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"I want to make something of myself, and I will. I will prove it to you, but not here."
"What do you mean? Did you get accepted somewhere else? Rita, this is great news."
He softened a little, and the knot in my gut tightened.
"No, I will not go to university at all. Not this year anyway."
And I'd be dead before I'd ever be an accountant. Who would want to do that?
"Rita!" my mother cried and covered her mouth with both hands, and daddy waved her away. He had no patience for tears.
"Listen to me, you will go and get that degree. I will drag you to school if I have to. Is this about that good for nothing boy you're seeing?"
It didn’t help my situation that father hated him.
"It's my decision, padre. Mine alone. I'm not saying I'm giving up on school, but I want to try something else first."
"What did that useless cabrón tell you? If he puts any more stupid ideas in your head, I'll start hunting him and crack his skull with my machete." Shades of red started showing on his cheeks, forehead and neck, his eyes burning with consuming fury.
"Papi."
"No!"
"I will be his wife; I can do so many more things in America than I can do here." I jumped up, looking him straight in the yes.
"Don't speak such words under my roof, Rita. No child of mine will be a whore. Una Puta, this is what you want?" He might as well have slapped me. "You will go to school, and this is the end of everything. Now get out of my face, I don't want to look at you right now."
The words crashed around me like a waterfall of pain.
"Listen to me." I tried to plead, but he only frowned deeper in my direction.
"And you will not see than boy again. He is poison. Poison! Since the day he came to this town, you've been the joke of everyone."
He wouldn't have had to go through such embarrassment in front of his friends from the bar if he had a son.
I had to try.
I had to leave.
I had to fight for me.
"I'm leaving. I'm moving with him to the East Coast, to New York or Boston, somewhere where I can find a job as an artist. Papi, I'm leaving in two weeks, and I want your blessing." I wanted his approval more than anything.
His burning face started to turn a worrying shade of purple.
"You listen to me, child, you listen! You. Will. Not. See him again while you live under my roof. If you want to leave, then do it, but you might as well do it today because if you choose to throw your life away for a man who's not worth the shit I stepped in this morning, you'll be deadto me."
The dagger of his disgust pressed on my core, cutting me clean and ripping me in half. I had never expected such hateful words to come from my father's mouth. I knew he never liked that I was seeing someone, but this? My own father.
He wanted me to make it his way, and it would never work. I could make it on my own.
My father wanted me to be secure, and I wanted to make him proud, but I was also in love. Crazy. Madly. My man would never wait for me to finish college here, and he had given me so much to look forward to. He told me all the amazing things we could do: make our lives better, start a family, and maybe it was too soon to think about this, but I wanted it so bad.
I rushed to my small and crowded room and packed everything I owned in a gym bag and a backpack - no one could say I owned too much stuff - and dragged them out the house. My mom was crying and begging me to stop being stubborn and acting out.
Stop being stubborn? How could I ever do that? I was my father's daughter after all.
"Rita, get back in the house. You will kill me if you run away."
