A Mother’s Child Is Missing

But an open heart may bring their back

When Ruth Weinberg sat on a random city park bench under a weeping tree, she realized that the reasons for all her afflictions had begun at that infamous Saturday lunch. Born on February 16th, 1980, somewhere in a part of Portugal beyond the setting sun, Ruth was not ready for what was going on in her life. Although the leaves kept dripping drops of water, nothing could distract her mind from a single thought: that terrible Saturday! Had it not been for that wicked day — when the entire universe seems to conspire to turn everything upside down — her life would have turned out to be completely different. She wouldn’t be sitting there on that bench, on that cold morning of March 8th, 2022, with her mind all tangled up, trapped in a net she couldn’t get out of.

“One might think that nothing serious could happen at a Saturday lunch, but only those who have never met my family thinks so.”

These were Ruth’s thoughts while people, indifferent to her existence, walked past her. Despite the rain, they strolled quietly in the park while Ruth tried to somehow search each of those faces for a trace that might remind her of her missing daughter. However, some still wearing medical masks made everything more complicated.

Her puzzled face did not go unnoticed. As people became aware that she was looking at them, the more upset and embarrassed she became. Sometimes she would get up and try to sneak under the others’ umbrellas to look them in the eye. And realizing the tremendous folly she was doing, she would quickly make up an excuse by asking them the time. “Shame on you, Ruth,” she thought. “Who asks for the time these days? Especially when you have a watch on your wrist”. Other times she tried to compose herself and be as rational as possible. Covering her mouth with one hand and looking at the tree that seemed to be crying for her. Relentlessly crossing and uncrossing her legs that kept swinging at a strange rhythm.

“I look like a lunatic, but my God, only I know why.” Ruth continued to think, ignoring the fact that she was sitting on a wet bench on a cold, rainy March morning.

Furthermore, despite the drizzle, the red umbrella her daughter had given her for her 39th birthday — when things were still ‘normal — remained unceasingly closed. Yet the more she tried not to go back to that Saturday lunch, the more she thought about every little thing that had happened. Her mind would go into little details, real or just a figment of her imagination, causing her to become so dizzy that she forced herself to stand up. And holding the umbrella, she wandered around the tree, regardless of the rain or anyone watching.

“ He is late; maybe I should just go! Maybe this is a big mistake! And maybe I should have listened to nobody!”.

Ruth continued to think, wandering through the town’s park. Sometimes standing, other times sitting down, but always looking at her wristwatch to check the time.

All her anguish had a plausible reason, though. Ruth’s daughter, Linda Weinberg, born to a single mother on March 8th, 2003, had vanished, gone for good. And only another mother could understand what was going through her troubled mind at that moment. How could a parent cope with the strange sense of grief and longing for someone who has, somehow, disappeared? Linda Weinberg was no more, and this was the fact.

Products of a childhood marked by violence, these children become adults, perpetuating a cycle that is difficult to break. These adults, who become mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, or daughters, continue this chain where everything repeats itself, although differently. However, some, upon reaching an older age, take two different paths. Either crawl into the same cycle of booze and brutality and don’t make it past fifty. Or, fortunately, they recognize in time all that they have done wrong and try to redeem themselves by becoming the peacemaker element in the family.

These last ones, those who survive, get all the credit and love from their grandchildren. Not having witnessed their grandfather’s violence in ancient times, they cannot conceive how horrible this sweet old figure could have been to everybody. In turn, their wives’ latter grandmothers, suffering in silence throughout their lives, are also transformed by reversing roles, strangely becoming the center of the family’s problems.

Having stifled their emotions for a lifetime, then comes the time when they burst out. However, this call for attention is so disproportional that eventually, they are seen as hysterical, over-emotional, and everything you may think to be hard to deal with. When all they wanted was recognition for years of being living their lives to their families.

Ruth knew precisely that this was the case with her parents. And if in her own youth she despised her father, now, oddly enough, they were both at peace with each other. Yet even knowing all this — and for heaven’s sake! Herself a woman, daughter, and mother of a little girl — Ruth struggled to cope with her mother’s emotions and mid-life crisis.

She considered all this as she drove to the farm along the winding road of that barren mountain consumed by summer flames. And recognizing that life was already too hard, she knew she had to try to become closer to her mother. On the other hand, however, she couldn’t help but think about the judgment her mother made about every little thing. Ruth’s mother was so inconsiderate of others’ opinions that she would spare no words and immediately say something mean if she thought so.

