“In life, there is only one thing more important than money, and that is more money. And I, Esmeralda would always choose money. Leave. At once.” Esmeralda finished her speech in a flourish, pretending not to notice the astounded look her children gave her.
“It’s alright ma’am. I’ll take my family and I’ll go.” The man who had minutes before been grovelling at her feet, stood up and hastily wiped the tears that had streamed down his cheek.
Sabrina looked at her mom, bereft of words. Watching the man slowly leave, she couldn’t take it. “Mother you can’t let him leave. His family will be out in the streets. They have nowhere to go. Have you no compassion?”
“She is right mother,” Caleb continued after his sister. “It doesn’t make sense to toss them out when they’ve been loyal to this family for so long.”
Esmeralda let out a laugh then. Loud and long. The twins stared at her in amazement as she continued in her laugh that they couldn’t help but notice had a sinister quality to it. She stopped soon enough and wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eyes. “Honestly, if I didn’t push you out of my womb, I would have thoroughly denied ever giving birth to the two of you.” Her face turned menacing immediately. “I’ve never hidden the circumstance of your birth from you both. Your father ran away to be with someone else, leaving his nursing wife and two children to fend for themselves. For twenty years I’ve raised you from my sweat and my blood. I raised Tear from dust to the empire it is now. I have worked tirelessly for every dime I have. And if I choose now to hold that dime above all else, would I be wrong?”
The twins looked at themselves and then at their mother. This wasn’t the first time they’d heard their mother talk about her travails as a single mother but she’d never said it in such a deadly note. Sabrina, ever the one to touch the tiger’s tale, forged on.
“But money isn’t everything, Mother. We’re grateful and understand everything you’ve been through. But we’re your children. Aren’t we enough-”
“But you’re not,” Esmeralda cut in, not missing a beat. She saw her children wince like she’d just stabbed them and softened her tone. “I have all the love a mother needs to have but you need to understand, I don’t want us to ever go back to that life of poverty.” She stood up from her chair and walked to them. Taking their hands in hers, she whispered. “You understand, don’t you?”
Sabrina was the first to pull out her hand. “No, I don’t understand.” She spat. “I’ll never understand why anyone would lose their soul over paper. Paper that we would all have to leave eventually. You’ve turned into a monster, Mother. A heartless, unrecognisable monster. I want no part in it.”
Esmeralda who clutched her chest like her daughter had struck her, grated out. “Take that back, Brina.”
“I won’t! Till you admit you’re wrong and change, Mother. I wonder if I should even call you that.” And with her back turned to her Mother, she began walking to the door. “You’re not coming, Caleb?”
Mother looked into his mother’s longing face. She grinned at him. “You’ve always been your mother’s son, Caleb. You can’t join your sister in her madness.” Clutching his arm tightly, hwr voice took on a desperate note as if sensing his hesitation. “You can’t leave me, Caleb. We’ve always been a team. Remember the songs we used to sing? You and me forever, against the world together...”
Caleb tried prying her hands away to no avail. “Let go, mother.”
Esmeralda was nearly hysterical now. “None of them deserved mercy baby. They tried to deprive me of my money. You know how important money is. They wanted to take us back to that life.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mother. Everyone deserves mercy and a few thousand dollars is no reason to render families homeless, especially when you’re sitting on all this wealth.”
Esmeralda let go of his arms like they were hot coals. Straightening herself like she’d been cut in an undignified gait, she turned her cold self once more. “You both are nothing without me. You’ll come crawling back.”
Sabrina who’d been waiting silently by the door all the while answered this time. “We’d rather wallow in the depths of poverty than come back here.” With that final word, she was out. Caleb turned to look at the stone-cold face of his mother one last time and walked out the door as well, shutting the door not angrily, but with a soft click. A click of finality.
Esmeralda remained rooted to that spot for a long time. But she recovered herself eventually and whispered. “They can’t leave their mother. They will be back.”
Esmeralda sat on her chair, staring at the door her children had walked out of. Watching. Waiting. Every day she got back home, sat on the chair and waited. The grief and bitterness in her heart wrinkling and ageing her rather early, surrounded by piles of money and even then, she looked longingly at the door and waited for the two people she realized now she could give her life for. And maybe her money. But they never came.