SMS 23'| Romero Kids

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry things went so badly. That’s the only thing I can think to say right now. I’m sorry I thought you were nice and I’m sorry I expected you to be something more.

When I first heard you were coming to New York to meet me I don’t think you could ever know how damn excited I was. I mean, think about it. It’s the first time I was going to meet you, I’d never seen you before, except on television. And I had this whole big picture of what I wanted you to be. I dreamed that you were going to be sweet, and friendly, and sweep me up in a hug and apologize for leaving me for nineteen years and tell me that now you were here to stay. I thought you just left me because you had to, and if you had any say in it you’d have been the one to raise me instead of Abuelita.

I did everything for you. Did you know that? All my accomplishments were for you, so that when you came back home to see how much I’d grown you’d know how hard I worked, and see all that I had done and be proud of me. The biggest thing I wanted was for you to be proud of me. Instead, well… you know what happened.

It really wasn’t easy growing up without you. I remember as early as I could talk I would just ask Abuelita over and over and over when my mom was coming home. Didn’t matter when or where. If I thought of you, I’d ask, because I just wanted you so bad. I wanted the hugs and forehead kisses and comfort and encouragement all the other kids got from their moms, and I wanted to go to the park with you and play music with you and go shopping and have you come to events at my school. I always saved a chair for you, even if I knew for a fact you weren’t gonna come.

Mother’s Day at my school was the worst when I was little. We would make crafts for our moms in elementary school, and our teachers stood over our shoulders helping us glue down yarn and bend pipe cleaners into pretty shapes. When I was in first grade I made you the prettiest card I could at the time because for some reason I thought this was going to be the year you came home. I thought Mother’s Day meant actually getting to see your mother.

One of the girls next to me asked why I was so excited, and I told her, all proud, that this was the first time I was going to get to see my mom, because again, I thought it was true. I will never forget the confused look she gave me. She just asked, “what? You don’t see your mom every day when you get home?” And I had to explain that no, I saw my grandma every day, but I’d never met you before, but that’s why I was excited! Because I just knew you were going to be the sweetest, kindest mom ever, and you’d feel so bad for having left me this long. But that didn’t happen, and after Mother’s Day that girl asked me what it was like getting to meet you, and I had to tell her you didn’t show up. All the kids laughed at me for that.

There were so many times I wanted you. You weren’t there for any of my graduations, and I don’t know how I kept holding out hope that you’d be there. You weren’t there for elementary school, middle school, high school, and even though we’ve met now, I’ll bet you won’t come to my college graduation either. Because you don’t care, do you?

You brushed off all the achievements I made with music. I got into music because of you, I thought you’d give it more than just a side-glance. When I was a little kid and there was a dance competition on I’d run to the TV after school to try and catch your performance. If you danced while I was at school, Abuelita would record it on VCR for me. I had a whole shoebox of tapes with your performances, those were my Bible. They were the only knowledge I had of my mother. I have one where you won the whole competition and they interviewed you afterwards, and until recently that was my most prized possession.

The footage was grainy and blurry because our TV was old, and the audio was a little strange because they’d put the microphone in the wrong place, but I didn’t care. I watched that tape over and over. You were still in your flamenco dress, and you’d let your hair down and brushed it so it was full and sleek, and I couldn’t see well because of the footage quality but it looked like you had jewelry on, and probably makeup too. I thought you looked like a goddess. You talked about your history as a dancer, how you had started when you were a little girl, spinning around your room, and now look at you, winning competitions. I’d started bass recently at this point, and I felt seen, I felt like you, like your daughter. I wanted to win competitions for you.

The interviewer asked who you owed your success to, and you said your boyfriend, for supporting you so much. I almost cried of happiness when I heard that; I had a dad. I was going to get to meet my dad. I wondered what he was like; was he as nice as you? Was he as pretty? As talented?

I spent hours of my life in front of that TV, laying down on the faded, patterned carpet, scouring every channel I could find to see if there were traces of you. Abuelita bought me cable as a Christmas present one year so I could watch overseas competitions, and learn. For a time I tried to learn to dance flamenco, because I wanted to be so much like you, but I figured out pretty fast that dance wasn’t for me. I kept tripping over my own feet and I never looked as elegant as you did on my tapes. Still, I wanted to do something, and so I found the bass.

