"In one of these emotion outburst, I called my mother to tell her what I had done. I needed someone to talk to; Tim wasn't enough and besides he was so agreeable to what I had done. He kept telling me what I did wasn't wrong. I wanted someone to tell me that how horrible person I was, and I felt my mother, being a mother, might say that to me. After talking to her, I realized what kind of woman she really was. I told her that I would never talk to her; and I didn't until tonight. She and Tim are just the same. In fact now that I think about it, they would have made a good match. No wonder I picked Tim, a man just like my mother.
"I longed instability, the warmth of a family. All these tremendous longing overwhelmed me. Before I heard from Vickie again, I could visualize the unlimited prospect for the kind of woman she might have become if I didn't interfere with her life.
"In that period, I even tried to stand aside and see the result of my act objectively. But I was exasperated by that observation. That watching my self touched the barest nerves of my life with so much pain. I felt a storm within me. I even didn't want to bother discussing my emotions with Tim anymore. I knew what his answer would be."
Tim, at this point cut in rudely and said: "Lab lab lab... Go ahead and finish. Stop talking about yourself so much. Get it over with." His tome was angry yet derisive.
"Stop Tim. Don't interrupt her. Let her say what she want to say." Jacob retorted.
"Oh, now she had a defender. Rosa you're fine. They're already forgiven you."
Jacob hissed at Tim, and told Rosa to continue
"I remember when I told Tim about Vickie's phone call, he smiled; one of those smiles that doesn't mean smile, but it means victory. He told me that I shouldn't be upset, that I didn't know how to enjoy victory. He didn't understand me. I didn't understand him.
"From time to time, our house, his house, became a battle ground, which our differences were fought on. Our dispute grew into a major struggle between us. Anytime I talked about leaving him, he temporary lured me to stay. I realized how difficult it was for me to leave him. I was addicted to him. I was just like him. The enlightenment I was after turned to an obscurity that no hope could change it. I felt that the struggle in my life to be where I was, had been vain. I pitied myself. I lost my place in cosmos. I lost my vision that use to give me facts along with dignity. All these penetrated my moral awareness to the degree that I began rejecting myself.
"I don't want to undermine Tim here because it was me who went to him, who moved in with him after two years, who asked for his help; but when I wanted us to stop, he refused. He is clever, visionary, yet sarcastic teacher. We had so much in common at the beginning, but he didn't know or want to stop when I changed my mind.
"Anyway, six months passed without hearing another word from Vickie. I completely lost hope. I even had nightmares that she was dead. Many times I thought about contacting you, but I felt how could I tell you what I had done. I was still about me, me; thinking about myself.
"It was in the two in the morning, I'd just waken up by a dreadful nightmare. I was sitting on the bed, trying to gather my thought. I was numb and didn't know where I was. My body was all wet of a cold sweat. As my concentration returned slowly, I got up and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Then the telephone rang. I grabbed the receiver in the kitchen in a way as though it might stop ringing if I didn't. It burned my hand. It was her, my sister. She was crying. All I understood from her stifling and stammering voice was that she was in Dallas in a cheap motel.
"I got dressed so quickly that in the car I noticed I was wearing my shirt inside out. Before leaving the house, Tim woke up by my knocking the lamp. 'What is it?' He asked. I told him that Vickie called and I was going to see her. He hissed at me and went back to sleep.
"Driving to the motel, I thought about what I would face, but never I thought what I really faced. She was standing outside her room waiting for me. It was a warm, breezy spring morning. However I assumed she was cold because she had wrapped herself in a blanket. I parked mt car, got out hurriedly, and ran to embrace her. She cried on my shoulder. then she pulled me inside the room, where her small bag was laid open on the bed.
"For moments, which seemed to me like hours, she sat on the bed, still wrapped in the blanket and gazed to an unknown place. I was waiting for her to say something, but I guess she was waiting for me to start. Suddenly she dropped the blanket on the floor and before standing up; and I saw the frightening result of my plot.
"Vickie's distorted figure drew my attention to a point that I almost fainted. She was not beaten up in the meaning of physical abuse, but she was thrashed by the life I had offered her. I felt as though I had opened the grave for her. I looked at her face, which was bathed with her tears. A know formed in my throat. I was hardly able to speak. Her stomach looked striking on her thin, very thin body. Yes, she was pregnant."
To Be Continued
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