Pat's lips moved, but she said nothing, her head dropping again.
Sylvester looked at me.
"Priscilla, I think Val has a point. You really should put something in writing."
"Write what?"
"That you're giving up your share of the demolition money. Obviously."
I laughed. I didn't even know why.
I took a deep breath.
"Fine. I'll write it."
I walked over to my mother, crouched beside her, and wrote a single line:
I voluntarily relinquish all claim to the eight-million-dollar demolition compensation.
Then, stroke by careful stroke, I signed my name: Priscilla Perez.
I set down the pen and looked at them.
"Can I go now?"
Mom smiled and nodded, her tone as casual as any other day.
"Don't forget to come back and cook lunch. Your brother loves your braised pork, and Val's been asking about it for days."
I walked down the cracked cement road, the surface warped and split from years of heavy trucks.
I thought about the year I turned sixteen, when Dad died in an accident.
At the funeral, Mom grabbed my hand and wept like her soul was being torn from her body.
"You're the oldest. From now on, you're the backbone of this family."
"My health is failing, and your brother and sisters are still young. You have to help me hold this family together. I'm counting on you."
That day, I stood in front of Dad's headstone in mourning clothes that didn't fit. I clenched my teeth and nodded.
From that day forward, my youth, my dreams, everything had to make way for this family.
I could have gone to college.
I could have had my own life, my own future.
But I gave it all up.
After the funeral, I held my baby brother on one hip while I knelt and bowed to every uncle and elder, thanking them for helping arrange Dad's burial.
Mom had four children and nearly bled out during one of the deliveries. Her health never recovered. She could only manage light housework after that.
The first year after I dropped out, I learned to plant rice at Uncle Hector's farm. I learned to raise seedlings, learned to transplant them into the paddies.
The sun blistered my skin until it peeled. Thick calluses formed across my palms. Even holding chopsticks hurt.
When the planting season ended, I picked fruit alongside the other women for the orchard farmers. Bent over all day, back screaming, spine feeling like it might snap in two.
Fifty dollars a day.
When there was no fruit to pick, I hiked into the hills to dig up herbs and sold them for pocket change to keep the household running.
At harvest time, I begged neighbors to help bring in our crops, fumbling through the work like a child pretending to be an adult.
The second year, I planted every inch of our fields with fruit trees. Saplings took three years to bear fruit. Three years. The family couldn't survive three years without income.
So I started bouncing between odd jobs at the small factories in town.
March meant making plastic crates. The workshop was sweltering, the fumes from melting plastic so thick I could barely keep my eyes open. Blisters bubbled up on my fingers, but I didn't dare stop.
May and June, back to the orchards picking fruit.
July onward, I ground glass into beads at the pearl factory. Fine dust coated my face, filled my lungs, left me coughing until my ribs ached.
When winter came, my hands swelled up like dough from the cold.
After my shift ended each night, I still had to go to the chicken farm to collect eggs. I wouldn't drag myself home until well past midnight.
During those years, I cried in the dark more nights than I could count. And every morning, I gritted my teeth, got up, and did it all over again.
Year after year, the only clothes on my back were hand-me-downs other people had thrown away.
But whenever my brother or sisters needed money, I never hesitated. Not once.
I spun like a top, around and around, year after year after year.
Finally, Sylvester got into college and married. Pat graduated too.
The weight on my shoulders eased, just a little.
By then, I was already thirty. A matchmaker set me up on a blind date.