Abuelita was the one who suggested I play an instrument instead of dance; she said you’d be proud, because it was music, and you’d be proud of me no matter what. She took me to a music store, and I was immediately entranced. It smelled like wood and varnish and paper. Gleaming instruments hung on every wall, strings and brass and woodwinds all organized by size. There were tiny violins fitted for someone as small as me, ranging all the way up to massive timpanis and harps that I couldn’t see the top of. The owner’s cat was allowed to walk around the shop; it was lounging on top of one of the pianos. I had to reach above my head to pet it.

I picked up the bass because I thought it was funny-looking. It was like a cello, but tapered at the top, and it was supposed to be taller than me; you had to stand up to play it, but I was so short that the shop owner had to put me up on a stool just so I could test it out. I immediately fell in love with it; the sounds were low and rich and loud, and I felt powerful. I loved that I could just move the bow across the strings the right way and it would fill up the whole room in an instant. It was armor, it was treasure, something that could make me worthy of being your daughter. If I could get good at this, you’d be proud of me.

Then I started taking lessons, and it turned out I was good. Really good, actually.

That sounds narcissistic to say. I really don’t think I’m the best bass player in the world, far from it. It just came so naturally to me to play. I understood it; I understood how much pressure I needed to create a full sound, exactly where my fingers needed to be to make the pitch right, how to divide up the notes and measures in my head so everything was perfect. I loved big, powerful solo pieces, originally written for cello and brought down a few notes, because those were flashy, and showy, and fun. Orchestral music was boring; I repeated the same four whole notes over and over for the whole song while everyone else did the fun stuff. Maybe I should have played cello instead, but that seldom crossed my mind; boring orchestral music didn’t matter when I could go home and listen to music on the radio and figure out the songs myself, just two octaves lower.

My teacher told me and Abuelita that I should start performing solo. She said I could rejoin orchestra when I was a little older, that bass music got more interesting then, but I wasn’t being challenged currently, and I’d plateau if I didn’t perform. I’ve been paraphrasing most of this so far, but I remember the word ‘plateau’ very vividly. I had to ask what that meant, and she said my growth would flatten, and I’d stay at the same skill level if no one ever gave me a challenge. That scared me. I couldn’t plateau, you wouldn’t be proud of a girl who played bass for a year and then didn’t get any better. So even though Abuelita thought seven was too young to start performing, I begged her and begged her to let me try, until she sighed and said okay.

Things were so much better after that. I was getting solos galore, harder music that even girls in the middle and high schools couldn’t play. I was practicing hours a day, until creases and calluses formed in my fingers from how much I was practicing. Abuelita had to force me to stop every night, she didn’t want me hurting my wrists, or burning myself out. I should be thankful, really, and I am; if she didn’t do that I would have easily played through the night.

That isn’t to say it was always easy. I was a kid, I didn’t always want to practice. I’d rather hang out with my friends, or go to the corner store and buy snacks, or go to the movie theater if there was something good showing. But every time I tried to get out of practicing, Abuelita would remind me that I was doing this for you, and you definitely practiced every day, even if you didn’t always want to. That was enough for me.

My first solo performance, in my own concert hall, playing a whole repertoire, was when I was eight years old. I’d done recitals before, for my teacher and at school talent shows, and I’d performed with my orchestra, but this was different. I’d be playing an hour’s worth of music, by myself, in a big concert hall reserved just for me. I was in second grade, and none of the other kids understood. I drew handmade invitations on index cards and put them on every kid’s desk, because I wanted them all to come and see the work I’d done. But they just told me classical music was boring, or there was no way I was getting my own concert, or they tried to one-up me by saying their dad worked for some big company or they were on TV in a crowd shot when they were a baby actually and no one came to see that. I didn’t understand why it was so hard to just be happy for me. But it was okay, because you were coming, since how could a mother miss her daughter’s first real performance?

