Part 7

November was ending soon and the day Gaby was leaving was looming ever closer. I knew this had to end sooner or later. Obviously I didn’t want her to go, but I knew she had too. I spent more days with her, I remember driving and her in the passenger seat and her cousin in the back. She grabbed my hand as I shifted gears, and she held on. It seemed she didn’t want to go either. I dropped her and her cousin off one night, and she was locked out. Her Aunt wasn’t home yet, and we went around back to check the back door. I told her I wouldn’t leave them outside, and that I would wait until her Aunt got home. She gave me a hug. There on the back deck. I didn’t want to let her go. I had talked more about going down to Guadalajara, and she agreed that she wanted me to go. But she was hesitant also. This confused me. I could understand us keeping it a little quiet at first, but things were turning out great, so why not just make it official? Why not let everyone know? I told her even though I didn’t have parents for her to meet, I really wanted to meet her parents. She would change the subject and be very hesitant to speak about me and her parents. I couldn’t understand why? She said her dad was strict, and I could understand the fact that I was a guy who liked his daughter. But there seemed to be something else there. Something bigger. The days were catching up with us. They were going to leave out of Houston the next weekend, and they had many family things to do. We had made arrangements for me to pick them up and take them to the Army Surplus because they were needing a big duffle bag for clothes and things. I got ready and headed over to their Aunt’s house. I drove up, and started to get out of the car. Gaby came out of the house and made her way over to the car. I smiled and asked her if they were ready to go. She looked scared, she kept looking around behind her and to her sides. She said she wanted to talk to me. I was caught off guard by the seriousness in her voice, but I agreed. “Come On, lets walk.” She said nervously. So we walked, around the mobile home park her Aunt lived in. Up and down the streets. She explained it all to me. It’s almost like another story in itself. I’ll try to summarize. It happened before she came up to San Antonio, before she met me. She had gone to Mexico City with some friends and met some other folks. Well there was a girl that was liking a guy there in Mexico City. For whatever reason Gaby’s friends there, didn’t like this girl. Or they didn’t like this girl for this guy. So they told Gaby to pretend she was going out with him, to make the other girl jealous or whatever. So Gaby did it. According to her, she didn’t think that much of the guy, so she wasn’t worried about actually having to live up to the lie. So she left Mexico City. The guy eventually found out. And ofcourse he was probably stoked. Here is a beautiful girl telling everyone that she likes me and wants to date me? And maybe even saying that we are already dating? Hell ya! I would have been stoked too. Any guy would have. So now the word has spread, Gaby is dating this guy. Which according to Gaby, was a lie. A Game. So what does the guy do? He decides it's about time that Gaby’s parents know about “them”. (whatever ”them” could be?) So he goes and talks to her parents about what? You guessed it, Marriage. See it works differently in Mexico. To say your dating is almost to say your engaged. There doesn’t seem to be a single word for boyfriend, only fiancé. They don’t date to get to know each other and possibly get married. They date to get married. No questions about it. Sometimes there is even arranged marriages. Some marriages are not for love or because they know each other and want to be with each other. But they marry for security and stability. Obviously not every marriage or situation is like this, but that’s what this case was. Gaby’s parents were surprised, here she hadn’t mentioned she was dating a guy, this guy who was older then her by I believe 10 years. And now she was getting set to get married? Her parents were probably shocked, but what she told me, they went along. The thing I learned about her parents was, they controlled her. Ever since was young, they told her what to do. Which is common when your younger. But as she grew up, she wanted her freedom, and her parents had a hard time with that. She told me she dated guys in school that she knew her parents wouldn't like. And her parents actually rarely knew this. It was a regular case of teenage rebellion. One that I never had to go through. I couldn’t rebel against something that wasn’t there. Once a person has as much freedom as you can possible have, there’s not much left to rebel against. She liked me for that. She said I acted different than any other guys she had met. She liked that I was balanced in my rebelliousness. Or the lack thereof. She told me she felt stuck. Her parents approved of this guy, and if things were going to escalate she would end up doing something she never really wanted to do, to a guy she never liked in the first place. So she broke it off. She told the guy she didn’t like him, and she told her parents she broke it off with him. But what she didn’t tell them is that it all was a lie. She didn’t tell them she never liked the guy in the first place, she didn’t tell them it was all a game. I guess she didn’t want to anger them, she didn’t want them to be disappointed in her. They didn’t know about the guys at school, they didn’t know about the game with this older guy, and what made me nervous, is that they didn’t know about me. After she told them she broke it off with the guy, they got frustrated. Like I said, you date, you get married. To lead someone on, especially for the girl to do it to a older man, was almost