Title: Por si éramos pocos by Belenuski
Rating: R
NB: Sorry for the delay, guys, I just really didn't feel like translating for a while there! But, well, now that I'm out of that funk, here's a new update and hopefully I can get another out soon. ;-) Enjoy!
April 16th
Pepa
(*)I never knew exactly what a family was, perhaps because I never considered my own to be one. My father was an asshole who hit me more than once, though it’s true that I was a mischievous kid. My mother was a little crazy, and after their separation I didn’t see her again. I never liked going home, and when I was there, I only felt comfortable if my brother was there with me. After Sara’s Communion, I disappeared, and while I was away I came to realize that, for many, family was one of their most sacred possessions. How was I supposed to understand that when I didn’t have one?
Time passed, I arrived in San Antonio and life began to make me smile, though that’s not to say I wasn’t happy before. I learned what it means to be a family, since now that I was with Silvia, Paco, Lola, Sara, and Don Lorenzo became mine. And later, Lucas hopped on the bus, too. There are many types of families, but it wasn’t until I saw Noah in my arms that I truly understood the complete meaning of the word “family”. To me, it means protection, love, affection, scoldings, games, warnings, learning and teaching. It’s to brush my daughter’s hair as she sleepily rubs her eyes. It’s greeting my wife with a kiss when she gets back from work. It’s seeing Noah holding both of our hands, jumping up each step of the stairs. It’s…touching my belly when I feel Iker’s first kicks, smiling when I see Silvia return, fearing for my daughter as she cries in the wardrobe, afraid…It’s being with people I most love to give them my life if necessary.(*)
“Well, I don’t understand, mi vida, it’s only a trip,” Pepa said, sorting the papers sent by the precinct. Noah jumped on the sofa wearing her pajamas. “And get off the sofa.”
Noah didn’t listen and continued jumping.
“I just don’t like the water.”
Pepa put the pages away in a blue folder and grabbed a new stack to sort through.
“But you’re going to be on a really cute boat. Do you want to listen to me and get off the sofa? You’re going to fall.”
Noah kept jumping.
“Yeah, but the boat’s in the water, and they don’t give us floats.”
“Well, it’s about time you learned to swim. This summer we’ll take you to the pool. Noah, get down now.”
“No! No pool!” Pepa knew that the girl had a fear of water. She was very brave when it came to some things, but with others, fear overtook her.
“You’re going to get down from that sofa or I’m going to get you down.”
Noah stopped jumping, but she didn’t get down. She tore up a sheet of paper that was on the table that she had been drawing on and crumpled it into little balls. When she had a few, she finally climbed down and headed to the kitchen. Pepa heard her opening the drawers, but she didn’t bother about it.
“Well, you not going on the trip’s allowed me to stay home this morning, so I won’t complain too much…” The brunette muttered as she frowned because she was starting to get confused with so many loose reports.
Noah then showed up with a straw in her hand and she put one of the little paper balls in her mouth. Using the straw as a blowgun, she shot a ball at her mother.
“Noah!”
“Lucas taught me.”
“Well don’t do that.”
The girl only shrugged her shoulders and put another ball in her mouth. She aimed at her mother and Pepa lifted her eyes from the papers.
“Don’t even think about it.” Noah smiled and took a breath. “If you do what you’re thinking about doing, we won’t go to the park this evening and I won’t teach you how to ride a bike.”
Noah looked at her angrily, she took the ball out of her mouth and inflated her cheeks.
“Backmail!” She yelled.
“First of all, it’s ‘blackmail’, and second, where did you learn that from?”
Noah was about to respond but Pepa heard voices outside and commanded silence with a gesture. She stood up warily from the chair and her daughter followed her curiously. The brunette was going to open the door, but when she saw two men in suits looking snooping around the other apartments, she felt a sharp twinge in her chest and walked over to the table.
“It can’t be…” she murmered.
She searched out some files and when she found them, she compared the photo with the two men prowling outside. She hardly knew how she acted so quickly. She shut the window silently, just as she did the three locks on the door. She ran to the table, grabbed the papers and threw them on the floor, kicking them under the sofa.
“Joder, joder, joder…” she repeated as she closed the curtains.
“What is it, mami?” The girl asked innocently.
Pepa’s pulse began to race and she took her daughter in her arms. She entered the hallway, away from the living room, and looked around. She didn’t know what to do or if her shaky legs would her daughter’s weight.
“Noah, look at me,” she said seriously. “This is very, very important. Outside…outside are the bad guys, vale?” The girl lifted her hand to her mouth. “And it’s not a game, cariño. They’re going to come inside and we have to hide.”
