Whispers of a Former Life: Episode 32

Alejandra stood up, bracing her palm under the tiny girl’s fragile back as she set Charity carefully down on her old coffee table. She watched for a heartbeat as Charity sat there, shivering in the cold air of the small studio,  so different from the marble-floored hallways and climate-controlled bedrooms she once floated through like she owned them. 

Alejandra bent to gather her scattered things, her movements unhurried but steady, the practiced tidiness of a girl who learned early never to leave her life lying out for others to paw through. As she stuffed a brush back into her bag, she caught it in the corner of her eye: Charity’s wide, desperate stare, locked not on her face but on the faded grey hoodie lying bunched beside Alejandra’s keys. 

A pang sparked under her ribs. For years, that hoodie had been her armor and her blanket. It still smelled faintly of her mother’s old detergent, of card games played too late in friends’ garages, of weed and sweat and whatever stale bus air clung to her shoulders after long days scrubbing other people’s kitchens. 

It was hers,  a little piece of warmth no one could take. 

But now? She looked at Charity, at the tremor running through that tiny frame, at the lips faintly blue around the edges. Qué más puedo hacer… 

She blew out a quiet breath through her nose. Then, with a small shrug, she lifted the hoodie and dropped it onto the table in front of the shivering girl. 

“Here.” Just that word,  soft but unarguable. 

She watched,  with a tight, conflicted twist in her gut,  as Charity immediately scrambled forward on all fours, tugging at the heavy cotton like a frightened kitten burrowing into a mother’s fur. The sweatshirt swallowed her whole: sleeves draping like blankets, the hem pooling around her like a tent pitched to keep out a harsh wind. Charity’s tiny shoulders relaxed visibly, though the trembling didn’t stop completely. 

Alejandra rubbed her jaw with her knuckles. 
Look at her, she thought, both pitying and faintly awed. A day ago she’d bark if I used the wrong mop in the guest bathroom. Now my old hoodie is her castle. 

She turned away before the thought made her feel more than she wanted to. 

In the corner of her tiny living space,  really just one big square room broken up by old furniture and a thin wall hiding the bed,  she slung her battered plaid backpack onto the same shelf where she kept her spare blankets and old pay stubs. It landed with a soft thud among a pile of folded t-shirts. 

Alejandra’s eyes roamed over the shelf for a moment,  this shelf, this studio, these four cracked walls. To anyone from the Stevens’ circle, it would look like poverty, a box barely fit for a college drop-out. But for Alejandra Jiménez seventeen, born in Sonora, a Mexican national who’d once crossed desert and darkness and fear with her older cousin clamping a shaking hand over her mouth every time headlights appeared on a lonely road,  it was a palacio. 

This place was hers. Truly hers. The first roof that couldn’t be kicked out from under her by a bad landlord or a greedy cousin. She’d fought for it in the only way she knew: a busted deck of cards, a table full of men too drunk to watch her sharp eyes. Mark the loudmouth idiot had bet his condo deed at the last minute, thinking he’d bully her if he lost. He didn’t. He tried to make good on the threat, but the cops dragged him away for something else before he could burn the place down around her. 

She still slept some nights with a kitchen knife near her pillow, just in case he ever came back. He never did. 

Now, the little income she made scrubbing the marble and granite of families like the Stevens? It kept the lights on, the gas running. More importantly, it kept pesos flowing back across the border to her pueblito in Sonora. Her father’s mechanic shop barely scraped by; her mother managed books for three different corner stores and still never stopped boiling beans for her siblings’ lunches. 

She sent them what she could. Always. Even if it meant letting that spoiled niña insult me for sport, she thought, her jaw tightening briefly. 

Alejandra moved to the kitchenette,  just a squat row of ancient counters, a microwave, a single-burner stove she’d rescued from a curb three blocks away. She rummaged in the tiny fridge for something to eat: an egg, maybe half an avocado, stale tortillas. She’d stretch it. She always did. 

Behind her, she heard a faint rustle: Charity burrowing deeper into her hoodie’s soft cave. She didn’t look back at first — she forced herself to focus on the eggs, on the oil sputtering gently in a battered pan. But every few heartbeats, her eyes flicked to the side, half-expecting that tiny girl to slip out, to vanish into a crack in the wall like a spooked mouse. 

Except Charity had nowhere to run. Not anymore. 

Alejandra cracked another egg with her thumb, let it hiss in the pan. In the sliver of old laptop light on her cluttered table, she could see the browser window still open: a dozen tabs about “Little legal status,” “Unaffected guardian rights,” “Generitech local offices.” Some of it made her stomach twist with unease. So many rules. So many chances for someone to knock on her door and ask for papers she didn’t have. 

She reached over, tapped at the trackpad, scanning the same line she’d read five times already: If you find an unregistered Little with no designated guardian, you may apply for temporary custodianship through— 

She snorted softly to herself. “Temporal, huh?” she muttered in Spanish. “Nada es temporal aquí. If they know about you, patroncita, they own you.” 

She felt more than heard Charity shift again inside the hoodie,  a muffled sniffle, maybe, or just a sigh. Alejandra’s chest tightened unexpectedly. She flipped the egg, the scent of oil and salt filling the warm pocket of her home. 

She carried the cracked plate to the table and set it down carefully, half-watching the hoodie lump wiggle closer to the plate’s warmth. She grabbed a chipped mug, poured half a cup of milk she’d been saving for her morning coffee. She hesitated, then set that next to the plate too. 

Standing over it all,  hoodie, plate, milk, and the ridiculous sight of Charity Stevens half-wrapped in Alejandra’s oldest sweatshirt like a baby possum in a burrow,  she scrubbed her hands on her sweatpants and blew out a sigh. 

Seventeen years old. Mexican. Illegal, yes,  but more free than this spoiled American girl had ever been. And now, she thought, biting down on the small laugh bubbling in her throat, the little princess can’t even warm herself without my hoodie and my cheap milk. 

She leaned down a bit, voice soft but unmistakable: 
“Come, chiquita. Eat. Tomorrow… we figure this out. But tonight? You live my way.” 

Then she turned away, letting Charity think whatever she wanted about what that promise meant. 

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