I was 6 years old, and I was in the shower with you.
I remember how you took the conditioner from your hair and put it on mine.
I still wonder if that was a love language—or if you just didn’t want the conditioner to go down the drain and be wasted.
Maybe it was the latter.

I remember that day.
You were agitated. Irritated with me.
I didn’t understand why.
All I knew was that I wanted to be near you.
Because you were my mom.

I don’t have many memories of you as a child.
I don’t remember playing with you.
I don’t remember you combing my hair.
Maybe that’s why I wanted to be around you even more.

After the shower, the memory blurs,
but I remember wearing a purple dress.
We had to go somewhere.
You were angry the entire time while we were getting ready.
I remember walking slowly through the narrow streets near your mother’s house,
and you were still irritated with me.

I don’t know what I was feeling then,
but I know what I feel now.

We were on our way,
And I knew where we were going.
I remember how cold you were.

You left me at a cul-de-sac near my father’s house.
I remember not wanting to be left alone.

That was the last time I saw you.
That was my last memory of you as a child.

It was in the first grade when I realized something was wrong with me.
We had a school project—a family tree.
I didn’t have a photo of my parents.

I’m not sure if I was embarrassed… or just in denial.
I knew I had a mother.
Maybe I just didn’t have a photo of you.

But not having a photo was fine.
I could describe you.
You were beautiful.
More beautiful than any of my classmates’ moms.

I was proud of that.

But I was confused.
Because the last moments I had with you,
you were always mad.
You hurt me.
You’d slap my mouth,
pull my hair,
beat me with whatever was closest to you.

So when you left,
I thought it was my fault.

I thought maybe I had to do better—
spell my name faster,
be smarter,
be greater.

Maybe then,
you’d visit me at school.

I waited.
You never came.

So I told myself:
I have to do more.
I have to do better.

I focused so hard on being great,
I forgot to have fun.
I forgot how to make friends.

Maybe that was my choice.
Maybe I just got used to it.

I was an achiever in school.
But no one was ever there.

Only a woman I called my godmother—
and even she rarely showed up.

She was busy altering clothes,
earning a few pesos to feed me.

Like you,
she was always angry.
She shouted a lot.
I don’t think she liked me.

I didn’t understand her struggles.
I was just angry.

I always wished I could see you again,
so I could tell you how they treated me.

Before I went to college,
my godmother got sick.

Her family blamed me.
They said she worked too hard because of me.
That it was my fault.

She left me too.

I had to survive.

My childhood friend had a grandmother who owned a small store.
I’d tell her I had nothing to eat.
Her granddaughter would sneak food—
instant noodles, an egg, maybe a can of sardines.

Just enough to last me two days.

I stretched it for a week.

I never cried.
Not once.

I wasn’t even sad.
I didn’t have time for sadness.
I was too busy surviving.

But I never lost hope.
I always believed I would see you again.
That I’d be happy again.

And I did see you.

You didn’t pick me up at the airport.
But it didn’t matter.
All that mattered was you were there.

You cried when you saw me.

But I didn’t know how to cry with you.
I didn’t know how to feel.

You were nice.
Then you asked me to work.
To help you, Papa, and my siblings.

I wanted to impress you.
I worked without sleeping.
I even forgot to take off my backpack sometimes.
I’d come home at 5 a.m. and be up again by 6.

I did it for years.

Because I wanted you to be proud of me.

Then one day,
you said I was gaining weight.

I didn’t notice it until then.
I knew I wasn’t your beautiful daughter.
My sisters looked like you.
They had your body, your skin.
I didn’t.

I looked like Papa.

As a child, I was told I looked odd.
That my skin was too dark—
like an eggplant, they said.

You and your mother were so pale.
You never had to say I didn’t belong.
I could see it in your eyes.

Your mother made me scrub floors on my knees,
even though there was a mop.
She said I was too fat to eat,
so she starved me.

Your brother did cruel things too.
And you let them.

I didn’t know it was abuse.
I didn’t have a name for it.

I asked you for comfort.
But you told me to love them more.

“They’re your family,” you said.

You and your mother made fun of how I looked.
You said that of all the things I could inherit from Papa,
it had to be his face.

That’s when I realized—
you didn’t love me the same way you loved my sisters.

Because I looked like him.

Mama,
I am your daughter.

All my life, I wished I looked like you.
But I don’t.

I don’t feel pretty.
I don’t feel wanted.

But what’s strange is—
even when I look like Papa,
when I stare in the mirror…
I see you.

And it terrifies me.

Am I the girl you once were?
Am I the daughter you were to your mother?

Do I even have my own identity?
Or did I become an image—
a reflection of what you wanted to erase?

Did you pass down your pain to me
so you could finally breathe?

Am I myself?
Or just a version of you that never existed?

Am I like you, Mama?

I’m afraid I am.

But I pray to God that I am not.