Mami by Roxanna Denise Stevens Ibarra

8 years old.

Sitting on the toilet, covering my face, snot seeps through crevices between my fingers. My eyes are swollen and raw. My shirt is sweaty. Between urgent breaths, I look up. 

“Estoy cansada.” 

Pa is on his knees and takes my hands into his. 

“It hurts too much to breathe. It hurts. I don’t want to breathe anymore. Estoy cansada.” 

I don’t want to look at Mami as she stands in the doorway. So, I look down instead. Pa gives me a thick wad of toilet paper and tells me to spit it out. Coughing into the tissue, I peek at Mami. 

“It’s okay, mijita. No es tu tiempo.” 

She smiles but it feels unsure. I shouldn’t have said I don’t want to live to the woman who gave me life. I know that behind those tearless eyes, and curtain of dark curls, I just broke her heart. 

… 

11 years old. 

“Mami, why does Tia have cancer?” 

My mom is mixing chile rojo. Placing corn tortillas into hot oil, the pan sizzles. Though she’s sweating, tired and skinny, she smells like sweet roses and bread. 

“Whenever we’d play outside and they sprayed la calle with this chemical, pesticides I think, we’d be told to go inside and all of us would run in,” Mami says. “Your Tia got sprayed.” 

Tia’s living with us during her treatments. She just got a double mastectomy and was undergoing chemotherapy. She flashed us once. At least that’s what my sister told me. I don’t remember that. What I do remember is walking in the hallway and hearing Mami’s soothing voice. Looking through the crack of her room, I see Tia’s drains poking out through the side of her protruding ribcage – redirecting the blood flow now that her pechito is gone. 

With careful hands, Mami empties the drains– ceremoniously doing the ritual she practiced so well with me and my breathing machine. Unlike the men in my family, Mami was always strong in her softness. Her bony hands and thick veins were what kept me alive. It is what keeps my Tia living. Mami always told me she was born to be a mother. A life-giver. 

… 

13 years old. 

Making tamales, slapping thick masa on corn husks, Nana sits at the table with her hijitas. 

Nana laughs with her eyes, as the table is in hysterics. Tia y Mami laugh about what I said about Nana being “bionic.” 

Nana had meningitis thrice and survived, but I remember the sleepless nights when Mami would sneak out and sleep on the hospital chair next to her. I remember endless caldos and tés alongside the amount of Tupperware she washed that year.

“Remember Ma, what happened once you had Tio? Rox listen to this,” Mami says. 

Nana’s eyes darkened, but her smile’s unflinching; unchanging. Mami laughs, but looks down, avoiding Nana’s eyes. She told me about the time when Nana put her matriz back into place after she had given birth to Tio. Mami got jealous and wanted Nana to pick her up. Pulling Mami up, her uterus fell out onto the copper tiles of the cocina. Upside down, she put the organ back inside herself– only to have it keep falling out again. Finally, she had to have it removed. 

She shouldn’t, but Mami still blames herself. 

… 

25 years old. 

Sitting in a full-capacity hospital hallway in a wheelchair at 2 am, too weak to stand, Mami holds my hand as I heave into another trash bin. Papi gets into it with the nurses. 

“Look at her, could you please do a cat scan? We’re already here!” 

The “good veins” arm is bruised up from blood labs and my not-so-good arm is already attached to the IV with fluids. I hate scans. I have already had five transvaginals, two MRIs, one CT, and an X-ray in the past year. Rolling me into the imaging room a couple of hours later, I see Mami’s face give me the uncertain smile I remember seeing so often as a child when I was sick. 

“Oh. Well, it seems you have an inflamed appendix and gallstones.” 

A month later I have a double laparoscopic surgery and Mami helps me replace the oozing curitas and makes me drink caldos. 

“Get up. Come on Shanita Bear, camina. You’ll heal faster.” 

… 

Mami and I drink our cafecitos. It’s still dark outside and we watch the news juntas. 

“Cómo está la familia?” I ask. 

Her smile is different – confident. Another Tia has been diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and her sister’s kidneys are failing and mi Nana’s post-meningitis infection requires potentially fatal surgery. I know that this means my mother must again do the impossible and procure a miracle. She sighs. 

Her face is young for a 54-year-old, yet I can see where the deep-set wrinkles will be in a decade or so; each wrinkle representing a distinct moment she healed someone or kept them alive. 

“Mami-” 

“It’s okay, mijita. It WILL be okay.” 

She no longer hides in the curtain of curls; she’s used to this now. Her eyes are dry, and her stare is hard. Bold. What a spirit to live up to. A woman bold enough to delay death.

About Stories Matter: Stories Matter is a mentoring program founded by writer Leslie Zemeckis, and co-sponsored by the SBIFF and ENTITY Magazine, for young female writers, nurturing and inspiring the next generation of writers to tell their stories. A weekly intensive where published female authors give their time to encourage and share their writing process. These are the best of the bunch, some remain works-in-progress, and some will (hopefully) take these stories and turn them into longer pieces.