illegal. Plus he was a man who was settled. He had the stability, he had the income, he was what a mexican husband was supposed to be, he had that ego, and he wasn’t to be toyed with. That’s what she said her parents were mad about, because it seemed like she was passing up a guy that could be a good thing. It seemed to me almost like they thought it as business venture, more then a relationship. It seemed like she was passing up some sort of deal that would have her set for life. To me it looked as if they could careless whether she actually loved the guy, just so long that he could take care of her. She felt the same way as me. She didn’t want to marry this guy, she didn’t like him, she didn’t even know him very well. She told me she liked me, and that she wanted to continue to get to know me better. She wasn’t ready for marriage just yet, she still had goals and things she wanted to do with her life. That can be a problem too. In Mexico, tradition and family is very important. It’s not uncommon for kids to still live with her parents well into their 30’s. Their parents still play a major role in their lives, they make decisions for them. Even if they were to get married, they are still so close knit. So for her to go against the grain, for her to not want that life right away, and to pass up a good opportunity, didn’t seem to make sense to her parents. It made perfect sense to me though. I was from the U.S. where kids leave home at 18 to go to college. It’s almost a tradition here, that you got out of the house as soon as possible. Even myself at 17 was out on my own. That was the life I was used too, I wasn’t used to parents telling me what to do, and when to do it. I had my sister and brother in law and others to help guide, but I was making my own decisions at an early age. So to say that parents could control her life like that, seemed so foreign, even stupid. But in her reality it was the other way around. She was almost 21 and her parents still very much controlled her life. I could understand to a point, because technically she was living under their roof. But telling her who to like? That was absurd to me. She told me her dad got so frustrated that she dumped the guy; he told her that the next guy she liked she had to marry. No games, no exceptions. I found that a little unsettling. What did that mean for me? I could understand now why she wanted to kind of keep us a secret. She didn’t want her parents to know about me just yet. But there was a problem. Her Aunt had found out about us. I guess with me picking her up and hanging out with her, and maybe because someone said something, her Aunt found out we liked each other. I thought “so what?” I didn’t care if they knew we liked each other. But obviously Gaby did. It got more complicated. She told me after she dumped that guy and her parents got angry with her. she was feeling down. I don’t know if she felt that way because she felt she let her parents down, or because of the foolishness of her actions. Whatever it was, she needed to get away, to clear her head, and that’s why she came to San Antonio. She didn’t think she was going to meet me, and she wasnt planning on falling for anyone up here. But I just happened. Her mom though, had called her Aunt and they had been talking about her. Her mom under the assumption that she was depressed because of the guy, told her Aunt that Gaby was so depressed. Gaby had never told her mom about the lie, or the game. The mom said Gaby was sad because it didn’t work out with that guy. Which was totally bogus. So here is Gaby, supposed to be so sad over this guy, but is having a good time with me? Her Aunt put 2 and 2 together, and realized Gaby was liking me. Her Aunt then seemed to almost threaten her with that. She said that if she didn’t break it off with me, that she would tell her mom about me. This in turn would have repercussions, with her parents, and with me. It was almost surreal what I was hearing. She said she wished she wouldn't have played that game on that guy, then she or we wouldn’t be in this mess. I reminded her that if she wouldn’t have done that, she wouldn’t have come to San Antonio. Then we would have never met. I told her, what she did in the past didn’t matter to me, because I’ve done things I’m not proud of either. All I needed to know was that she liked me now, and that she wanted to be with me. She said Yes. She gave me a hug and a kiss and we kept walking. Her Grandfather had been driving around trying to find her by now, and he picked us up. We got back in the car, and drove back to her Aunt’s house a few streets down. When we got there, I had to leave. I wouldn’t be taking them for a bag, I wouldn’t be doing anything with them that day. With her Aunt not letting me see her, I didn’t know if this was going to be the last time I saw her. I thought about it as I waved goodbye and drove home. It all was unreal. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. How things were so perfect, and in one day, things had totally changed. Now we would remain a silent couple, liking each other in secret. Even if I went to Guadalajara, I wouldn’t meet the parents. And if I did meet them I would be introduced as just a friend, not as a boyfriend. She had told me she knew her dad, and that he wouldn't approve of me. I found that disturbing. She said I was different then what they wanted for her, and they wouldn’t allow anything different. They wanted stability. I had a ok job. They wanted security; I had a bed and a stereo. They wanted income; I had a few bucks and a old Mazda. They wanted a husband; to them I would just be the boyfriend. It dawned on me, that this was going to be a lot harder then I thought it was. I was ready though. She was worth the fight, I was ready. I had no idea what I was in store for.