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Chapter 10: The witch won again!

10 The witch won again!

It was Thursday, and Nicky was at the kitchen table, doing a Physics assignment and trying hard to forget that she got the lowest, barely passing grade on their Filipino chapter exam, when she heard her mother from outside their house.

“But she’s too young to have a boyfriend!” said Linda, her mother, with all aghast.

Nicky immediately recognized the loud screeching voice of Aunt Gracia. “You’re just jealous your daughter still has no suitors, Linda.”

“No, I’m not. Nicky is a smart girl. She’s better off than having tons off suitors.”

Nicky moaned in embarrassment and anger. Are they going at it, again? She wished they weren’t so loud the entire barangay could hear them. Even though her mother and Aunt Gracia had been neighbors since she could remember, and that they even had went into the same high school, for most of the time, they never really got along fine. Nicky hated the way Aunt Gracia got nosy on everybody’s business, especially her mother’s. She figured Aunt Gracia was just jealous and insecure of her mother. Nicky hated it more every time Aunt Gracia made a comparison of her and Georgia, with the latter always coming off as the better one. Nicky had somehow thought that Aunt Gracia was just using her own daughter to make up for her own insecurities she had with Nicky’s mom. This is what I got from having a pretty mother, with me being practically the opposite of pretty, and a neighbor who looks like a hag but has a very pretty daughter.

Nicky even somehow wondered if she and Georgia got switched while they were infants. But she could not just stomach the horror that she could be Aunt Gracia’s daughter. She knew it wouldn’t be possible. She was older than Georgia for about two years. And her mother had not really hooked up with some old pathetic foreigner. Nicky was already second-guessing as she thought more about it. No, it just couldn’t be!

Like her mother, Aunt Gracia also had no husband, and had only Georgia as her family. The old American man who knocked her up immediately fled from the scene, leaving Aunt Gracia a pretty little mestiza girl who looked a lot like Vanessa Hudgens.

Aunt Gracia was laughing derisively outside as Nicky tried to cover her ears. Maybe Aunt Gracia was really a witch and just cast some spells to make her daughter pretty.

“I’m actually happy Nic is studying, instead of entertaining suitors during a school night,” Nicky heard her mother’s voice surfaced from the witchy laughs of Aunt Gracia.

Nicky wished her mother would just pay their neighbor no mind and get back inside the house immediately. It was torture hearing her mother trying to defend her from the nosy close-minded hag.

The only thing Nicky thought she was better than Georgia was that she was a whole lot smarter. Georgia went into some public high school, and Nicky figured she was dumb as a stick. Every time she’d talk to her, Georgia would just blink, smile, nod and mutter words like, “uh-huh, I see, as in.” But Aunt Gracia really didn’t care much about brains. Nicky even think that woman was just as dense as Georgia, if not more. She already knew it would just be pointless arguing with Aunt Gracia how studying is important than having rich boyfriends.

“Do you know who Georgia’s current suitor is?” Aunt Gracia then asked, gloating, her voice spilling with all pride.

“I really do not wanna know, Gracia. But I hope he’s not too old he’d look more like her father.”

Snap! Nicky thought her mother just hit the bull’s-eye.

And the bull got really mad. “Don’t you ever dare speak of my daughter like that! She is not that cheap, and I won’t let her be with an older man! But just so you know, Linda, Georgia has the congressman’s son as her suitor.”

“But, isn’t he too old for her?”

“He’s not really old, he’s only twenty.”

Nicky squirmed on her seat. Of all the things she could think of as the lowest—one of them would have to be those boys in their twenties dating teenage girls and most especially those girls who haven’t even reached eighteen yet. She thought it’s practically child abuse. Why couldn’t just those boys wait till those girls turn eighteen? She could not really get it why these boys couldn’t find girls their age, and she figured, maybe those stupid boys just couldn’t handle girls their age at all.

“Exactly,” Her mother replied to their neighbor.  “Georgia is only like thirteen, Gracia. She’s not just too young to have a boyfriend but also too young for that boy.”

“And I’m hearing this from someone who was having her first baby while she was a senior in high school.”

There was silence for a while. Nicky could feel the sting on the words that Aunt Gracia had just spat.

“My daughter is nothing like you, Linda,” Aunt Gracia went on. “I won’t have her sleeping around during high school. So, don’t you worry, okay? She got a good head on her shoulders. She won’t turn into a slut like you.”

“I had enough of this,” Nicky’s mother sighed. After a few seconds, Nicky heard the door opened then shut close in a loud bang. She then saw her mother appeared in the kitchen, looking weary and strained.

“What’s that about, ma?” Nicky queried, scoffing.

“You heard that?” Her mother asked, slightly agitated.  “No. It was nothing, Nic.”

“Sleeping around? You were sleeping around in high school?”

“Would you just finish your homework, Nicky,” Her mother said as she got a glass and filled it with water.

Nicky could not hold it any longer. And so she asked the question that she was not even sure her mother could give a straight answer. “Who really is my father, ma? Do you even know?”

“Nicky, I won’t have this conversation.”

“I knew it! You really don’t know!” Nicky had never felt so betrayed. Anguish tears were filling her eyes, her teeth was clenched as she spoke, “How many guys had you slept with in high school, ma? Or did you just do them all at once?”

“You keep your mouth shut, Nicole Ann!”

“Aunt Gracia is probably right. You’re a slut!” Nicky exclaimed angrily as she hurriedly got up her books and paper, and then stormed out of the kitchen.

Nicky was so angry, she locked up the small bedroom and buried her face in the pillows. Her kid siblings were already sleeping on the other side of the thin old mattress.

She already knew her mother had her at just the age of fifteen. She also knew that her mother had a boyfriend, then. Her parents were in their senior in high school when Nicky’s mother got knocked up. She grew up believing his father passed away in a terrible shipwreck. That was what her mother told her. That was the story she had been living with for as long as she could remember. Now, Nicky didn’t know if she should still believe it.

Nicky looked at her kid siblings sleeping serenely. She wondered about their fathers, too. Soon after, tears filled her eyes. She had never thought she could be this mad at her mother. She cried until she eventually drifted into sleep, her sobs, turning into soft snores.