“I’m sorry, Ruth, but this dish has no taste; even cats wouldn’t eat it” or “your breath smells like rotten potatoes.”

Silvia, Ruth’s mother, had lately been expressing enormous displeasure with anything that came from her daughter. This had become so common that Ruth wondered wistfully where her once sweet mother had gone.

One can think of his entire life just in one car trip. However, thinking deeply on that road was only for experienced drivers, who could not be distracted, especially when the wind wanted to blow everything away. Even more difficult it would be for the person sitting next to the driver, trying to hold a cake without dropping it on the ground.

“Linda, come on!” said Ruth to her daughter, who had been struck down by some sudden sadness on that day. “Hold it tight, please!”.

Linda’s sadness was clearly not indifferent to her. So, as soon as Ruth had uttered those words, she regretted them, suddenly realizing how much like her own mother she was being.

After all, Linda was her eternal and everlasting baby girl. A baby born of a one-night stand with whom Ruth had thought at the time was the love of her life. A man Ruth would never see again, never even allow her to tell him about the pregnancy. In the face of such heartbreak, she decided that she would be a brave woman, the most fearless of all and that a single mother figure would suffice. Moreover, her complicated relationship with men, in general, led her to think that the lack of a father figure would not be a problem but rather something positive. “Enough of patriarchy! Let the matriarchy come,” thought her feminist mind.

Obviously, Ruth was not considering her parents’ reaction to having a 23-year-old daughter pregnant by a stranger. Fortunately for her, she had just graduated on time when Linda Silva Weinberg was born on March 8th, 2003.

The Weinbergs were not very well known in the region, yet their history was fascinating. Their known origins went back to Walter Weinberg. Walter, born in Hungary in 1933, had been adopted by his Aunt Hannah when he became orphaned at the age of four. His parents, mingling with the excited crowd waiting to see Miklas, the Austrian President, were killed in Budapest on May 3rd, 1937, by a clumsy bus driver.

Hannah only twenty years old, Walter’s aunt on his father’s side, was the closest relative who was given custody of the boy. Even if the winds of change hung in the air, little did Hannah know that shortly after losing her brother and sister-in-law, she would have to endure one of the most challenging journeys of her life.

Frightened by Horthy Miklós’s policies, she knew that she had to run away as soon as possible. Luckily, Hannah met Maurice Dupont, a French merchant who, captivated by the girl’s eyes, took her to La Réole in France, just in time to do so. There, she lived with him and Walter for two years. However, as the war escalated, Maurice began to fear for his life as he housed two Jews in his quarters. Thus, on one summer morning, he promptly told them about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese ambassador granting visas to Jews and refugees.

Portugal, a war-neutral territory at the time, even though harboring a fascist regime, could be the entrance ticket to go to the other side of the ocean. Hannah and Walter quickly hit the road. They arrived in Bordeaux on June 17th, 1940, and lined up with hundreds of Jews in front of the Portuguese Embassy, hoping that the news was not a mere myth. Having no choice but to flee, they both remained on that street in Bordeaux for two days. At dusk, the diplomat, with his tired and emotional eyes, asked her if she was there alone with that boy, to which she replied that he was her son. At that very moment, Hannah and Walter received their seal of freedom and headed for Portugal.

Being helped by anonymous people, Hannah Weinberg became Anne Dupont. Pretending to be a French woman. Always hiding her true identity, she married Antonio Vasconcelos, a wealthy local man whom Hannah despised throughout her short life. The marriage took place only after she knew that her days on earth would not be too long.

Diagnosed with tuberculosis, Hannah was sent to the sanatorium at Caramulo, the most famous in the Iberian Peninsula, where the fresh air and the sun were the purest of all. However, fate wanted her misery to end soon. Most likely, if it weren’t for her illness which made her last days on earth painful, she too would have escaped from a country drowning in fascism and poverty. Hannah Weinberg would eventually die on March 16th, 1945, and be buried as Anne Dupont.

Vasconcelos abandoned Walter when the boy was only eleven. The latter had resented the boy’s existence as soon as his eyes landed on Anne’s and then on her hand holding Walter’s. For this, he sent the little boy away to a Catholic priests’ school in the Portuguese countryside. From there, he escaped one early summer morning and wandered to Belmonte.

