““It has taken me twenty-eight years to be able to admit that I'm glad I did not know my mother until now. Not because, as my father suspected, she would ruin my life, but because this way, I did not have to bear witness as she ruined hers. My mother's sorrow is so powerful, it cracks the clay tile beneath her feet; it makes the water in the fountain behind us overflow. "Delia," she says, as her eyes fill with tears. "I'm trying." "Me, too." I reach for her hand: a compromise, a good-bye. Maybe this is as good as it gets.””
