Only you matter

Alba left the vacuum aside while she had a glass of water. Looking to the kids´ playroom, she found a phone toy with smiley little eyes and a red nose... just the same as hers when she was little.

Its old wheels made her remember Mrs. Teresa, the small fatty colombian woman who used to pick her up at school every tuesdays and thursdays.

-Have the salad too -said Teresa, with her usual bossy voice and her unmistakable colombian accent. 

-But I don´t wanna! -answered Alba, as usual.

-That´s not my problem, miss. You have your salad and I´ll tell you what happened last night on "The Lady In Pink."* 

-What if you tell me and then I have it?

-Yeah, right. I wasn´t born yesterday, you know?

Alba smiled wickedly while looking for The Lady In Pink´s theme in her iPod and then started to clean the dust from the toys. Franco de Vita´s sickly sweet lyrics remind her of other conversations with Mrs. Teresa.

-Is your house beautiful, Mrs. Teresa? -asked Alba, as a teenager.

-A lot, miss. There are flowers in every window, a pen and a vegetable patch that my Jon loved.

-Then, why don´t you live there? Why did you come here?

-Because of the war, miss. War is mean, and I´ll do anything for my children.

Alba came back to the reality and couldn´t contained the tears when she heard her iPod: "Only you matter. It´s the same if I have everything or nothing. Only you matter."**

She remembered how lucky she used to feel because she was an Engineer and she didn´t need to escape from war like Mrs. Teresa. 

She rememebered the days when it looked like she would have a brilliant career.

She remembered the slow lost of her quality of life and also the day she decided to move to Spain.

She remembered her baby´s face, for whom she would give up her life if necessary.

And then, she recognized Mrs. Teresa´s face on her own. 

Alba turned off the iPod, wiped out her tears and stood up. "Only you matter. I´ll do anything for you" said to her baby in the distance. Then, strongly took the cloth and kept on cleaning other kids´toys.  

*"The Lady In Pink" (In Spanish: "La dama de rosa") was a succesful venezuelan soap opera in 1986.

**Author´s lyrics translation. Original in Spanish: "Solo importas tú. Da igual si tengo todo o nada, solo importas tú".
***This post was published in Zhandra Zuleta´s original blog on Jan 20th, 2014.

Twittear