Gracias a Dios, Sheila always returns. Last Tuesday night she left and didn’t return until Wednesday afternoon. The last time she left, she brought back with her a lot of sadness, regret and anger. She returned a bit like she had first come, her face so sad, streaks of dirt on her hands, face and clothes, tired and worn, and defeated. Sheila’s own memories assault her; hit her as hard as el senor who swung a bucket full of cement at her forehead, strike her like the police that called her a nothing, with as much force as the sticks her husband beat her with when he was mad, or drunk, or feeling mean. Being abused, in all its forms, was her life. Treated like trash by her own family and by her ex pareja, by the people she encountered on the streets, she’s been used and thrown away, again and again. She almost doesn’t know what it is like to be respected and loved; she constantly lives her life in suspicion. But every day, I see her changing, opening up and softening. She really has a good heart.
Whenever Sheila sees anything in the shape of a heart, she exclaims how pretty it is, claims it for her own. She makes and collects as many hearts as she can, claiming she does not have one herself. The Mother’s Day card I made for her full of hearts is displayed in our living room, right behind the plastic roses Magda gave her and in front of the picture Mim gave her. Sheila is loved here. If only it were that simple.
Her biggest regret is what kind of mother she was when her kids were very young. History repeats and so does physical abuse. But I never hit my kids with a stick, never with a stick, she always says. I think her wish is to become a singer, as she always tells us; but her biggest wish is to make it up to her kids for the way she treated them, to make up for the life they were forced to live. Sheila wants to get well and become a better person not only for herself but especially for her kids.
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