Helped by the local Jewish community, he later would marry Daniela Amorim, a Jewish woman. In 1959, Walter became the father of Salvador Amorim Weinberg, Ruth’s father. Despite living in a fascist country deeply rooted in its Catholic tradition, Salvador never hid his true identity. He had always proudly affirmed that he had come from a Jewish family with roots in Hungary.

And when, on that beautiful day of April 25th, 1974, Portugal turned the page of its history and left fascism behind, the country nevertheless remained for many years a difficult place to live. Steeped in poverty and ignorance, it saw children grow up to later become men and women clad in a hard shell that the modern world could not penetrate.

However, Salvador’s life would change on one of those hot Portuguese summer nights where music floats in the air, and the smell of grilled sardines attracts people from all over. Far away from his hometown and his parents, his eyes set on Rita, a Catholic woman who that day dared to dance with a stranger. The dance changed their lives, with the sudden wedding having to take place before Rita’s womb began to show what was for her parents the fruit of a tremendous sin.

The marriage would turn out to become a nightmare, not for having married a woman he loved but for everything that came along with it. Salvador, a Jewish man — something seen as strange in Rita’s region — would hear insults from both families. From his own who saw this marriage as a direct affront to their traditions, and Rita’s, who drowned in ignorance feared Jewish traditions like the devil fears the cross. “It’s a bad sign, daughter. It’s all judiarias* kept saying Rita’s mother, who distrusted the boy’s good faith until his last days on earth.

Tired of the closeness to both families and the constant slander, Salvador bought a small farm on a mountain far away from everything and took Rita to raise their first-born, Mauricio Silva Weinberg, and later, Rute Silva Weinberg, nicknamed Ruth.

Living in Portugal, they settled down to produce wine and olive oil and live up to their family name. After all, “Weinberg” as a word was the combination in German of wine and mountain. And what better place than there, surrounded by mountains and vines, to get ahead in life? But as Rita considered all this, she thought long were the days when this family heritage seemed relevant. Sharing different roots, Ruth was the first family member to abandon religion and declare herself an atheist. A fantastic privilege on her part. Born from a mix of stories, she would pass as an ordinary Portuguese woman, just as her old Aunt Hannah had pretended to be French. Ruth, with average height, long brown hair, and hazel eyes, could easily blend in with everyone else.

And then, lo and behold, another tragedy struck the Weinbergs. Even in the face of life’s adversity, they, who had managed to put Ruth through college, had to deal with her unexpected pregnancy. Ruth, indifferent to any other opinion and being herself as Portuguese as anyone else, decided to name her daughter Linda — ‘pretty girl’ in Portuguese.

Upon learning of her pregnancy, she knew she didn’t want to be a lonely woman raising a child in a city, so the wisest thing to do was to return to her parent’s farm. And so, she did. Her business degree was put to work on the farm, and Ruth became the bravest woman of all, just as she wanted. She expanded the business, created a sophisticated brand, and internationalized the farm and the products as the flow of tourists came into the country to visit and buy wine. As for Linda, she grew up surrounded by her grandparents, who loved her unconditionally, or so they used to say.

As Salvador grew older, the already distant bitterness of his youth slowly faded away, making him a charming grandfather and very close to his granddaughter. After all, Salvador was aware that there had to be a father figure — against all Ruth’s opinions or wishes — trying to be the double figure of father and grandfather.

Linda Weinberg would grow up loving every second she lived on that farm, especially the times she spent with her grandfather. However, she hated every time she had to face school. It wasn’t about getting up early and catching the bus to the nearest town. It was about all the preparation her mother proudly did for her every morning. With Ruth stretching her curly hair and Linda complaining … putting scrunchies of all kinds of colors in her hair and Linda screaming … or Ruth trying to get that voluminous hair into a Dutch braid tied with tiny rubber bands imitating fake roses and pearls. For Linda, this was what made her feel most like a fish out of water.

Obviously, Ruth was not aware that Linda’s desire to go to school early was connected to her need to get rid of all those accessories. She didn’t care about being with friends or being punctual. What Linda only wanted was not to be seen with all that apparatus in her hair. And thus, every morning, she would sneak into the school bathroom and nervously take everything off. Sometimes succeeding, other times leaving little colorful scrunchies hanging from her hair, making everyone laugh at her.

When Linda would show up at home with her hair all messed up by the end of the day, Ruth would think that she was not doing a good job. So, the next day she would tie it up even more, in a routine that eventually caused Linda so much distress that she thought that getting rid of it all was, in the end, like beating a dead horse. And so, giving up on her attempts to free her hair, she would spend the whole day scratching her head, with everyone looking at her thinking she might have lice, causing all the children to stay away. There is always one freak in the classroom that the kids like to pick on. Whether true or not, Linda got it into her head that that figure was her.

