What Men Don't Understand by Nuria Solano Read Free Book Online Page B

annoyance at her mother. They had maintained for very long a cordial and sporadic contact. One or two pretty formal calls at month, and eat together three or four times a year. That had been all. Sonia's life was settled, and finally seemed to take a path that she alone had decided, without such maternal inference that made her insecure. Her death didn't come at all at a good time. What nonsense! Although a resentment kept bothering her with that idea.
    She reconsidered about what she had to deal with, and what she still had to get done, like the speech she still had to write, and read aloud in front of all those people! Her brother, as always, would arrive the very same day of the funeral, finding everything done.
    She thought also about Lolo, the coworker with whom she had been flirting for countless months, and who finally asked her for a sort of date the following weekend. She'd have to cancel it, of course. Her mother's deadth really came in bad time for Sonia.
    They had to do the autopsy on the body, and finally the paperwork got a bit complicated. Dori, her mother's lapdog friend, offered to help, although it seemed to Sonia that she actually interfered, getting hit and overwhelmed at every tiny mishap.
    Felipe came -as expected- just to accompany the coffin to the cemetery. He kissed twice to his sister, and she replied just to be polite.
    "Thank you for having taken care of everything. I haven't been able to arrive earlier. It was very complicated. You cann't imagine", he said distressed.
    "You haven't changed, Felipe" was her curt reply.
    When they arrived at the cemetery chapel, Sonia was surprised to see so many people. Did her mother really deserved all that appreciation? She placed herself in the front pew and wept. That's it. It all was about to end.
    The priest red an anodyne sermon. A rehash that tryed to accommodate what little he had heard about the deceased a few hours before. Still, his tone, exercised many times, seemed to thrill a few assistants. He also red a few paragraphs from the Old Testament that were not related to Marta, who, in fact, was never a believer. Sonia was glad she had prepared something more personal. After rewriting it again and again, she was satisfied with what she had to say. It seemed to her sincere and deep.
    Dressing in dark colours and with no makeup, she got to the lectern, near the coffin, and looked at the audience. For a moment she felt brave. There was her brother with an indefinite grimace. A french woman was with him, she had dark hair, smooth white skin, and a bulky body inappropriatedly inlaid in a green dress. There were some of her mother co-workers, many of them came by commitment, also her last partner (Sonia had trouble remembering the names of many "ex", although this had lasted a couple of years), Dori, her lifetime subject-friend, some people she knew by sight, and many others she hadn't seen before.
    She placed her speechon the lectern, cleared her throat and red: "It's being said, if we compare ourselves with the stars, we are nothing. That thought never made me feel relieved.
    My mother was only one person, but she always struggled for not being just one more. She tried to take charge of her life in this men's world, without having to depend on any of them. But without understanding that today is still not possible to do that.
    It is true that often she didn't get what she wanted, and her frustration splashed on the lifes of those who were close, but thanks to her persistence and will, sometimes she succeeded, and thought that what it was good for her, would also be good for the rest of us. That wasn't always true.
    I had all her love, even after disappoint her for rejecting to be like her, and I still wonder where she could find the strength to cope alone with two children, and also get for herself something more than a enslaved life. I don't know if before she died, she was satisfied with what she had achieved. Possibly not. She never was. But I think that