The dress I wore was scratchy, I remember that clearly. It had a lace collar and a tag on the back that dug into my neck. It was all black, collar included, because that’s what you wore for performances. I felt so professional; it was enough for me to ignore the weird fabric. Abuelita tied my hair up into a neat bun and fastened it with a bow, the way you wore yours for your dance performances, just with a black ribbon instead of red, since red was your trademark.

The concert hall was the biggest room I’d ever seen in my life. The walls looked like they extended out into infinity, and the stage would have taken me several minutes to walk across. There were more people than I thought ever existed sitting there in the audience, all looking at me. It was scary. But I had my armor with me; I lifted up my bass and brought it to the center of the stage the way we’d practiced a hundred thousand times earlier, then gave a curtesy, and began. I could feel my hands shake with the first few notes. I felt small compared to all these people; most of them were adults, all of them filled the room. I couldn’t see who was there specifically; the lights beamed down on me and cast everything else into darkness. But I knew they were grownups, and I knew they were here to see me, and I was all alone on this huge stage, here to impress them.

Now I know it really wasn’t a big hall, and there couldn’t have been more than fifty people, but to little-me it might as well have been Carnegie. I had to play loud to be heard; this wasn’t the same as playing in my living room.

Once the first few notes passed, everything got better. My motions became smooth again, the notes came immediately to my mind, and I don’t remember making a single mistake. This is something that would impress you, this was something to be proud of. My heart raced the entire time, and even afterwards; I remember the feeling of it beating against the inside of my chest. I did it, though, and it was my first-ever performance. You weren’t there. Of course you weren’t there. I should have figured things out sooner.

I don’t know why I didn’t. It seems like such an obvious thing to me in retrospect. Of course you never wanted me, of course you never cared. You would have come so much sooner if you did. That’s what kills me most of all; the fact that I spent nineteen years waiting for something I should have known would never happen.

Once I did one performance, more were inevitable. I was having solo concerts multiple times a year. I was in newspapers, I was on TV. Child Prodigy Zena Romero. That was me. Years were measured not by age or grade, but by musical pieces. When I was ten I played at Carnegie. When I was twelve I performed abroad. I played in England, France, and Italy. I played in Spain, and I spent the whole time running around Barcelona looking for you, dragging Abuelita around by her wrist. I had a great time, but I didn’t find you. Of course I didn’t.

I could really have used you in high school too. Once I got older, people went from thinking classical music was boring to thinking that I was stuck-up. I was a little quieter, I was awkward, and they misinterpreted that as me thinking I was too good for them. I dressed kind of weird too, which didn’t help my case. Abuelita always told me to dress the way I wanted, and if people judged me, that was their fault, but when everyone judges you, it starts to feel like it’s your fault instead.

Really I didn’t even dress that strangely. I just liked to wear black, and lace, and high platform boots, and mix it with pastels and tie my hair up with ribbons like I saw you do on TV. It was just a little different. I felt like myself when I wore things like that, even if it was a weird mix between pastel and goth and my platform boots made me taller than everyone and people thought it was stupid to wear your hair in pigtails with ribbons when you were sixteen years old. I could have used a mother in that instance, someone who could hug me and tell me it didn’t matter. I had Abuelita for that, which was better than nothing, but there are some things that only a mother can really provide.

I got over it though, and I still like to dress that way. It’s just another one of those hundreds of little things that would have been better if I’d had you. Or, if I’d had the image of you that was in my head. Real-you probably would have said you didn’t care.

Because of all this, I didn’t have many friends in high school. Abuelita always said college was going to be better, and that’s what I held out hope for. I spent all of my time playing bass and doing homework; I didn’t hang out with friends anymore, because I didn’t have many to speak of. I missed school all the time for performances, which was a blessing. I didn’t have to deal with people looking at me strange for my makeup or my spike-studded backpack or students calling me names just because I was pretty good at an instrument. Onstage I felt powerful, instead of strange and awkward like I did in class. It was appropriate to wear black there, and it didn’t matter if you were a little weird, because every artist was a little weird. The arts were where I belonged.

