Chambers Lane Series Collection

2. Lucia Maria-2

He will swallow up death for all time,

He will swallow up death for all time,And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,

And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;

And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;For the LORD has spoken.

For the LORD has spoken.She repeated the words to herself until they brightened her spirit. She began to long for the day when the truth of those verses were a reality; when her own tears would forever fade away. Michael, her youngest son, had promised that he would never leave her and that he would be with her always. Her other children had moved on with their lives, had gotten married, or had kids. For some reason, she held Michael to that child-like promise at this moment even though it was unrealistic.

“Why did you leave me, Michael?” she muttered; hoping he would somehow answer or perhaps the Lord himself would respond and clarify the reason.

An overwhelming sense of anxiety overtook her as she wondered what her life would be now without her youngest son. Wearied by the sleepless nights, Lucia continued. “Lord, you should have taken me. It"s not right for a mother to outlive her children and bury them. I don"t know what to do. Please give me strength and Your Wisdom.”

The ache in her heart grew stronger. The only avenue of comfort that she could think of was to remember her youngest son. She remembered his strawberry blond, curly hair which he got from his Caucasian father. Michael"s hair frizzed more often once they moved to Marietta, Georgia. She remembered when he was a child and how he loved to play with his Teddy Ruxpin, the animatronic teddy bear that he got as a Christmas gift from Daniel when he was two. She remembered the way that Michael would hopelessly try to fit in with the teenage boys his age and pretended to be fully white the way that his father was. However, every student and teacher could see that his mother was a Latina. Michael refused to learn to speak Spanish or even admit that he was Hispanic. Instead, while living in California, Michael only had white friends. When he was thirteen and in middle school, his group of friends fancied themselves as neo-Nazis. They painted swastikas on several local homes until the police arrested the whole lot of them. His mother was surprised to find out that Michael was ashamed about being part Hispanic. But his curly hair gave away that he was not 100% white. There was nothing he could do about it, but deny it vehemently.

After the swastika incident, Michael began a slow, downward spiral. There was the incident when he tried to set fire to the neighbor"s house or when he abused another neighbor"s tabby and swung it in circles by the tail. Then there was the time he stuffed firecrackers in the external door of the school cafeteria, lite them so that the door mysterious opened, and then pretended with his other friends to be line cooks passing out invisible food for fun to invisible children, some of whom were his classmates. Luckily, they left before anyone found out or the cops came. Or the time when he broke into the local liquor store late one Thanksgiving evening when Lucia was away in Tijuana, Mexico for the weekend with one of her boyfriends. Michael came home with a large box of Snickers and no cash or anything of real value. The other siblings mocked Michael for such an unprofitable endeavor. The laughter ensued when Michael decided to throw the box of candy into the neighbor"s yard for fear that the cops would find the evidence of his bungled robbery in his own home. He also became more aggressive after his growth spurt when he became freakishly taller than the rest of the kids in school, including his substantially older siblings. But his new found height only reminded him of his absent father who was just as tall and obese, but who also had a boyish face and an immature demeanor.

Michael despised his father. His father left Lucia when Michael was seven years old to be in an open relationship with a man. Lucia"s family repeatedly suspected that he was gay, but she adamantly denied it, ignored any signs, and married him anyway. When Michael"s dad left with his lover, Lucia could not believe it and went into shock. She lost tremendous amounts of weight from the anxious nights, wondering if he would come back to her and whether she should take him back. They had been married for seven years and got engaged shortly after she learned that she was pregnant. Lucia considered Michael a miracle baby because she had him at forty-three years old and thought she could not have any more children. Her eldest, Maria, was already twenty-five when Lucia got pregnant and Sylvia, the youngest, was sixteen.

Lucia met Michael"s father when she lived in Canyon Country on Sierra Highway. The mobile home that she owned sat on nineteen acres which was mostly hilly and unusable. But she had a goat, chickens, rabbits, and other animals there and pretended to live a country life not too far from the city. She never harvested any of the animals and considered that cruel. She raised them only as pets and named them all. After years of living there alone, she met Michael"s father when he came to her house to deliver propane gas for the winter months. She liked his boyish charm and his constant joking. When he lost the delivery job with the propane company, she let him move in. They married later that year after she became pregnant. She quit her job as a teacher"s assistant to be a stay-at-home mom taking care of Michael.