It was challenging enough being a kid. However, being one feeling like you were outside your body, and were living someone else’s life was a nightmare. Looking at boys and wanting to play with them and being rejected… trying to get involved in the girls’ games and feeling uncomfortable every second… looking at yourself in the mirror and not recognizing that face, that long hair… All these feelings created a deep emptiness in Linda that no words could ever describe how she felt. However, it was when her breasts started to grow, and blood began to appear every month, that Linda knew for a fact that she did not belong in that body. And clinging to that feeling, for years, she kept this secret until the winds of change would make her consider that she might as well die as live like that.

It was typical for the Weinbergs to reunite the whole family on Saturday for lunch. After all, Salvador still wanted to pass on his Jewish traditions and celebrate the Shabbat. This lunch was itself a ritual to follow a Kosher diet. Being the dutiful wife society wanted her to be, Rita didn’t mind embracing her husband’s traditions and came to appreciate them over time.

Mauricio had arrived with his family, his wife Marisa, and their children, Rosa, Duarte, and Viriato, at twelve o’clock sharp. Ruth and Linda came afterward, with Linda holding the cake that they went to buy in the town at the foot of the hill, and they all rushed inside.

“Mom, does the television need to be so loud? We’re all going to go deaf,” said Ruth to her mother, regretting instantly the words that came out of her mouth. “You have barely arrived, and you’re already complaining. Give your mother a kiss first, at least,” Rita said, shouting from the kitchen, as Ruth walked toward her to hug her while striving to fulfill her previous thought to give her more affection.

Those family lunches were always a mix of different noises. TV news at too loud a volume; everyone talking louder to cover their sound, and Mauricio’s children running around the house asking the adults to play with them. “The idea of a peaceful family only exists in television commercials,” Linda thought.

On the verge of turning seventeen, Linda would usually keep quiet to avoid adding to the big mess. However, this day would prove to be different. Suddenly, the confusion would stop whenever something came on the television would get everyone’s attention. And as everyone was getting ready to start eating, the voice of a teenage girl made everyone listen and shut up.

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. (…) You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones…

“Oh no! This little girl became the world’s clown! Saying that someone stole her dreams? Please, what a little princess, what does she know about suffering?” groaned Mauricio indifferently to Greta’s message.

At the same time, his hand grabbed the only available chicken leg on the table, which he ate voraciously, covering his hand and face in grease.

“My son is right,” said Salvador, giving him a tab attesting to the veracity of his words as if Mauricio were an authority.

“What does this generation know of suffering?” sighed the family’s boss. Obviously, Salvador would repeat the whole family history, and then nobody could compete with it.

“Come on, dad, do not play the ‘holocaust’ card because it is tremendously unfair,” Ruth warned each time the situation called for it. However, even she knew that to say such a thing was itself unjust.

“I’m sorry, but it’s true, dad. Times are different, everything is different, and we don’t know even how we should act. The world is on fire, and literally, this whole mountain burnt two years ago. Or should I recall the awful day when we spent it surrounded by flames and smoke! Trapped here in the house with wet towels at the bottom of the door so the smoke couldn’t get in?” exhaled Ruth.

“Exactly my point, Ruth! Now! That was a bad day!” asserted Mauricio while holding his fork with a piece of potato and pointing it at his sister.

“That is exactly what Greta Thunberg is trying to warn you all,” Linda uttered those words for the first time in a low tone of voice.

However, nobody really listened to her, making Linda think all that was just a giant metaphor for what the world was going through. Mauricio, on the other hand, would not shut up on that day.

“You know I even heard saying that we may get more contagious diseases because of climate change… She is what, 16? For crying out loud, she should really be in school! Where did she get this stuff from?” Mauricio said once more, being a Jack of all trades and stealing everybody’s airtime.

The debate continued with endless discussions that led apparently nowhere, with everybody commenting on the news. From climate change. to how meat is killing the planet, or how the Palestinians are dying in an unfair battle against Israel…Ouch! One of the many sensitive points for the Weinbergs. Either the Palestinian war or any news on Black Lives Matter always caused embarrassment to Salvador, who would immediately change the tv channel. At the same time, as a distraction maneuver, Mauricio would start talking about his own job, what he had done during the week or what was left to do. This time, however, this constant and subtle change of topics was a fact that would not go unmentioned. Linda stopped to express her opinion on the subject for the first time and precisely on that day.