“But…” Noah clutched at her mother’s shirt. She looked into Pepa’s eyes and when she saw the look of worry, she hugged her around the neck. “Mamá…”
“Is this it?” They heard from outside.
“Yes.”
“You sure there’s nobody here?”
“The woman’s at work and the kid’s at school.”
“Perfect, force open the lock.”
Pepa looked around again. From the little bit she heard, the two men hoped to find an empty house , which meant they didn’t want to hurt anybody now. Still, they both had guns in hand and if they saw someone inside…she sighed, pressing her lips together, terrified for her daughter’s life, not her own. She didn’t have time to think.
“You have to be very brave, Noah,” she said quietly.
She heard them working the lock.
“No…” the girl whispered, starting to sob.
“Yes, mi vida.” She walked into the bedroom and opened the built-in wardrobe. She put her daughter back on the ground and began to pull all the clothes from the hangers. She hid the hangers in a drawer and made a space on the floor of the wardrobe. “Get inside, come on.”
Noah did as she was told, but she didn’t let go of Pepa’s sleeve.
“Mami…” She was terrified, as evidenced by the tears running down her cheeks.
“Crouch down, I’m going to put all of my clothes on top of you, vale? You can’t make a sound.”
“Stay with me.”
“Cariño, we don’t both fit.”
“No, no...” Noah squatted down, like she always did when she was scared. She covered her eyes and started to cry harder.
“No, mi vida, don’t cry, or they’re going to hear you. Look, I’m going to be there, vale?” She pointed at the bed. “I’m going to be under the bed, I’m not going to move from there, I promise. But you have to be very brave and not cry. Pretend you’re playing Hide and Seek with Dani.”
Noah shook her heard effusively and Pepa heard the men outside open the first of the three locks.
“Come on, mi amor, do it for Mamá.” Pepa felt a horrible burning sensation in her chest as she threw clothes on top of her daughter who, resignedly, had sat on the floor, and she felt more and more like she herself would cry. The second lock opened. Pepa kissed her daugther’s forehead. “Mamá is going to protect you, vale? Mamá is the police and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Noah nodded, still crying, but she had her hand over her mouth knowing she wasn’t supposed to make any sound. Pepa finished covering her up completely, closed the door of the wardrobe, and when she heard the men finally open the front door, she stretched out her hand to grab the gun she kept on top of the wardrobe and threw herself on the floor, sliding under she was completely hidden under the bed.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.”
“I told you. Where’s the girl’s room?”
The steps neared the bedroom and Pepa looked towards the wardrobe in reaction. Then she looked back to the hallway and the only thing she could see from her view were shoes, one pair brown the other black.
“Here it is.”
“Perfect, take what we came to take and let’s go already.”
“Why the rush?”
“This is a cop’s house, man. A cop with a pair of balls that even the boss doesn’t have, kid.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Have I seen her? I saw the show the day of the wedding…she had a rifle!”
One of the men let out a laugh.
“Hija de puta! On her wedding day! Look, we take this?”
Pepa knitted her brow and carefully stuck her head out from under the bed, but she couldn’t see anything, so she slid back under and just listened.”
“A photo? Come on, man! That’s not what we were ordered.”
“A personal object, no?”
“Yes, but shit, something that hurts more, something to scare them.”
“Okay…only because the girl’s in it, if she wasn’t, I’d take the photo for myself. The redhead’s hot, eh?”
“Oof…I’d take the brunette.”
“Joder, and they’re lesbians, what balls…”
Pepa clenched her fists. “Balls…I’ll squeeze your balls myself, jackass…” she said to herself.
“I’ll rid the redhead of her lesbianism when the boss sends her to Italy and I get to play with her a while, you’ll see.”
Pepa loosened her fists and her frown deepened, not believing what she was hearing. They weren’t going after Noah?
“You think he’ll leave her to me for a bit before he kills her?”
His companion laughed. Pepa swallowed and, though she drew her Magnum with the intention of shooting the first head she saw, she had to calm herself down. If she were alone in the house, she’d get out and shoot each one of them for what they were saying, but Noah was there. She didn’t want her to hear gunshots, much less see two corpses in her bedroom. She had to calm down though her blood was boiling.
“No fucking way, she’ll be for his personal enjoyment. You know how he is, he won’t kill her until he’s squeezed out every last drop."
“Bastard…it’s us getting our hands dirty and he gets to keep the prize. At least give us the brunette!”
“That one would kill herself before we could touch her.”
“Don’t you know it…” Pepa spoke to herself again.
“Anyway, they haven’t told us anything about catching the brunette. I don’t know what they want with the redhead when it was the other one who shot at El Gordo.”
