“I’ll go soon,” I promised. I would be keeping that promise whenever I found the strength to string three consecutive steps together without getting tired. And take a shower, for that matter. Until then, I would settle for hearing my mom’s sweet, familiar voice lulling me to sleep.
“Estupida,” the woman grumbled.
The laugh that burst out of me was the best medicine I had all week. “Sweet” might have been an embellishment for Amá. “Caring” was more like it. I snuggled into that feeling of being cared for as I sank deeper into the mattress and closed my dry, heavy eyes.
Of course I’d gotten sick directly following an amazing weekend. Almost as soon as I left Harper’s bubble of laughs and orgasms, I started to feel funny.
It took only from the time I got home until it was time for bed for the full force of my condition to hit me. Headache, congestion, nausea, and this feeling of bone deep cold came out of nowhere. The decision to turn in early and maybe skip my morning run was an easy one to make.
The heavy weight laying over my chest when I woke up laughedin my face.A run?I was lucky if I could even walk to the bathroom without trouble. And it looked like I wasn’t making it into work either.
Each day I woke up hoping to be better or at least be well enough to go into work—I had only just started on the revitalization project and I wanted to do a good job. But each morning my body mocked me for thinking I was going anywhere. The best I could do was work on my projects from my bed.
Now, going on four days of this thing and I was beginning to feel like the crap on the bottom of someone’s shoe. I don’t know what it was about being sick that made me feel emotional, but suddenly I wasn’t just contagious, I felt lonely and miserable, and not to mentionanxious. If I let this consume me much longer, I would miss the small window of opportunity that hadjustopened up for me at work.
And nobody understood.
Finally, things were turning around for me. I was taking control of my own future, asserting myself and was learning how to ask for what I wanted—I was finally on the right track.
It was just like me to reach a roadblock when I was finally picking up momentum.
“Mija?” Amá’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts, reminding me she was still there. She tsked, chiding. “Escuchame, mama. I know you aren’t sleeping because you snore like a little bear when you are.”
I laughed, the pain in my chest breaking momentarily at her words. “Amá! I do not.”
“You do,” she said, a smile in her voice, a sigh following close behind. “And you are every bit as stubborn as your brother.Go to the doctor, mama. Close that computer and put your work away. I know you have not truly rested if you are there on your own.”
I scoffed as much as my sore throat would allow. She could tellthat to my atrophied muscles, because I was definitely wasting away.
If not my body, then my mind. And maybe my heart too.
Present turbulence aside, I still loved my family. They were my comfort and my support. Disagreeing with them had never made me want to dispel them. I’d never been good at staying gone too long, even when things were rocky. I’d rather wade it out and fight through it than leave things up in the air unresolved.
With that said, before my solution was always to give into what everyone else wanted, but now I was learning that sometimes what I want needs to come first. Subsequently, I had to prove to my family I wasn’t weak.
And unfortunately, standing your ground didn’t take sick days.
So as much as I wanted to curl into my older sister’s side or watch from a warm place on the couch as Ceci tried to make soup—burning it like she always did, I couldn’t.
I was being strong Alta, and strong Alta could get through a cold on her own. She could do it while keeping up with her responsibilities, too.
Giving up on the nap Amáalmostlured me into, I fired up my laptop and knocked out a few more work tasks instead. Then I got to work for my clients. Ticket commissions from the block party were due. If I could just write up the checks and the breakdown report, I knew a guy who could deliver them for me.
And maybe he’d take pity on me and make me a cup of tea, too.
The banging on the door jolted me out of my sleep.
Jolted was probably too strong a word for it. The way my brainprocessed was slow. Every one of my senses felt stuffed, crammed full of whatever yucky things sicknesses were made of.
I shivered in the breeze of the ceiling fan. I’d turned it on before I laid my head down. I was hot then, but now I felt like a popsicle.
Alta popsicles—I’m not sure those would sell very well.
Banging so loud it felt like it was happening inside of my head continued, and I groaned.
Which one of them forgot their key? Or couldn’t read their messages, for that matter? I’d strictly said: HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS! DO NOT COME. Even when Mateo had dropped by earlier to do me a favor, I’d simply passed the small paper parcels through a crack in the door, waiting until later to give him instructions for what to do with it over a video call. I had no idea if I was even a little contagious, but the message was all the same.
I got this.
