Mary

Mary was sitting by the window, watching the street, people with umbrellas, it's raining. She thinks: like my heart.

She remembers her childhood, out in the country with her four siblings, her mother milking the cow to give them breakfast. I remember when we all went to school together in a pack, my older brother took us, I got sick and left school, my parents said that knowing how to read and write was enough. How I cried when at 15 they sent me off to work in the city, in a family's house.

I never saw my family again, I got married, had my own children, and now they went looking for their aunts and uncles and that's how I found out that my parents had died, and a brother too; the others got married and live in different cities, they remember me and want to see me. But I'm afraid, my heart weeps with emotion and I wonder what's left of the little girl they knew, I look in the mirror and only my eyes haven't changed.

I pick up my purse, I look at myself, I smile, I go out with my children to meet 2 of my siblings, and my past.