“You just do what they ordered us to do. Go on, grab one of the girl’s toys.”
“Will this one work?”
“Yeah, come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Wait, wait. They have to know we were here.”
Pepa then heard a crash. The things on top of Noah’s desk fell to the floor, some breaking and some bouncing away. The men went to the kitchen and she heard glasses shattering into thousands of pieces.
“Now we can go.”
They shut the door and silence fell. A silence broken by the beats of Pepa’s heart as it seemed to want to pop out of her chest. She dragged herself out from under the bed and looked towards the living room. When she didn’t see anybody, she sighed nervously, rubbed her eyes to wipe the look of fear away, and put the gun away so Noah wouldn’t see it then.
She opened the wardrobe and started to pull the clothes away from the pile that had formed.
“Noah…” she called. When she had removed all the clothes, she found Noah tearing up with her hands over her ears and trembling from pure fright.
“Ma…Mami…” She tried to stand up, but her legs gave out and Pepa caught her just in time, lifting her in her arms. Noah immediately began to cry and hugged around Pepa’s neck.
“Shh…it’s okay, mi vida, it’s over…”
Noah loudly cried and cried and shook so hard that Pepa wanted to cry along with her. She was like one of those abandoned dogs that shivered in the cold and inevitably made you feel sorry for it.
She held her daughter to her as much as she could and sat on the bed, cradling Noah in her arms like when she was a baby and she wanted to see her face. Noah pressed against Pepa’s belly and continued to cry, not understanding why those two men had come into her house saying bad words and breaking everything. More frightened than ever.
_________
Pepa finished throwing away the last pile of glass in the bin and leaned against the counter with her hand to her forehead. She wasn’t feeling too well and her eyes stung. She looked at the clock and seeing that it was nine o’clock, she walked to the door and opened it quietly. She saw Silvia race up the stairs with a desperate look in her eyes and Pepa, for the first time that evening, she smiled. Tiredly, but she smiled. When Silvia reached the hallway of their floor, she focused on her ex-wife and they both ran to each other to embrace.
“Thank god you got here…” Pepa said as she hugged Silvia. “Good thing you were able to catch a train today.”
The redhead’s heart was racing. Pepa had already been on the verge of a heart attack a few hours earlier, so her heartbeat had already had time to calm down to normal.
“Where’s Noah?”
“In the living room, she just fell asleep. It wasn’t easy, she wouldn’t stop crying. She didn’t want to eat anything.”
“Was she crying all day?”
“Almost. She stopped for a few hours, but when we went to the precinct to tell Don Lorenzo what happened, she started again.”
“You took her to the precinct while she was in that state?”
“I couldn’t leave her with Sonia, she wouldn’t let go of me. She was…” Pepa looked away and clenched her fists. She licked her lips and took a breath. “She was really scared, you didn’t see her.”
“My baby…”
They both entered the apartment silently, and Silvia crouched down in front of Noah who had fallen asleep on the sofa. She softly stroked the girl’s hair and kissed her on the forehead.
“She had to use her inhaler a lot,” Pepa informed her in a low voice. “I thought she was going to asfixiate…”
The redhead looked at Pepa and stood upright again. She walked over and wrapped her arms around the other woman, running her hands along her back.
“You must’ve been frightened, too.”
“It was horrible. Not for me, for her. The sound of shattering glass, those bastard’s loud voices…it was a lot for her. And now I’m worried, she didn’t eat anything at lunch and I don’t know if I should wake her up for dinner, she probably won’t want it.”
“It’s okay, look at her now. She’s asleep, leave her like that. Tonight she’ll sleep with us, and if she wakes up hungry, we can give her a sandwich and juice.” Pepa nodded and rubbed at her eyes again. They still stung and Silvia saw that they were red. “You don’t look so good.”
“I think the cold’s gotten worse, but that’s not important right now.”
Silvia felt her forehead and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.
“You have a fever, have you eaten anything?”
“No.”
“I’m going to make something for dinner, we can eat and then put Noah to sleep in our bed, vale?
Pepa smiled, squeezed Silvia to her, holding her around the waist, and gave her a tender kiss.
“Thank god you’re here…”
Silvia smiled, looked at her daughter, and clenched her fists. Seeing that both of them were okay had calmed her down, but the fear had grown even larger. Two men had come into their home just like that, and just as they had taken Noah’s stuffed animal, they could’ve taken the girl herself. If it weren’t for seeing Pepa so scared and overwhelmed, Silvia would’ve locked herself in the bathroom and cried to relieve the tension.
