Picking Up A Burden - #3

By Remedios Dorio

 

Mario disappeared and Lorna was rattled. She doesn’t know what to do. She could not return home to her parents. Her father wanted an abortion, and there’s already an appointment made. In her young age, she was determined, no abortion, never.

 

She went to the house of a friend. Her friend Lucy and Lucy’s parents helped her, and to avoid confrontation with her, the parents of Lucy decided to bring her to a relative in another town. Lorna tried her best to accept the reality that Mario was gone and that she would be a single mother, a shame. Lorna also understood her father. The honor of the family was damaged just because of love, her love to Mario. Mario was more than willing to marry her only the pride of a father and the prejudice, looking down the family of Mario because they were poor.

 

Lorna and her mother Antonia have contacts with each other thru Lucy. Antonia financially supported her daughter behind the back of her husband Luis; until Lorna gave birth to a baby girl.

 

Lorna’s baby was already six months old. Antonia thought that Luis knew nothing about her and Lorna’s secret but then one day from the market Antonia came home and she saw Luis was waiting for her in the balcony of their house. Antonia looked at Luis and she saw there’s something that bothered her husband.

“Will you put down your groceries? I want to talk with you,” Luis said to Antonia.

“I will bring these first to the kitchen,” Antonia answered Luis.

 

“Bring it to the kitchen later. I want first to talk with you,” Luis insisted.

 

“What we have to talk?” Antonia put down her groceries on the small table and asked Luis what they have to talk.

 

Luis looked at her straight in the eyes and after a while asked, “why are you doing things behind my back?”

 

Antonia could not answer Luis. Then she heard a baby cry inside their house. She looked at Luis.

 

“She’s home with her baby!” Luis said.

 

Antonia hurried inside the house. Inside she saw Lorna breast feeding her baby.

 

“Lorna, you came home?” Antonia doesn’t know what to think, but she could not hide that she was happy.

 

“Mama, Papa went to where I lived and he brought me home,” Lorna said to her mother.

 

“I did not like you both doing things behind my back,” Luis said who followed Antonia inside the house. “But I forgive you both because of that little girl.”

 

Antonia hardly could believe what she heard from Luis. She suddenly hugged her husband. “Thank you, I am so happy!”

 

Lorna was also happy. Her father took her back home and had loved her baby. From his work, Luis would always play with the baby.

 

The parents of Lorna wanted that she go back to school, and she did.

 

Gossips. Disapproval looked. Called a disgraced woman, it did not bother Lorna at all. Although her mind was always to Mario whom no one know where and what happened to him, Lorna focus to her study and to her child. Her father had a different outlook in life but did love her and also accepted and loved her child.

 

Lorna thought everything was just all right yet she still wished that Mario would come back to her life.

 

But one day, two policemen came to the school. The reason was that there’s something happened to her child. An accident.

 

“An accident? What accident?” Lorna could not understand when the policemen told her that she must go home for something terrible had happened.

 

The police took her not home but to the hospital. Her parents were in the hospital. Her mother was crying, and her father looked haggard and had fear in his face.

 

“Mama, what happened? They said the baby had an accident,”

“We are sorry, Lorna, but your baby had an accident. He’s no more, he’s gone,” it was Antonia who answered Lorna.

 

Lorna looked both her parents. She could not believe what her mother told her. Her baby was no more. Lorna screamed, it could not be true. Her baby could not die. ****to be continued****