Maybe that’s how you felt too. I imagined you feeling the same way, though I couldn’t imagine you as an outcast teenager. You were so beautiful and strong on TV, I always thought you must have had tons of friends when you were my age. But maybe you were rejected, and maybe you felt strong onstage too, and you needed to feel strong. Maybe that’s why you picked performing over me. I still wouldn’t be happy if that was the case, but I’d understand it a little better than you just not caring about me at all.

I graduated with fine enough grades. No friends meant I had a lot of time for homework. I didn’t go to prom either. No one asked me, and I didn’t ask anyone. I had begun to figure out something I didn’t really want to admit; I liked girls. That was something else that had set me apart from everyone else.

I never told anyone, but they must have picked up on my stolen glances at the pretty girls in class, seen how I reacted in the rare instance where a guy asked me out. Usually I only got asked out as jokes; girls would try and upset me by having their friends fake asking for a date. Even when I didn’t know they were jokes, I was still disgusted at the thought of a relationship with a boy, so whenever it came out that they didn't mean it, I was more relieved than anything.

Most people weren’t accepting of that kind of thing. It was alien, strange. Just like almost everything else about me. The art world though, that was different. A lot of people there were like me. They never said anything, and the words they used were as strange to me as I was to most other people, but I picked up on the slang within a few weeks. ‘Dairy Queen’ didn’t mean the ice cream chain, there wasn’t an actual closet involved in being closeted, and if someone asked if someone else was a friend of Dorothy, they definitely weren’t asking about their friend group. It was strange; I’d never thought there was such a big community for people like me. Once I learned the codes, it was as if I suddenly knew there was a whole other world existing right next to mine. I learned to recognize other people like me; there was a sort of quiet solidarity, similar to what I felt with music.

I bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you all of this. It’s because I want you to know that even without you helping me, I found a community for myself. I found people who really loved me. Unlike you. And it’s not as if I’m sending this to you anyway, so I can say whatever I want.

One of the people who helped me learn so fast was a woman named Kira. She liked girls, and she was the concertmaster in a philharmonic orchestra. She mentored young musicians and taught masterclasses at a nearby university. I met her best student, a viola player, Iliana; the two of us would spend hours gossiping on the phone in Spanish about whatever came to mind. She was my first real friend.

When I turned eighteen, Kira approached me and asked if I wanted to join her philharmonic. I could, now that I was an adult. It was prestigious, the conductor was world-famous, and the music would challenge me. Another thing she told me, her voice low when she said it, was that most of the people there were Dorothy’s friends, and I’d be safe with all of them. I auditioned, and was accepted immediately; another perk of being a proclaimed prodigy.

So you can see, Mom, that I managed, somehow. I wish I didn’t have to do it all on my own, but I did. And there were things I wish I could have told you. I wish I could have told you about all the nights spent on the phone with Illy, the philharmonic rehearsals where everyone would greet me with a smile, the little shared glances on the street with people I knew were like me. Would you understand it? Would you care?

Most of all I wish I could tell you about Saoirse. I met her a few weeks into phil rehearsals. She played flute, she sat in the back of the section, so we didn’t talk very much at first. She was a grade above me, a sophomore in college when I was a freshman, and she was attending Juilliard, full-ride scholarship. You’d be impressed by her, I know it. Her mom is Reva O’Carroll, you should know her, she’s the most famous pianist in the world. Her dad is Kieran Walsh, he owns a fashion line that’s popular here, I don’t know if it is over in Spain though. So, yeah, she comes from a good family, but I didn’t know that when I started talking to her; I just thought she was cute, and funny, and a great musician. We talked about everything.

She told me everything that frustrated her; people expected her to be as talented as her mom, as fashionable as her dad, and still be her own unique person. One of her aunts was marrying a man her family hated, and her other aunt was like me, and was seeing a girl in secret, and her cousin never talked to her anymore. Having a big family was a foreign concept to me; it was always just me and Abuelita. I hate to admit it, since I know it was so hard on her to deal with, but I had a lot of fun listening to her family gossip.

In exchange I told her about you; I regret doing that now. I told her how beautiful and talented and nice you were, how I thought you were, and how any day now you’d be coming back to meet me. She’d always give me a look I could never quite interpret whenever I talked about you. I think I know what it meant now.

