Chapter Ten
TERESA’S MOTHER BLEW in like a hurricane, complete with water and howls. She stood still for only a moment, in order to locate her daughter, and then burst afresh in torrents of tears and cries of suffering. As she threw herself on to Teresa’s neck, she cried piteously, “Querida!”
As Doña Isabella began pouring out her woes on to her daughter’s shoulder, Teresa could not help but think that she could not remember the last time her mother had embraced her. She also had not remembered how strong her mother’s perfume was. Her nose itched and she was hard put not to sneeze. But then she began to listen to what her mother was saying.
Life had been so hard since she left, her mother told her in her native Spanish. It was too much to expect that she could handle everything alone.
