- "But they did a hysterectomy!" -He shouted.
-"But the tumor is still there," -she said.
- "Nevertheless, you smile," -he explained.
- "What choice do I have!" -She said.
And so on, one after night. On another occasion the neighbor below had to bang her roof with a broom to ask them to shut up. The marriage was going wrong from Pedro´s perspective. However, Laura was still in love with him and ... Adèle.
In the month of the quince, when the sun was infuriated with its reddish color when getting dark, and the heat combined with the high humidity made the day more unbearable, they continued to bathe on the beach and playing and of course, kissing, but still, the best had not come. Laura was determined to experiment. That was a week later since Adèle guided her hand to her chest.
- “You know?” -Laura began as she tried to stay afloat in the water, away from the rocks that separated the beach from the Cocedores and Amarilla Beach. – “When I was single. My three friends and I did a very strange thing for our time ...
Adèle who was splashing on the crystal-clear water was all ears and looked interested.
- "We decided to take off all the bathing suit and be naked in the water!"
Adele’s eyes widened, and a copious smile traced a wrinkle in her face.
- “What do you think?” -Laura was floating like an inert buoy in the middle of the sea.
Adèle smiled at her again, this time with a certain mischief drawn on her face.
- "And why do not we do it now?"
Silence overpowered the splash of water. There, where they were, no one would see them. Nor in the beach of the Cocedores. They were two hidden coves and the huge rocks and small mountains that had formed over the millions of years eroding over time.
Laura submerged for a moment. Then her face wrapped in millions of drops of salt water emerged from the sea. Her blond hair was taking its natural curly form. A mischievous grin on her face was drawn to one side and the wink of her right eye.
- “Doesn´t matter. If you're already showing me your breasts every day,” -Laura explained, smiling.
-"I want to see yours," Adèle said.
Laura´s hand began to take off one of the straps of the dark bathing suit. Adèle was anxious and desire filled her completely. She bit her lip. Laura's whitish shoulder appeared under the September sun, then the curves of her breasts. Now she was to the other strap, keeping herself afloat, like a dog following his master. The other strap showed Laura's other naked shoulder and Laura kept smiling. Showing her the open mouth with her fleshy lips that Adèle had kissed a lot these last days. And then she began to lower her bathing suit, and they appeared, floating their whitish breasts with their nipples erect and rosy. Adèle opened her eyes wider and moved toward her, swimming. She needed to see them better.
-"You have beautiful breasts," -Adèle confessed, and meanwhile, Laura, as she could, keeping afloat, began to lower her bathing suit completely.
Adèle took off her bikini panties.
And that evening the first time they saw each other naked wishing each other. They did not touch, just watched their bodies and laughed together. Laura was madly in love with Adèle, and she was in love with Laura.
And the sun reddened by the wind high in the sky witnessed their fluctuating naked bodies seen through the natural mirror of the crystalline water of that afternoon.
- "I want to experience everything with you," -Laura said.
- “I know what you mean.”
But life changed the course of it again.
But that would be later.
- "Your mother is like distant," -Pedro explained to his son Claudio as they lay bare on the sofa at home. – “Does she no longer love me?”
- "What kind of nonsense are you saying, Dad?" -Exclaimed Claudio, putting one foot on the table. A clack rang, and the leg was removed quickly. It had seemed to him to hear the creaking of the glass on the little table.
- "She does not want to do anything with me," -his father explained, oblivious to the table setting.
Claudio was also focused on something else.
- “Do you listen to me?”
Claudio saw a crooked crack on the glass.
- “Yes. I heard you." -But he was lying.
- "You're somewhere else" You look like your mother,” Pedro complained, raising his arm with a bitter taste in his throat. – “I am going to drink water.”
Claudio leant forward, on the little table, and touched the slit of the glass in case one part was higher than the other. But the surface was still smooth. That relieved him greatly.
His father in the meantime, had been gone in the direction of the refrigerator that was next to the living room since the kitchen shared space with it.
- "You better get some fresh water," -he growled as the dull light of the open refrigerator lit his face.
Claudio leant back on the couch again.
- "Mother still loves you. What happens is that we do not know how long it will last. That's the problem. This has terrified us all. Until when will it arrive? Claudio's serious countenance filled the room.
Pedro with his head bowed.
It happened only two days after performing that naughty. It was in Adele’s house, who lived in the Aguilas center. In the low houses that were crowded under the San Juan de Las Águilas Castle. From where Laura lived there would be about two kilometers in almost straight line. A curve that bordered the entire sea of Aguilas and separated the different beaches that were at the end of the soft sand or stones around the port and which was called Paseo de Parra. They walked together without holding hands, which would imply dishonest and incomprehensible looks for them. In 1963 homosexuality was not seen well, much less, among women. Male chauvinism still prevailed, but there were hundreds of thousands of men who loved other men and women who loved other women. But they did not make it public. It was disturbing, but it happened.
