“I don’t think I’m going to take the new job.” My vision blurred from holding my breath and my heart pounded in my chest. This was what I’d promised myself I’d never do: never give my mother a reason to be sad, to feel like another part of my father was dying.
“Oh?” She cocked her head, as if she was trying to read what was going on inside my head. “Did something happen? Are you staying in Addis longer?”
I shook my head and brought my knees up to my chest. “No, I just—I think I want to go to grad school, do something different.” I closed my eyes and just said it. “I think I want to do social work school. There’s a program at NYU that focuses on working with refugee children in the States. I think that’s what I want to do. I like this work a lot…”
I looked at the screen and my mom’s face was serious, but the faraway look she had told me she was thinking hard. Trying to figure out what I wasn’t ready to say yet. Finally, she turned her eyes to the screen. “Desta Joy, I think you need to hear me say this.” She paused then, clearing her throat, obviously bracing herself. “There is nothing more important to me than for you to be happy.” She clicked her tongue in that way she did when she thought things were in a sorry state. “We’ve lost too much, mi amor, to waste time on things that don’t fulfill us.”
A knot closed my throat when I heard the same words Elias had said to me coming from my mother.
I wanted to believe her, and at the same time I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I’d know what to do if the burden of living out this dream for my mother disappeared. Before I knew it, I was blurting it all out. “I fell for this guy here.”
“Oh, Desta.” My mother’s voice was completely devoid of any judgment, and that was almost worse.
I shook my head, hardly able to process everything that had happened tonight, but it was still bursting out of me. I wanted so much, and I needed my mother to be there for me. “He’s on the team for the project, but he got into a PhD program at Columbia and I don’t know if I’m doing all of this for me, or just as an excuse to go to New York and follow him.”
My mother opened her mouth, closed it. Then she sat up straighter. “Does it matter?”
I snapped my head back at her question. That was not I was expecting. “What do you mean?”
“If you finally decided to do what you want, is it so bad that what pushed you was someone you care about?” She sounded genuinely confused.
“But I do this, Mom. I keep getting into relationships that can’t work out. Where I get my heart broken. Elias isn’t even sure he can come to the States, he’s got family to think about, and now I’ve complicated my own plans by getting involved with him.”
My mother shook her head and I could see that doing this over video was starting to frustrate her. “Desta Joy, you can be falling in love and still want to make these changes. Both can happen at the same time, baby.”
Maybe. It was true that I’d applied for that MSW program long before Elias was in the picture.
“I just don’t want to be some pathetic fool.”
“You’re not pathetic.”
I deflated at the fierce urgency in my mother’s voice and heard the echo of Elias’s plea for me to believe in what we had made. I couldn’t discard that.
“You say that, but I keep chasing after men who drop me when I’m no longer a convenient part of their plan.” But even as I said it, I knew that wasn’t remotely fair. Elias was not Miguel, and he would never do that. Even tonight, when everything was awful, he didn’t try to reassure me by making promises he didn’t know he could keep. He’d told me how he felt, promised me he’d fight, and then gone out to do it.
“You’re right, I’m not pathetic, and I’ll be fine. We both will.” I felt stronger as I said it. The misery of the evening was already turning into purpose. I didn’t know what, if anything, would happen to change how things ended with Elias tonight. But I would do what I needed for me. I’d make myself whole. I was on my way there already.
“We’re both stronger than we give ourselves credit for.” My mom’s voice sounded a little surer too.
“We are strong.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about my mother and me or Elias and me, but in that moment it didn’t matter.
Tears were running down my mother’s face, and for once I didn’t feel compelled to stop them. “Tell me about your plans and your novio, sweetheart. I want to know.”
I straightened, a sad little smile on my face at my mother’s request to hear about my boyfriend, but then I started to tell her.
Once I finished with my mom, I decided to hit up the other woman in my life and give her some news that was going to blow her away. Hopefully making plans would do something to soothe my battered heart.
DestaJoyWalker: Yo! Are you free for like a minute? I need you to tell me what the farthest point in NYC from where you live is so I can start looking for apartments there.
Within a second I could see she was typing.
Lucía.Woods: MIRA COÑO. WHY ARE YOU PLAYING WITH ME DESTA JOY? FUCK THIS MESSAGING SHIT!!!
I picked up the call after the first ring.
“What are you talking about?” She was yelling into the phone and I could hear noises like she was walking outside.
“I’m moving to New York.”
“Please do not mess with
