“It rains again,” I said spooking the cigarette smokes out of the window.

“Yes. If it continues, how are you going to work tomorrow? Can’t you take leave?” my mother asked, cutting the veggies for the soup.

“No, I can’t. I will walk,” I said crushing the butt of the cigarette in the ugly ashtray I made when I was eight or so. I went to check my rain boots. I rummage in the closet to no avail.

“Mom, where are my rain boots?” I asked her.

“Oh, your brother was here the other day and he needed some for Marisa.”

I looked at her with open eyes. “You gave away my rain boots to him for his girlfriend?” I feel a sour taste in my mouth, acid shooting right up from my stomach to my throat.

“He mentioned that hers were only up to the ankle. Yours are up to the knee and I thought that in this weather it would be better for her.”

“But…did you not think that I might need them too?

“Uh, what a pain you are, I just wanted to be nice to her,” my mother said looking at me as if I was a monster.

“Don’t you know that I also use them to go to work when the rain is heavy?” I said, my voice sounding like the chirp of a dying bird.

“Walk to work, walk to work, what do I know? You are seldom here, I could not ask you. And Marisa is almost family, like a daughter. They are marrying next April,” she said throwing the pieces of vegetables in the pot with boiling water.

“How am I going to walk tomorrow with the flooded streets?,” I ask, my stomach now closed by a knot.

“I don’t know. Your business. You are the one who wants to work, so you are on your own.”

“But these were my boots,” I said with a veil covering my eyes.

“I bought you the boots last year, when you had no money to pay for it, I can decide what I do with them,” she said talking to the wall.

I turned to my heels, my entire body trembling with hatred, and once in my room, I threw myself on the bed to hide my tears of rage. It was hard enough working in that awful restaurant, under the eyes of all those disgusting men who always touched my breast or behind by “mistake”. I grabbed my phone and then remembered that I had nobody to send a message, since my boyfriend left me. Because I was working in the restaurant. Like a prostitute, he said.

I went to my desk and took out my savings. Drying my eyes, I counted them. A few more wages was all it took to set myself free from this hatred. I looked out the window to check the state of the streets. “No, rain. I won’t let you stop me. We’ll see tomorrow who is more stubborn.” Then I grabbed my backpack and put in a change of clothes, before I stretched on the bed, dreaming of the day where my tears won’t compete with the rain and I will gadly tell the rain “You won, you have more, this time.”

****

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