Fiction Friday: Luisa Eduarda Gil de Torres

Luisa dreaded the trip, but accompanied her father faithfully each weekend, never letting on that Montjuic made her skin crawl and did not make her feel any closer to the mother that she only vaguely remembered. She was often told by her father's friends that she was the very image of her mother at her age, with her thick dark hair and extremely pale skin, her diminutive stature and eyes set just a bit too close together.

Luisa regularly examined the few photos of her mother that remained. She considered her mother quite pretty. She was not beautiful in the way a magazine model was, but something about her close-set eyes and overly full lips, about the way her face wasn't quite symmetrical left you with the feeling that she was not only attractive, but approachable.

Did her resemblance make her pretty as well? Possibly, she supposed, but that's not what she saw when she looked at herself. Instead, she saw a weak girl; an adult in years, but still a child, living at home, with no end in sight. She hated herself for always giving into her father, for wearing a mask of filial love, while almost all the time seething with bitterness.

Would it have been different had her mother not died so many years ago? Would she have been her daughter's champion, insisting that she get out and see the world, perhaps even get a job? Would her mother have used her wiles to free Luisa from the stifling limits her father set?

What did it matter? Thinking about the impossible only made her feel more desolate, more isolated. If she were going to change her circumstances, she would have to do it herself.

But her outside contacts, those not loyal to her father, and therefore bound to tell him of any plans she might be making, were few. Less then few, she thought, as few implied more than two, didn't it? Well, more than one at least, and one was all she had.