head was thrashing. She rubbed her eyes and then glanced at her watch. It was seven o’clock in the morning and she hadn’t slept a wink. She was slumped with her back rested against the headboard, and her knees were pulled into her chest with her arms wrapped tightly around them. She’d been in that position for hours. A box of tissue rested next to her in the bed.
“Lualhati!” the voice called again. Yana opened the door and stuck her head inside. “There you are.”
Lu wiped her face, attempting to remove any traces of tears. “What are you doing here, Ina?”
“I was worried about you, my darling.”
“Zach called you,” she said knowingly. Mentioning his name made her heart hurt even more. She gazed downward.
“Yes, he did, and thankfully so.” Yana gathered the used tissues and placed them into the trash can. “What is this about you calling off the wedding?”
“Didn’t he tell you? He’s already married.”
“Yes, he told me.” Yana placed her palm against Lu’s face. Then she grabbed her daughter’s chin, lifted it, and gave her a smile. “Darling, this is nothing that can’t be fixed.”
This coming from a woman who fell in love with someone else’s husband , Lu thought. Surely her idea about love and relationships would be skewed. She couldn’t be trusted, Lu decided after replaying all that John Samuels had filled her brain with.
Yana slid onto the bed, facing Lu. She brushed Lu’s hair from her eyes and then dried the tears with her fingertips. “He’s already started divorce proceedings.”
“That isn’t the point. The point is that he lied to me in the first place.”
“Did he lie or did he withhold information? There’s a difference, you know.”
“Like you withheld information?”
“Darling . . .”
“Why are you taking his side, anyway?” Lu asked as she stared deeply into her mother’s eyes.
“I’m not taking anyone’s side, sweetheart. I just don’t want you to overreact about something that can be fixed with a conversation.”
“Yes, a conversation that should’ve taken place long before he asked me to marry him. I should’ve known that he was a married man before we became involved.”
“You’re right.” Yana moved closer to her daughter, wrapped her arm around Lu’s shoulder. “But you know this woman is no one special. They were never romantically involved.”
“So he says. How can I believe anything he says now?”
“I agree, he should’ve told you.”
“Yes, he should’ve told me. My best friend knew, and she also should’ve told me.”
“Kenya?”
“Yes, Kenya. Or should I call her Judas?” Lu rolled her eyes upward and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Now, Lualhati.” Yana gave her a half-smile.
“No, seriously. I feel like everyone in my life has betrayed me or kept things from me. All the lies and secrets. I’m so over it. Even you have kept things from me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I learned a lot while in California, Ina, about you and John Samuels’s relationship, and your lifestyle .”
“What about my lifestyle?”
“You always told me that you were a waitress. You weren’t a waitress when you met John.”
“I was a waitress.”
“Yes, but you were more than that.”
“He had no right to tell you that. It was my place.”
“Well, when were you going to tell me that you were a lady of the night?”
“There’s really nothing to tell. It was a way of life.”
“Because you were poor, right?”
“Very much so.”
“Being a hooker was your only choice?”
Yana looked at Lu squarely in the eye. With her voice raised, she said, “Watch your mouth and your tone with me, young lady. I’m not proud of things in my past, the choices I had to make. Sometimes our lives aren’t pretty, and our decisions are based on things beyond our control. You don’t understand this because I’ve always shielded you from my past and things that were of no concern to you.”
“It seems you shielded me from a lot.”
“It was for your own good.”
“For my good, or for yours, Ina?”
“There were some things that you just didn’t need to know. Things that have had no impact on your life whatsoever. I took care of you, raised you to be a wonderful young woman. You graduated from law school and joined one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. Now you’re the owner of a very successful inn. And I’m still your mother who loves you with everything in me. My past didn’t change any of that.”
Lu was silent for a moment, trying to digest what her mother said. A slight frown formed on her face and she pursed her lips. She couldn’t think of one reason that her mother’s past impacted her life. Yana was right; her past hadn’t changed one thing. But she couldn’t let it go. “Why did you go after a married man? Were there not any suitable single sailors in all of Manila?”
“I didn’t know that he was married right away. And truthfully, Lualhati, I don’t even know that I cared. We had our own life in Manila, John and me. We were in our own world. By the time I discovered that he was married with a toddler, I was already in love and already pregnant with you.”
“But after you found out, you still followed him to the States.”
“He was my ticket out, plain and simple,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I wanted him to choose me. But he didn’t.”
Lu breathed in deeply and then out through her mouth. Her eyes stared at Yana, but her shoulders relaxed, her stance softened. She felt sorry for her mother. She couldn’t fathom what it was like to want a man and to watch him choose someone else.
Yana gently stroked her daughter’s arm. “You have a good man, my darling. One who has chosen you, and only you. I urge you not to throw it away. Give him a chance to fix this. Don’t become an old woman with many regrets.”
“What are your regrets, Ina?”
“I don’t regret my love affair with John Samuels, because I have a beautiful daughter as a result of it.” Yana slid from the bed and stood up. “I have to go. But I hope that you’ll think about what I said.”
Yana kissed Lu’s forehead and touched her cheek with the palm of her hand. Lu looked deeply into Yana’s dark brown eyes, took in her smooth, flawless tan skin—not a wrinkle in sight. The crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes were the only indication that she’d seen more than sixty-seven summers. She’d worn the same candy apple red lip color since Lu was a child, and the same fragrance—Chloé. Over the years, Lu had tried buying her a variety of other colognes—expensive ones. Still, she preferred Chloé’s 1975 honeysuckle and lilac scent.
Lu watched as her mother walked toward the door and touched the handle. Yana looked back before exiting, giving her a gentle smile. Lu didn’t smile back, but her heart did. She loved her mother. Life hadn’t always been easy for them, but she couldn’t remember one single day that she went without eating or without the things that she needed. Yana had made sure of it. After talking to John Samuels, she had lost respect for her mother, had even rehearsed the conversation she had intended to have with a woman who had fed her nothing but lies her entire life. However, as she watched Yana leave the room, suddenly the things that John Samuels had shared didn’t seem so important. What was most important at this moment was that her heart ached, and she couldn’t seem to make it stop.