Hector and I were married for five years. From the first day I became his wife, I grew accustomed to his cold words and indifferent looks. Hector wasn’t violent or loud, but his apathy made my heart shrivel a little more each day.

After the wedding, we lived at his parents’ house in a neighborhood in Mexico City. Every morning I got up early to cook, do laundry, and clean. Every evening I sat and waited for him, only to hear him say,
“I’ve eaten.”
I often wondered if this marriage was any different than being a tenant. I tried to build, I tried to love, but all I received in return was an invisible emptiness I couldn’t fill.

Until one day, Hector came home, his face cold and expressionless. He sat across from me, handed me some divorce papers, and said in a terse voice, “
Sign it. I don’t want to waste any more time, neither mine nor yours.”

I froze, but not surprised. With tears in my eyes, I took the pen in my trembling hand. All the memories of waiting for him at the dinner table, of the times I’d suffered stomach aches in the middle of the night without him even knowing, came back to me like knife wounds.

After signing, I started packing my things. There was nothing in that house that was truly mine, except for some clothes and the old pillow I always slept with. As I was about to walk out the door with my suitcase, Héctor threw the pillow at me in a sarcastic voice:

“Take it and wash it. It’s probably falling apart by now.

” I picked up the pillow, feeling my heart ache. It was indeed old; the cover was faded, yellow-stained, and ripped.

It was the pillow I’d brought from my mother’s house in a small town in Oaxaca when I went to university in the city. And I took it with me when I got married because I had trouble sleeping without it. He often complained about it, but I kept it anyway. I left that house in silence.

Back in my rented room, I stared at my pillow, stunned. Thinking about his sarcastic words, I decided to take off the pillowcase and wash it, at least so I could sleep well that night, without dreaming of painful memories.

As I opened the cover, I felt something strange. There was something bulging inside the cotton padding. I put my hand in and stopped dead. A small bundle of paper, carefully wrapped in a nylon bag. I opened it with trembling hands.
Inside was a wad of bills, all 500 pesos, and a piece of paper folded in four.
I opened it. It was my mother’s shaky, familiar handwriting:

“My child, this is the money I saved for you in case you fell on hard times. I hid it in your pillow because I was afraid you’d be too proud to accept it. Whatever happens, don’t worry about a man, my child. I love you very much.”

My tears fell heavily onto the yellowed paper. I remembered my wedding day, when my mother gave me the pillow, saying it was very soft, so I could sleep well.

I laughed and said, “You’re getting old, Mom. What a thing to say. Hector and I are going to be happy.”

My mother just smiled, her gaze distant and sad.

I hugged the pillow to my chest, feeling as if my mother were beside me, stroking my hair and comforting me.

It turned out she always knew how much a daughter could suffer if she chose the wrong man. It turned out she’d prepared a backup plan for me; not one filled with riches, but one that would keep me from despair.

That night, I lay on the hard bed in my small rented room, clutching the pillowcase, tears soaking the pillowcase. But this time, I wasn’t crying for Hector.
I was crying for my love for my mother.

I was crying because I felt lucky, because at least I still had somewhere to go back to, a mother who loved me, and a big world out there waiting to welcome me.

The next morning, I woke up early, carefully folded the pillow, and packed it in my suitcase. I told myself I’d find a smaller room, closer to my job. I’d send more money to my mother, and I’d live a life where I wouldn’t have to shiver or wait for a cold text message from anyone.

I smiled at myself in the mirror.

From now on, that puffy-eyed woman would live for herself, for her aging mother at home, and for all the youthful dreams yet to come true.

That marriage, that old pillow, that sneer of contempt… all of that was just the end of a sad chapter.

As for my life, there were still many pages left to write with my own hands and my resilient heart.