As if my body didn’t know what to do with so much rest.
The following days were a whirlwind.
Interviews.
Social workers.
School visits.
My teacher confirmed that I had been falling asleep in class for months.
The neighbor Irene said that she often saw me alone with all the children.
Even a lady at the store said it was me, and not my mother, who was always running to buy milk, diapers, or medicine.
My mom tried to defend herself.
He said I was exaggerating.
That all the older daughters help.
Poverty forces us to.
And it was true.
Poverty forces you to do many things.
But it doesn’t force you to steal a daughter’s adolescence and call it love.
My dad ended up admitting more than I expected.
Not all at once.
Not as a hero.
But in pieces.
Like a man who is ashamed while confessing.
He admitted that I bathed the children.
Who cooked.
That I missed school because I stayed home taking care of them.
That my mom relied on me “more than necessary”.
“More than necessary.”
Even today, that lukewarm way of saying it makes me angry.
But it was enough.
Child protection did not force me to return.
I was allowed to stay with my aunt Lucia while the case was being reviewed.
Later, over time, I achieved something that seemed like an impossible luxury in that house: routine.
I went back to school as I was supposed to.
I slept.
I studied.
I failed less.
I started feeling hungry again at my usual times.
I calmly combed my hair again.
I rediscovered that I liked to read, that I liked math when I wasn’t half asleep, that I still knew how to laugh at silly things.
My brothers missed me.
That was the hardest part.
Because I didn’t leave because of a lack of love.
I left because I was sinking.
I saw them some weekends, initially with supervision.
Mateo ran to hug me.
Samuel cried when I left.
And every time that happened, my mother would try to look at me as if to say, “See? They need you.”
Yeah.
They needed me.
But not as a mother.
As a sister.
And it took me years to understand that difference without feeling guilty.
The seventh baby was born two months later.
She was a girl.
My mom named her Esperanza.
When I found out, I stared at the message for a long time.
I didn’t feel hatred.
And tenderness.
I felt a strange sadness for that baby who was coming into a world where there were already too many burdens placed incorrectly.
Over time, things changed.
No miracles.
Changes.
Social services forced my parents to enter a family support program.
My father reduced his overtime hours for a while.
A neighbor started helping some mornings.
For the first time, my mother had to hear from others that I did not owe her motherhood.
He never apologized to me.
Not once.
Sometimes, when he sees me, he keeps looking at me as if I had betrayed something sacred.
But I no longer tremble.
Because now I know that I did not betray my family.
I betrayed the role that had been imposed on me within it.
And that’s not the same thing.
I turned seventeen at my aunt’s house.
It was the first birthday in years that I didn’t have a sleeping baby on my shoulder.
She made me a crooked cake.
My friends went.
We laughed until late.
And when I blew out the candles, I didn’t wish for anything grand.
I didn’t ask for money.
I didn’t ask for revenge.
I didn’t ask my mother to change.
I asked for something much simpler.
I asked never to forget that I too was a child.
And that no one, absolutely no one, had the right to make me a mother before my time.
