One Way or Another(93)

I ask myself how can a woman like me have such aspirations? No background, no money, but now I have a sense of myself I never had before.

Am I wounded by it? Of course I am. Can I put it in the past? Sometimes. Do I think about it often? Not as much anymore. After all, it’s not the kind of memory you want to keep for those long nights alone in bed with only your thoughts for company.

Maybe that will change too, soon. There is someone on my horizon, a teacher, a few years older, a whole lot wiser.

And now I have my friends: Marco, my savior; Martha, my angel in disguise; Lucy, who is so silly sometimes and so lovable, and under it all far cleverer than we suspect, who comes over to practice her cooking on me whenever she is in town.

I envied Marco his dog, so much I even got one of my own. Small, whippet thin, skinny little legs, russet color, alert eyes, and an underbite that exposes his bottom teeth in a permanent smile. A joke of a dog.

I found it, as Marco had found his, outside a café. It did not ask for food, it simply sat there waiting. Trusting. When I got up and walked away, it followed. I said goodbye, but it persisted. And I knew it—she, Rusty—belonged.

I have my life. I have friends, a dog. I have a future. One way or another, what more can a girl want?