A Mother's Sin Part 2- as told by Abuela
1724 Words
“Now pay attention, mis niños. This is the part where everything changes. The part no one likes to remember—but we must, because forgetting is how we make the same mistakes again. And Esperanza… ay, pobrecita... she never saw it coming.”
---
It started with a feeling—small at first, like a thorn caught beneath her skin.
Esperanza couldn’t name it, not right away. But it was there, every time Mateo came home smelling of something unfamiliar. Every time he turned his face when she reached to kiss him. Every time she woke in the night and realized she was alone in their bed.
She told herself it was just the tiredness. The weight of raising children, of feeding them, loving them, keeping them alive. She told herself she was being foolish, jealous, insecure.
But the thorn twisted deeper each time he walked through the door without looking at her.
And then came the day it stopped being a feeling—
And became a truth.
She was on her way to the market. The morning was warm, the sky too bright, and her youngest tugged at her skirt, asking for sweets. She barely heard him. Her eyes were already drawn to something across the plaza.
Mateo.
He was supposed to be at the mill.
But there he was, leaning against the corner of the panadería, talking to her—the widow in the red shawl.
Esperanza froze behind a stall of tomatoes, her heart dropping like a stone in her chest. She watched as the widow touched Mateo’s arm. Watched him smile. Not the tired, forced smile he gave at home—but the smile he used to give Esperanza in the early days. The one that made her feel like the only woman in the world.
She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Her feet stayed rooted to the cobblestones while her heart tried to claw its way out of her chest.
Then they started walking.
Esperanza told the children to stay by the fruit cart—just for a moment—and she followed. Quiet as shadow, careful as breath. Down the back alleys, past the chapel, out toward the river where the trees grew thick and wild.
She knew that path.
It was the same one Mateo used to take her on Sundays, back when they were first married. Back when love bloomed between them like the wildflowers along the bank.
She stayed hidden behind the trees, her hands shaking, her eyes wide.
She saw him pick a flower.
A white one. Simple, pure.
He tucked it behind the widow’s ear.
And she laughed.
Then—Dios mío—she kissed him.
Long and slow, like they had all the time in the world.
Like they belonged to each other.
Esperanza felt the world tilt beneath her. Her knees buckled, and she sank to the ground without a sound. The grass pressed against her palms, but she couldn’t feel it. Her body was still, but inside, everything was crumbling.
“That’s when the dream died,” she would say later. “Not with a fight. Not with a scream. It died with a flower and a kiss.”
She walked home in a daze, her babies trailing behind her, asking why she was crying.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
Something inside her had broken—shattered so completely there were no pieces left to gather.
From that day on, Esperanza was no longer the woman she used to be.
She stopped brushing her hair.
She stopped singing.
She stopped looking her children in the eyes, because they reminded her of him.
She moved through the house like a ghost. She fed the children because she had to, but her hands barely remembered how. She laid in bed while the baby cried in the next room, her heart too heavy to rise.
No one could reach her.
Not her mother, who came with broth and whispered prayers.
Not the priest, who urged her to forgive and find strength in God.
Not even her children, who clung to her skirts and begged for the mamá they remembered.
The light went out in Esperanza.
And one day, when her bones had grown numb with sadness, Mateo came home.
She was sitting by the window, staring at nothing, when he said it—just like that, like it was a business arrangement.
"I’m leaving.”
She blinked. “Leaving where?”
“To live with her. With the widow.”
At first she didn’t speak.
Then she laughed. But it was the kind of laugh that didn’t have any joy in it.
“You’re joking,” she said. “You have children. A home. A wife.”
But he didn’t joke.
He didn’t flinch.
He packed a small bag. Said he’d come back for the rest later.
And that’s when she fell to her knees.
Begging. Pleading.
Tears spilling down her face as she clutched at his coat like a woman drowning.
“Please, Mateo. I love you. I’ve loved you since I was a girl. I gave you everything—I gave you our children. I gave you my life.”