It took them less than half an hour to get to Adele’s house, and they went in, one after the other through the wooden door, keeping their distance. Some neighbors, old women already, looked at them with a sparing look.
- "Do you want to take anything with you?" -Adèle offered as she dropped her green bag on the sofa. The two had put on a long dress, Laura a blue one, like the one she had when was a young girl, as she remembered, and Adèle a flowery pink dress.
- “No thanks. I'm not thirsty.”
Adèle lifted her palms and showed them to the ceiling as she said.
- “This is my home. For now. I only came for a few months. Now everything will depend on you.”
Laura knew what he meant.
- "It's as small as mine," -Laura said, breaking the ice.
- "I feel comfortable here." -She bent a chair she'd removed from the dining room table and added. – “So, I have less to clean ...”
And Laura laughed. A laugh Adèle heard and looked at with an unusual desire.
After that, they both stared at each other. Silent. Laura hated the silence, but this was something special. Adèle also did not share much silence, except in the most intimate moments. This would be his first time.
Slowly they reached out to clasp their hands. Their fingers played for a moment before crossing like a creeper. Their hands were sweating, but the touch was soft, and the skin was warm. On both sides. Then Adèle brought her face closer to Laura's and opened her mouth. Her lips settled on Laura's, swaying gently and gently touching them with her tongue sought hers. They kissed long and slowly under the rays of the sun coming through the dining room window.
Outside, an old woman wore a black dress from her neck to her ankles walked up the steep slope and passed by that same window, but her hustle of climbing the hill did not make her think of looking inward.
Unaware of everything, Laura and Adèle hugged and compressed their breasts in a strong grip. Laura felt an unusual desire at that moment. Something she did not get to feel with her husband. Her breasts crushed t
ogether. Adèle pulled Laura's hand to lead her into the room. Laura followed her anxious and curious to see what was happened from now on.
The bed was covered with a pink sheet and was made of metal, of bars. On one side of it was a small bedside table. And it had a lamp. The room window had the blind open toward the ceiling. Through the glass came the rays of the sun that warmed the center of the bed. The room was painted white, and a light bulb hung inert in the center of the ceiling.
Adèle sat on the edge of the bed without letting go of Laura's hand to which she dragged with some anxiety. Laura sat down next to her, and the mattress gave way, crushing it a little more. Laura opened her mouth and waited. Adèle pressed her wet lips to hers and kissed her slowly and with great excitement, panting.
Laura's heart began to gallop beneath her chest. She knew what would come now, more or less, she could know even though she had never been with a woman. Neither Adèle. And they were carried away by feelings, passion and desire.
Their bodies lay on the bed and began to remove their dresses one to the other, while they continued kissing. Her bare breasts brushed against her body, and her long fingers searched the crotch. The wet sex that vibrated at that moment. Naked, both, and caressing themselves in the most erogenous zones were carried away by passion and love.
They had a long secret romance for seven years until the poisoned life was snatched away in only two months, and with their grey eyes turning off at times. Laura had survived cancer and Adèle had not. Life was being unfair to her. Adèle one day had detected a small lump in one of her breasts while bathing and two months later Laura was crying disconsolately over her coffin. And neither Pedro nor her familiar environment ever knew why Laura was so distressed and pained by the young woman of twenty-five.
- "She was a very close friend," -Laura whispered, her eyes wide and muffled.
And things soon grew worse for Laura, who had seen the course of her plan outlined in that letter written in pencil. Laura was still alive to see all the sufferings of this world.
12
Year 1977
The Suffering of Seeing a Mother Die
Sex had ended up with her husband in the last seven years ago. She loved him now, but she no longer felt the same way as with Adèle. She remembered her with tears in his eyes, and at night she dreamed of making love to her again, as she had so often, feeling more excitement and satisfaction than with Pedro.
- "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, I love you, my love," -said Laura when she visited her grave.
Seven other long years had passed in which the town of Aguilas, prospered and grew in inhabitants. But she never noticed any other woman. Now, at sixty-three, she had only to take care of her elderly parents, even though they continued to do so on their own, and to see her grandchildren marry and see her children grow old, herself.
- "I'll stop crying when I have you by my side." I will stop crying when I hold you in my arms.”
- “What do you say, Laura?” -Pedro was surprised, from the other bed. They slept in separate beds.
"Nothing, it has been a bad dream,”
- "Wherever you are I want you to be remembering me ..."
- “What?”
- “Nothing.”
And the night, once more, wrap them in a deep sleep.
Maria was in bad health, had a series of complications produced by her advanced age since she was already eighty years old and all her bones creaked when she walked, and there was no day that she did not feel the pain in her joints. But lately in the winter of 1977, she had been caught a catarrh that made her enter the new hospital of the Arrixaca, the second in importance at that time in the region of Murcia founded in 1975, but later it surpassed the first place; which was a University Clinical Hospital, where expansions were constant and new technologies as well. The Hospital located in the Palmar becomes with time, the most important of the Region of Murcia and one of the largest and most advanced of Spain in which they executed the most complex operations.
