Chapter N°3
Your mother has come.
Worse than the antichrist, but better than your dad. Because there's no way you could possibly hide yourself from his all seeing eyes. His startling black eyes.
You have always been fascinated with them: they seem to be bottomless and enormous. Like the rest of him. People used to wonder if you were really his: for it seemed impossible for such a rough man to produce a perfect little china doll like yourself. And the fact is, you really are different from your mother too. For years you've been afraid to be just one of the many adopted kids around the world. But then one day your dad took you on his knee and proceeded to show you his family album. That of his Italian family. And, surprise surprise, you're the exact replica of your deceased grandma; and it explains why you're always been his favourite of all the four children your mother bore him. Funnily enough, you began asking how was it possible for a little china doll as your grandma to produce such a rough man.
Even now that his hairs are no longer a flowing black and he seems unable to carry you in his arms anymore, when you look at him you still see a towering giant with big shoulders and olive skin. And his smiles never changed in the twenty something years you've know him. With a dimple that blossoms just there, right under his left eye and you think that he is a lot happier then a seventy-two ex soldier have a right to be. He went to hell and back, after four years in captivity in Africa, and still his eyes crinkle just fine around the edges: his smiles are genuine.
You're such a daddy's little girl!!!
Your mother is another story altogether: short and plump, she carries herself with the sad gait of people with a low self-esteem. And you and your brothers have paid for it. The four of you all tall and slim and beautiful beyond belief. All of you a carbon copy of one of your dad's family member. And it still hurts that she resents you for it. The same way she hurts because she can't seem to find not even the smallest part of her in her sons and daughter.
But now she is here and, for some strange reason, she can't look at you in the eyes.
You worry, then, because your mother is nothing short of a brusque combinations of edges and she is know to be ill-tempered and to the point.
But now she shift uneasily and takes a breath to compose herself.
"Your father had been admitted. And his doctors don't know what's wrong with him"
You nod. Maybe you were expecting something like this.
"How long has he been in the hospital back at home? We could transfer him here..."
"Five months. Five months next Sunday"
Five months. Five months of lies. Five months believing everything was ok at home.
For the first time in your life you think you could hate her.