K.Esquivel-LWFC

The main cause of her lateness was her
adorable niece, who had been
born three months before, prematurely, just
like Tita. The death of
her mother affected Rosaura so deeply that it
brought on the birth of
her daughter and made nursing the child an
impossibility.
This time Tita couldn't or wouldn't take on the
role of wet nurse, as
she'd done with her nephew, and what's
more, she didn't even try,
perhaps because of the devastating
experience she'd had when they took
the child from her. Now she knew better
than to establish such an
intense relationship with a child who wasn't
her own.
She chose instead to provide Esperanza with
the same diet Nancha had
used with her when she was a tiny baby:
gruels and teas.
She was baptized Esperanza at Tita's
request. Pedro had insisted that
the child should be given the same name as
Tita, Josefita.
But Tita refused to hear of it. She didn't want
her name to influence
the child's destiny. It was enough that while
giving birth to her, her
mother had had a series of setbacks that
forced John to perform an
urgent operation that saved her life but made
it impossible for her to
get pregnant again.
John had explained to Tita that sometimes,
because of abnormalities,
the placenta does not just implant in the
uterus, it sends roots down
into it, so that when the baby is born, the
placenta does not detach.
It is so firmly attached that if an
inexperienced person tried to help
the mother and pulled on the placenta by
yanking the umbilical cord,
the whole uterus would come with it. Then it
would be necessary to
perform an emergency operation, removing
the uterus and leaving the
woman unable to become pregnant for the
rest of her life.
Rosaura required surgery not because John
lacked experience, but
because he had no other way to loosen the
placenta. And so Esperanza
would be the only child, the youngest child,
and, worst of all, a
girl!
Which meant, in the family tradition, that she
was the one designated
to care for her mother until the end of her
days.
Perhaps Esperanza sank roots in her
mother's womb because she knew
beforehand what to expect in this world. Tita
prayed that the idea of
perpetuating this cruel tradition would not
cross Rosaura's mind.
To help keep that from happening, she didn't
want to give her any ideas
with the name, so she pressed them day and
night until they agreed to
call her Esperanza.
But several coincidences suggested that this
child's fate would be
similar to Tita's1 for example, out of sheer
necessity she spent the
greatest part of the day in the kitchen, since
her mother couldn't take
care of her and her aunt could only take care
of her in the kitchen,