But Maria seemed to have arrived at the end of her time; then Laura took a paper and pen to start writing a letter, which in part became over time in her secret and personal diary, where she would spend her entire life and draw a line to follow, like the one made at the age of sixteen, and who veered brutally from one point of his life until now.
The new text of the letter began thus;
Life had me played. That letter I put in a bottle and threw in the sea may be sunk for eternity, or maybe someone has already found it. And I was right when I wrote it. My life must have ended at that point that I set, but it was not like that. Anyway, I have had a wonderful experience with Adèle, who left me involuntarily seven years ago and that marked the distancing with my husband. Yes, I have seen my children grow up as I once dreamed and I have seen my grandchildren, Jean, Ambre and Ana, who have their majority of age, except Ana, who is the youngest, when my Adrienne becomes pregnant at the age of twenty-seven. An age too far away from my first pregnancy and the customs of this area of Murcia. But finally, she was a mother. And all this is very good, but I have also seen the death of Adèle that is still present in my life, and I have seen myself grow old with my wrinkles and wrinkled skin combining with my long, blond and curly hair, and yes, I still keep the shine of my blue eyes, for these will shine until they are extinguished someday. But I'm afraid life has played me pretty well. In 1963, they gave me a few years of life and now look where I am. The love I felt for Adèle gave me the strength to heal myself at all. In 1964, I had the last review and the astonished Gynecologist, gave me the discharged. I was cured. But Adèle fell ill a few years later with less aggressive cancer, but death took her with a lesser breast. A scar that caresses like your new breast. And she died one night, staring into my eyes, telling me, I love you.
I am now sixty-three years old, and my mother is already eighty and she is admitted to the best hospital, but I fear, her lungs will not hold out for long and she will return to my other whiplash with extreme pain. I am sure of it.
My husband's father already died many years ago, but his mother recently died of angina and sugar complications. He is desolate, now I understand, and I am afraid to stay alive when I am missing my parents or my husband. That's what I did not want to see face to face. I wrote that in that damn letter.
Now I'm going to rest for a while; I'm exhausted. My mother needs me.
Until next time.
Laura
Laura left the paper and the pen to one side, on the tabletop stand next to the stretcher where her mother was snoring, with strange and strangled noises coming from her soaked lungs. But, she thought if she fell asleep they could read that part of her story. That piece of paper. So, she thought about it and she better put it in her purse, which was in the closet by the window that let in the mean moonlight. After that Laura leant back in the companion seat and she drifted into sleep.
The birds that settled on the window ledge early, dozens of them, with their uncontrolled chirp, awakened Laura who had spent the night asleep in the companion seat. Her gaze went directly to the silhouette of his mother lying on her side, turning her back. And it was then that she noticed how wide her mother's back was. The first rays of the sun came in through the window and caused sparkles in the steel bars of the bed. In the same room, there were two beds, but both were separated by a shabby curtain of green that was open. The other patient, the one on the other bed, lay with her mouth open and her eyes open. She had stopped breathing.
Laura got up and stumbled with the wheel of her mother's bed, let out a snort and reached for the whistle knob that was used to call the nurse. At least she pressed it twice. The woman who was obese and had her breasts down the edge of her chest like large balloons crushed and was starting to turn purple was alone. The companion's seat was empty and to tell the truth, Laura did not remember seeing anyone in the last three days sitting there. The woman, then, had died alone, who knows if with the lament of another patient in that same plant.
Sudd
enly the white door with metal latch opened from the blow, and a nurse with an old-fashioned cap placed on her head asked in a voice sparingly.
- “Have you called?”
- “Yes.”
- "What do you need me for?"
Laura extended her arm and at the end of it, the hand extended her index finger pointing to the woman who was not breathing. The nurse with plastered lips turned her gaze, stared at her, and after a few moments of strange confusion, she reacted by approaching the fat woman who stared at the ceiling with her eyes dimmed. The nurse put her index finger and heart in her jugular and looked at the needles of her watch for lack of a stethoscope.
- "She's dead," -she said, as if said: "I'm going to eat a doughnut," -and left the room passively.
Laura's face was now an abstract picture reproduced in her wrinkled and tense skin. And she thought, - "Oh God! this does not happen to my mother!" -As the door opened again. It was the doctor, who had around his neck, a stethoscope. This one has it.
Maria prolonged her stay in that room of the Arrixaca Hospital, in three more weeks, seeing as how each day it became worse and how she lacked the oxygen. Every night someone from the family took turns to spend with her. But it was Laura who wanted to be closer to her mother now. Her mother constantly called up Gonzalo's tired arm heavily with her flaccid muscles, and Laura discovered another of her mother's curiosities. She was fat. What had happened all this time that she found out new things about her mother? Nothing.
- "Papa is eighty-three years old and cannot come." He is weak, and the trip is very long," -Laura explained, her gaze down.
Mama would then begin to cry like a child and sudden a cough attack in doing so leaving her literally with the face bruised.
All My Life by Your Side Page 10
