Tia Matilde put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. Thoughts were racing in Marina’s head. It all seemed so surreal. LAX was such a huge airport. She hadn’t been in Los Angeles since she was two. Now, 17 years later, she is in a car with her aunt and cousin, driving across the city to her mother’s family’s home in Boyle Heights. Only her mother would not be there. At least not really. She’d been dead for a little over a week now. All because of a uterine infection that took a turn for the worst and lack of medical insurance. Marina’s mother had not kept in touch with Marina, her twin brother Hernan, or her father. Apparently, her mother had divorced her children, too, --not just her husband. There were many times Marina wished she could have talked to her mother. So many overwhelming questions and feelings that no one else could have understood. Her father never brought up her mother and even Hernan did not care enough to probe into the family history. But Marina, on the other hand, longed for a motherly connection. Marina didn’t resent her mother but was hurt by the fact that she did not seem to care enough about what happened to her children. How can you just decide to get up and leave one day? Sever all ties? Did mother think of us as she took her final breaths?
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