After a few weeks I worked up the courage to ask whether or not she was like me once rehearsal ended. She said she was. There was silence, awkward tension as we stood five feet apart in the parking lot, both waiting for our families to pick us up. I looked at the ground, she looked at me. I went home feeling like I said something I shouldn’t have. It was all okay though; at the next rehearsal, she asked me out, and days after that, we were dating.

We kept it secret, it was something just for the two of us to know. Even today no one really knows besides a few special people we decided to trust. I wouldn’t tell you about her if I was actually going to send this letter; I hate to say it, but after what happened I just don’t trust you with anything important to me anymore.

But I love her, and in an ideal world I’d be able to share that with you. She introduced me to her parents after a few months, and I introduced her to Abuelita. We went on dates and kissed in her bedroom and everything was gentle and soft and loving, the way it should be.

Her parents are the ones who found you. They went to Spain for a fashion show and went to one of your performances while they were there and met your makeup artist, and gave you Abuelita’s number. They’re the reason I met you. I almost cried when they told me you were coming to New York to visit me; it meant so much that they were willing to do all that for their daughter’s girlfriend. And then I met you.

At first you were everything I wanted you to be. You were just as pretty as you were on television, and you looked just as young too, even though it had been fifteen or so years since I first saw you on tape. You still wore all your jewelry and you had your trademark red ribbon in your hair, and we hugged, and I nearly cried; I’d waited my whole life for a hug from my own mother. How sad does that sound?

It didn’t take long for things to go downhill. Really, the moment I realized you weren’t what I imagined was when I asked why you left me and you didn’t have a response. Not even a little ‘I had to.’ No answer whatsoever.

That killed me inside, Mom. Do you know how hard it is to hear that your own mother left you without even having a good reason? I could think of hundreds of reasons that would have been better than nothing. I wasted my entire life waiting, hoping that someday I’d have something as small and natural as a mother who loved me. Is that too much to ask?

I can’t even really blame you for making me spend so much time waiting for you. I should have picked up on it sooner. I can’t believe I was so naive. If you didn’t want me for nineteen years, what would make you want me now? So go, go back to Spain and have your life as a dancer. Don’t talk to me ever again, I don’t care. You rejected me over and over, year after year as I waited at every big event in my life, waited for you to show up and tell me how I’d made you proud. I can’t believe I was so stupid to think that you would ever really want me or love me. I was just a child. In some ways I still feel like one.

I’m an adult now, but part of me still wants and craves the little things like having a mother who would give me hugs and kisses and give me gifts on my birthday and come to my school events and say good job after every performance. But I’m never going to get those, and I just need to make my peace with it.

It’s not like I had a bad childhood, and it’s not like I have a bad life now. Abuelita filled the role of a mother as much as she could, and she did a good job of it. Saoirse is the best girlfriend I could ever ask for. I have Iliana as a friend, and Kira as a mentor. I have the phil; I found my people. So it’s not as if I’m lacking. I just really wish you’d turned out to be even a little bit the way I imagined.

The one thing I’ll admit went well is that you told me I had half-siblings. That was surprising to hear, but I guess it only makes sense. Of course you had other boyfriends; you’re an adult, and you’re pretty, I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Hearing I had four siblings was a shock, though. One in India, one in Japan, two in Brazil. You really got around, huh.

I’m going to try and find them, I think. Maybe they feel the same way I do; maybe they wish they had a mom too. Maybe we can be friends with each other, and help each other feel better. You said they’re all older than me; it would be nice to have some more guidance, and them being family alone is enough for me to want to find them.

Anyway, I don’t really know why I wrote this. I was just trying to process, I think. I don’t know how to feel about this, and I think a little better when I can see what’s going through my head. But anyway, thanks for giving birth to me, I guess; that’s the only thing I can say you really did for me. And thanks for trying, however little you did. Hopefully you have a better life. Hopefully if you have another kid you’re there for them.

I’m sorry things went so badly. And I’m sorry I expected you to be more than you were. And I’m sorry for all the time I spent waiting for you. I won’t make that mistake again.

Sincerely,

Zena