When I Knew You by Desireé Prosapio Page A

her thoughts from becoming audible.
    I reached over and pulled her hand away from her lips gently. "Maybe what?" Maybe she knows she's... not well.
    "Maybe she's the other Antonia," she said quietly.
    In my mind, I saw the fierce intelligence of my mother from before, the other Antonia, a force so great that I couldn't understand where she had gone, or how she had disappeared from my life and left behind so little...  
    The thoughts stung, because I knew Antonia, this Antonia loved me. But most of the time it hadn't seemed to be anywhere near enough. Most of the time I was watching out for her, feeling like I was more the parent than she was—until she pulled me out through those French doors.
    Antonia turned away and started for the camper's hatch. "We should go before they start looking around here."
    I followed her out, wondering where it was we should go.

Chapter 14
    This is insane.  
    That's all I could think as we drove towards downtown El Paso. The modest skyscrapers squatted humbly at the foot of the mountains, tucked in the pass between the Mexican range and the US range of the Franklins.  
    I had showed Antonia the envelope and the tape, and told her about the lawyer who came to the ropes course to tell me she was "back." And now I was driving us to his office based on a business card, hoping he was still there and could help us figure out what was going on.  
    I was going there blind, not knowing what side Calderon was on. At this point, I didn't even know what the sides were. I was going there with a woman, my mother, who could only retain a week's worth of information, who was talking to "the Lady." Then there was the goofy-guy-turned-psychopath who had probably tried to kill me. Eliah was somewhere out there looking for me. For us.  
    And there was the old man that had come to the hospital. Abuela had warned Pilar about him.  
    This whole thing was a bad idea. We should go to the police, run across the International Bridge to Mexico, head back home. This couldn't be happening.  
    My body argued back. My side was scraped from scrambling in and out of the back of the truck, my bruises on my ribs from the accident were still tender. The little toy climbers swayed from the rearview mirror and I thought of Pilar, and the blanket that lay flat where her leg should have been.
    "Is this the tape?" Antonia held the cassette in her hand, reading the label on the side. "Is it the one ... I made for you?"
    I nodded, suddenly not wanting her to hear it—to hear how the "other Antonia" had referred to her.  
    "It got erased. I think it was Eliah." I remember Eliah standing by the bookshelf after he delivered my medicine. After he left, I'd heard the click of the machine. He must have erased it when I went to the bathroom to ditch the pills.
    "Both sides?" Antonia asked.
    "What? What do you mean?"
    "Are both sides erased? You know, if you flip it over?"
    "There's another side?" I was lost. I never even played a cassette tape before a week ago. I assumed cassettes were like the old camcorder tapes Abuela would play sometimes.
    She reached into her overnight bag and pulled out a cassette player. "Let's listen and see."
    I felt a sudden wave of panic. She seems nothing like me , I remembered the other Antonia saying on the tape . She seems... like an idiot. A sweet, dim, idiot.
      "No!" I reached out and tried to get the tape. "Not yet, okay? Not right now."
    She pulled away, palming the tape deftly. "Kati, we need to know if she, um.. I... well, you know, if she had more to tell you about this."
    "It's just... I mean, I ... I don't think I'm ready."
    She stared at me incredulously. "Do you think we have time for you to get ready?"
    "Not now." I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until I could see my knuckles turning white. What else would Antonia say? "Not now, Mom."
    We drove past the airport exit in silence, then made our way past another mall. Soon we'd be under the soaring maze of overpasses that fed traffic