____________
Noah opened her eyes a bit when Silvia lifted her up. It was usually Pepa who carried her, but since she was pregnant it was best that she not lift any heavy weight.
“Mamá…” Noah whispered with her eyes closed again. The redhead put her down on the bed and kissed her cheek.
“I’m here now, mi vida.” Noah nodded and curled up into herself. “Tonight you sleep with your mamas, vale?”
The girl didn’t respond. She was really tired and it was very late for her at 12:30 at night. Though it was late, Pepa and Silvia didn’t go to bed just then. They sat on the sofa, without turning on the tv, without looking at each other, just sighing and clenching their fists, looking at the floor.
“You know what scares me most?” The redhead asked. Pepa looked at her. “Thinking that they could have taken her.”
The brunette leaned back, setting into the sofa and let out another innumerable sigh.
“I think…I think that right now they’re not after Noah.” This time it was Silvia who leaned back and looked at the other woman. Pepa lifted one of her arms, asking the redhead to move to her, which she did, curling up against Pepa’s chest as a long arm wrapped around her, as if she coul ward off all evils that way. “I heard them say that they want you.”
“I know, my father told me when he called from the precinct. Truthfully, it makes me feel better.”
“Makes you feel better?:
“I’m an adult, a cop, a doctor and I’ve been doing my job for a long time. Noah…Noah’s four years old, joder She’s tiny, fragile and…and it scares me to think of something happening to her.”
“Me, too, but…It also scares me to think of something happening to you.”
Silvia curled up even more and shook her head.
“I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t want you to take care of yourself.”
The redhead smiled and caressed Pepa’s hand, noticing how cold it was. She looked at Pepa’s face and frowned.
“Has the fever not gone down?”
“I don’t know, but my head really hurts.”
“Wait, take this.” She stretched her arm out to the table and grabbed a thermometer. Pepa placed it under her armpit and closed her eyes with her hand on her forehead.
“Have you realized that whenever something bad happens to us, it happens all together? I mean, look at us: two men break into our home, turns out they’re after you, I have a fever, you were on vacation…could there be anything worse?”
“Yes, to top it all off, we’re not together.”
Pepa smiled and opened her eyes. She kissed the redhead’s forehead who settled back against her chest.
“Te quiero, cariño.”
“Yo también a ti, Pepa. Mucho.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Don’t start…”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re five months pregnant, soon you won’t be able to walk without panting because it seems as if you’re going to gain more weight with this pregnancy, and you insist that you’re going to protect me. Could you let me take care of you for once? Just once?”
Pepa rolled her eyes and the thermometer beeped. When she removed it, she got a little dizzy and her vision blurred, so she handed it over to Silvia who frowned when she saw it.
“Joder, 39º.” The redhead stood up. “Come one, take a paracetamol and off to bed, we’re both tired.”
Pepa was about to follow her ex-wife’s orders but she felt a small kick in her gut and her headache disappeared for a few seconds. She grabbed her belly and opened her mouth when she felt another kick.
“Wait, wait, wait, come here.”
She pulled Silvia’s arm and placed her hand where hers just was. They both felt another kick, one from the inside and one from the outside, and they smiled broadly for the first time, with true happiness.
“Kicks!” Silvia exclaimed. “Iker’s kicking, we can feel them!”
“Yes, finally! I thought they were never going to come.”
Silvia bent her head to Pepa’s belly and pressed her ear to it. Feeling some light movements, she smiled. She pulled her head away and kissed her ex-wife affectionately.
“I made it home in time for this one.”
The brunette remember how guilt had inundated Silvia when she told her that Noah had already started kicking. She had missed her daughter’s first kicks, but she was there for Iker’s. Deep down they knew that among all the bad there was something good, it’s just that it was hidden behind the fear and worry so that they couldn’t see it. So, the baby had made his presence known to comfort his mothers and get them to let out that smile that was so hard for them to show. Would they ever be completely at peace?
Pepa stroked Silvia’s hair and dipping her fingers into the sea of red curls, she pulled her ex-wife to her to kiss her again. They kissed for several minutes, without stress, without nerves, without passion, only with the utmost affection and tenderness that they could, with their hands caressing Pepa’s belly and both smiling with every kick they felt. Kicks that were slow and weak but would soon come quick and strong. Kicks that brought home the reality that the baby would arrive at any time and, when this happened, he would become the most fragile link, but also the most protected.
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8481210-por-si-eramos-pocos-01-11-09-23-40/http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8680673-por-si-eramos-pocos-ii-28-11-09-21-35/http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8848739-por-si-eramos-pocos-iii-14-02-10-0-55-finalizado/