Going 78 Miles Per Hour | ✓

03 | Keeping Fuel

LUNES
6:39 PM

Dahlia Gray

I really don't understand why I prompted the idea that I should finish my friends' homework.

I mean, it was a spur of the moment type of thing. We were all huddled before first period and I brought homework into the conversation. It was innocent. Suddenly, Hannah and Josie were freaking out about not having completed their assignment for Calculus tomorrow and looked at me for help.

Somewhere in the midst of it, I just volunteered. I guess I just felt guilty for them since I have all this free time, and they have so much they have to do. Hannah had cheerleading practice and Josie, well, she said she had some personal issues at home.

I just felt bad.

Now, I'm really regretting my decision. Since first period, I've been assigned three homework packets and it's due—tomorrow.

Estupendo.

The sizzling of the oil surrounds the kitchen, my mother stood before the stove with one hand on the handle and the other looming over the thin edge of the worn-down recipe book.

My grandmother had given it to her, right before she died, and she was the only one of her siblings to have been able to obtain this privilege of keeping the family's generational recipes. From what I heard, the battle was brutal—mainly with the argument of my mother being the only one who'll lose her culture the most.

Because she married a white man.

My mother's black hair is pulled back into a ponytail, the front of her forehead covered in a flowery pale-orange scarf. She looks much younger when she dresses down, around her thirties. Though she isn't that much older, it was the complete contrast that got me.

When my mother was at the dinner, versus when my mother was at home.

"Dahlia," my mother hums, her blue eyes found mine as she studies the load of homework before me. My backpack sprawled against the glass breakfast table, three different color notebooks and rolling stationary covering every square inch of the table. "¿Te acuerdas de Venezuela?" Do you remember Venezuela?

The question caught me off-guard, considering how she glances down at my homework before she meets my gaze. I thought she was going to question my load, or if I'm struggling, or if I needed any additional help. Sure, she wouldn't have been able to provide support in any of those departments, but she would've found a way to help me.

Any way she could.

"Um," I mumble, playing with the end of my pencil. The eraser burned down to a stubble. I shake my head. "Un pelo." A little.

"Oh," my mother muses, her full lips fall to a frown. "Eras muy pequeña." You were pretty young.

I nod, "Recuerdo a la abuela, recuerdo a las cabras. Simplemente no puedo... no puedo recordar nada más." I remember grandma, I remember the goats. I just can't... I can't remember anything else.

My mother lived in a small village in Venezuela, struck with poverty. My grandmother mainly grew her own vegetables and livestock, not dependable on supermarkets or stores like I'm used to. It was healthier, but there were risks.

There were those who were so poor, they stole from us. They were storms, that could someday destroy our only source of supplements and there were always that edge of belief; that this was it. This was how I was going to live my life.

My father met my mother when she was in her twenties, when he was stationed there for a couple of years. I don't know if they fell in love, but I knew they got married. They were happy. They had me.