But Mateo just pulled away.
“It’s already done,” he said.
And then… he was gone.
“That’s how he left her, mis amores,” Abuela says, her voice low and heavy. “With nothing but babies in her arms and a hole in her soul. And you’d think that would be the end of it. But no... no, that was only the beginning of her sin.”
After Mateo left, something inside Esperanza began to rot.
The sorrow that had hollowed her out started to sour. It turned bitter, blackened by betrayal. Her love curdled into something sharp and cold. And from that cold, a thought began to take root. A terrible, trembling thought.
He had destroyed her.
Torn her apart.
Walked away as if she were nothing.
And still, he smiled.
Still, he lived in the village with that widow and dared to look happy.
She told herself he needed to suffer.
To feel what she felt.
But Mateo didn’t care about her anymore—she knew that now.
So what did he care about?
The answer was simple.
The only pieces of her he did love—the children.
It started as a whisper in the back of her mind. But day by day, that whisper became a voice. And that voice told her what she had to do.
One morning, she woke before the sun. Her eyes were dry, her face calm. She moved through the house in silence, as if she were preparing for a celebration.
She bathed her children, scrubbing behind their ears and brushing their hair until it shone.
She dressed them in their finest clothes—the ones she had saved for holidays.
She made them warm tamales and fed them with shaking hands.
Then, she took them to the market and bought them each a sweet. A candy skull for the eldest. A honey pastry for the little girl. A mango with chili powder for the youngest.
“Where are we going, Mamá?” the girl asked.
But Esperanza didn’t answer. Her smile was too tight. Her eyes stared through them.
The children followed her, laughing and sticky-fingered, as she led them down the familiar path toward the river—the same one Mateo had once walked with her, hand in hand.
She told them to play near the water.
She watched them splash and giggle, innocent and unaware.
And then—her breath caught—
She stepped into the river.
“Come,” she called softly, holding out her hands.
“Let’s play together. Just like before.”
One by one, they came to her. Trusting. Blind.
Their little hands slipped into hers, and the cold water crept up their legs.
That’s when the rage took her.
It came all at once—fast and blind like a lightning strike.
She didn’t hear their cries.
She didn’t see their faces.
All she saw was him—Mateo—smiling in someone else’s arms.
Her arms wrapped around her children, pulling them under. The water roared in her ears, louder than their screams. The river thrashed and pulled, and when the silence came...
It was already too late.
She opened her eyes and saw their small bodies floating around her.
Limp.
Still.
Her rage vanished.
And in its place came a scream—a howl—that split the heavens.
“¡Mis hijos!” she cried.
“¡Dios mío, qué he hecho! My babies... my babies...”
She gathered them in her arms, but they did not wake.
No matter how she rocked them, no matter how she begged, they were gone.
And with her heart in pieces, Esperanza waded deeper into the river.
She let it take her.
Let it swallow her grief.
Her body was found tangled in the reeds two days later.
But her soul... her soul was never at rest.
---
Abuela’s voice drops low now, soft as a hush:
“Because of what she did, Esperanza was cursed. The heavens would not take her, not after she took what was meant for them. So her spirit was left behind. And now she walks the riverbanks—forever crying, forever searching for the children she’ll never find. Some call her La Llorona. Others just say... la mujer que llora.”
She leans forward, her eyes sharp now, voice just above a whisper.
“People still see her, you know. A woman in white, her hair long and dripping, her face twisted with sorrow. She weeps, calling out for her children. Some say if she mistakes you for one of hers, she’ll take you with her into the river. That’s why—listen to me now—if you ever hear crying at night, especially by the water, you run. You run as fast as you can and don’t look back.”
She looks each child in the eye, holding their gaze.
“Do you understand?”
And when they nod—eyes wide, breath held—Abuela sits back with a slow sigh.
“Good. Then you remember this story. Remember Esperanza. Remember her sin. And never forget the sound of sorrow on the wind.”
- Writer