The marital relationship splintered as they often do after the birth of a child. Michael"s father got a job working at a dealership in North Hollywood. His daily commute was an hour one way. The job kept him away for long hours into the night especially on the weekends. Then there was the late night happy hours with his friends or coworkers. Michael"s father would forget to call and say that he was coming home late. He would also conveniently forget to let Lucia know that he spent a little too much money so that the bills could not be paid. Lucia considered it her wifely duty to stay at home and take care of Michael like a good Christian woman. Without a job, she was wholly dependent on Michael"s father to pay the bills. This was the first time in her adult life when she was not independent. She had prayed mightily that God would give her the strength to be patient and loving when Michael"s father would not come home or when he would not pay the bills. It gave her anxiety nonetheless.

When he lost the job at the dealership, Michael"s father could not find or more accurately would not find a job for nearly two years. He saw the break as a time to spend with Michael. He did not want to miss out on anymore of Michael"s childhood like when he was working long hours at the dealership. Besides, he knew that Lucia had cashed out her retirement fund when she quit her job to raise Michael. But when one month of unemployment turned into three months and then four, Michael"s father began spending even more nights at the bar, leaving Lucia and his son alone more often. Because they were unable to pay the mortgage after two years, Lucia lost her home that she bought before she met Michael"s father. She was angered by his mismanagement of their money. They moved into a small, two-bedroom apartment in town and she had to give away all of the animals that she had come to love and sell some of their furniture. Less than thirty days later, Michael"s father came clean and finally admitted to Lucia that he was gay and had a lover. She feared that he lost her home purposefully in order to sabotage the marriage and go his separate way and that angered her even more. Why couldn"t he had just been honest with her from the beginning rather than force her to lose her house in order to move on with his life and pursue his gay lifestyle?

So when Sylvia called several months later saying that she was pregnant with her second child, Lucia took that opportunity to move cross country to Georgia and get away from the familiar surroundings and to be near her new grandchild. She had nothing to lose and wanted to start over in a new town where no one knew her and no one would bring up the divorce or that her last husband abandoned her because he was gay. This meant, however, that she no longer lived near Maria or Daniel or Jose Luis. But she was not looking backwards anymore and wanted a new beginning. She took Michael with her because he was still young and underage. But eventually, a month or so later, her oldest son, Jose Luis, moved in with them when he also lost his job.

It was not the first time Lucia moved away to avoid past hurts. She moved away from Chambers Lane after Daniel turned eighteen, graduated from high school, and he moved away to attend college. Daniel was the last of the three children that Lucia had from her first marriage with Jose Luis Mendoza. She hoped that moving into the small two-bedroom mobile home in Canyon Country would mean that the two eldest children, Maria and Jose Luis, would finally move out as well. She made them pay rent and even raised it twice in hopes to get them to move out when they turned eighteen, but they refused to do so and preferred the security of living with their mother even if it meant paying higher rent. Their constant bickering and fighting caused her so much stress that she finally decided to seek professional counseling on top of the religious counseling that her local pastor provided. Her therapist advised her to move away; otherwise the stress would kill her. In some ways, maybe she was still following that advice when she decided to move to Georgia to avoid the stress of her divorce from Michael"s father.

“Lucy!! Is that you?”

She shyly raised her head and responded, “Yes, Pastor Brown,” and quietly wiped the remaining tears from her face.

“What"s wrong?”

“My, my son, … Michael. He"s dead.”

Pastor Brown approached Lucia and sat next to her, wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and began to silently pray for Michael. Lucia mustered the strength to silently pray as well.

“Thank you, Pastor,” Lucia said when he finished. She became teary-eyed again.

“Michael was a lovely boy. He hadn"t come to church in awhile. But I remember you mentioning him during prayer meetings every week and praying for him. We all did.”

“I always appreciated that Pastor.” The church had always been a family to her during hard times, even when Sylvia and her husband were having difficulties.

“We are all here for you, Lucy. Is there anything that you need?”

“I don"t know what I am going to do without him,” she sobbed. “He was my baby.”

“The Lord will be there to comfort you, Lucia. You need to just trust in Him and His plan for you.”

“I will try, Pastor.”

They began to speak of Michael"s passing and Pastor Brown offered to perform a memorial at the church. Lucia was happy about the offer, but did not want to bury Michael in Georgia. They had only lived there a few years and Michael disliked it there. He often complained that he felt even more estranged in Georgia as a biracial boy. The white kids in school and in church were almost as pale as Michael was, but he seemed to tan easier and not burn. The kids wondered why. It was the Puerto Rican side of him that would make it easier for him to tan quickly. Lucia"s friends were all Caucasians. She even mistakenly forgot that she was not white at times. Michael, however, did not have the same experience. The white kids would make racial remarks about him and his mom and would cruelly tease him that he would become gay like his father. The black kids considered him white and wanted nothing to do with him.