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“I pushed out your three daughters. They literally had to stitch my vagina back together after the last one. Until you’ve known the pain of a third-degree tear, don’t complain to me about my loose pussy. Go to this party by your damn self.”
“You’re the wife, right?” “Yes.” I flash a saccharine-sweet smile and lean into Edward. “I also answer to my given name, which is Soledad.”
“Is that what you think I do with my days? Shop and get facials?” “I know you don’t work. I do that, so if you could just let me do my job and take care of you and the girls the way I see fit, we’ll be fine.” “You don’t think what I do is work? Cleaning, cooking, organizing, driving, taking care of our children. All tasks people pay to have done for them. Is it not a job because I do it for my family? Did you think all these years you were the only one working just because you left the house every morning?”
“Oh, God, Sol. I don’t have time for this feminist bullshit tirade. I know you have some things you do to stay busy, but I’m talking—” “To stay busy? There aren’t enough hours in the day for all I do, and you think I’m looking for ways to ‘stay busy’? Was I staying busy when I worked at the hotel’s front desk during the day and cleaned rooms at night, seven months pregnant, so you could focus on your MBA? Was that just staying busy?”
“You accept a man shitting on you,” she used to say, “he’ll make himself at home. There’s no three strikes. You use me, take me for granted, you prove you don’t deserve to be in my life.”
Men married to the most gorgeous women in the world still cheat. Hello, Lemonade?
Motherhood truly is a thankless endeavor sometimes. We sacrifice everything for these people who never really understand what we’ve done for them.
“You smell like you always do to me,” I tell her. “What’s that scent you wear?” “Oh.” She smiles. “Jasmine oil. It’s my favorite.”
honorable mention
“As in Texas?” I ask, willing all my frown muscles not to flex. “Yes, Texas,” Lola says. “And you’re endangering your reproductive rights for what?” I ask.
“I’ve come to realize that a woman who wants more and realizes she deserves it is a dangerous thing.”
“You’ve taken time,” Lola says. “And you’ve done a lot of work on yourself. When are we ever done working on ourselves? I believe wholeness is not a destination, but a lifetime process. Something that instead of waiting for, you could be living for.”
No one can love me like I do. No one knows me like I know myself.
When you hurt the way we women sometimes have to, when you lose so much, when the world ends over and over and over again, we are no longer butterflies. Those wings are much too fragile to carry us on and through. I’m a hornet. I can love. And I can sting.
She looks up at me, resolve and wonder in her expression. “I was never sure I had either with Edward, but with you I’ve found both. You make me forget the world when you kiss me, and it’s reckless and out of control, and yet there is no safer place. No one I trust more. You’re a harbor, not just for me, but for your boys, for your ex, for anyone you love and who needs you. You are the seed and you are the vine, and I love you, Judah.”
I’m the girl who has always loved too hard and offered too much, sometimes to those who didn’t deserve it.