“Grandad, why do you always do this? Change the channel to change the conversation? You always do that,” Linda said, finally breaking the ice.

“You as a Jew should be the first in line to understand Black people’s constant anguish! And it’s not only in America, but I also bet that one of these days, some crazy old man will shoot a Black Portuguese in his back! Jews have had such a troubled history too, the least we could do is be a bit sympathetic… I remember very well when I was on that school trip to England. A girl on the train called me ‘Mediterranean scum’ after looking at my olive-oil-tone skin and curly black hair! Isn’t it all ridiculous?” sighed Linda.

Characterized by friendly discussions and bellies full of food, Saturday lunches had always been warm family moments. However, this one would go down in the history of the Weinbergs. Everybody stood quiet to listen to Linda. It was unusual to listen to her speaking her mind in such a strong-minded way.

“Now there I was, thinking I had been ‘white’ all my life! But no! Apparently, being Portuguese is somehow not what I thought we were! What’s even funnier is that here, in this hole we live in, I’m just as white as everyone else!” sighed Linda as she continued. “ I can even hide Hannukah, Shabbat, grandma’s devotion to Fatima, or whatever I want! But there! Oh, there in London, I was nothing but ‘Mediterranean scum’! And I hadn’t even said a single Portuguese word, and that stupid, stupid girl had labeled me on the spot! Oh boy!

If I had told her that I had Jewish roots, she would have gone bananas! Or maybe not! Who knows? Since we have switched roles and become the oppressors, perhaps we would have something similar. Because, hey! Everyone wants to be on the side of the big guys!” And then Linda started giggling at the absurdity of the adult’s vision of the world, making everybody feel so nervous and restless that their voices went mute. Nothing else held her back.

“So, we all should be on the Palestinian's side! … For crying out loud!… My Great-grandfather had to flee his own country. Now those people are in their own land being occupied by heartless and evil people who are literally and shamelessly stealing those people’s houses! Like, literally going there and occupying their houses! What a nerve!!” said Linda, now looking at her grandma and not giving Salvador room to whisper a word.

“This is exactly like David and Goliath’s story you told me about from the Bible,” Linda remarked.

Despite the great love for his granddaughter, Salvador felt she was going off-limits and finally got a chance to interrupt her speech.

“Careful with that, Linda!” interposed Salvador immediately.

“It is from the Bible, but it’s a Jewish story first! And besides… you are changing sides in that story, Linda. The monster was not Jew; David was, and he was the first…!” said Salvador while rubbing his eyes, thinking that he could somehow fool the granddaughter whom he had taught to be wise. However, he could not finish his sentence, for Linda had heard the story too many times!

“You know what I mean… It is the underdog situation, fairness against unfairness. It is not because one thing is born with one ideology that it can’t eventually switch sides… Look at the political parties! Nobody knows what is left or right anymore. They go wherever the wind takes them!”

Out of the blue, Linda, always quiet and a bit shy was silencing everybody.

“And anyway… You all just don’t care about a thing, the planet, or people’s rights because you all be dead by then, but we….” She stopped breathing and continued. “My generation will have to put up with all the crap you guys left us with! So, these endless circle stops with us,” she attested as her eyes, for the very first time in the family, looked red.

They all stood silent for a while, looking in awe at each other when Rita gently asked her granddaughter what she had meant by “ending with us.”

“Come on, grandma, how can we even think about putting more humans on this wild planet? Only an ignorant would do so”, and as she said this, her eyes crossed with those of her uncle.

Mauricio almost choked on hearing this as his three children continued to scream over the table, asking for attention and for Babka’s Chocolate cake. An awkward feeling hung in the air. As the speech progressed, Salvador tried to change the topic of conversation by taking the remote control and, trying to aim the strange buttons, changing the channel by turning the sound even louder. While he did this, Ruth tried to pull her daughter aside and whispered to her, “watch your tongue, young lady!”

Linda crossed her arms and, looking straight ahead, nervously burst out, “I am not a lady mom; I never was, and I never will I be one!”

Ruth stopped acting ridiculous and stood up from the wet bench. For an hour, she thought about that Saturday, more than 3 years ago. Especially how Linda, her precious daughter, had just admitted not identifying with being a woman. In a first reaction, she found it highly offensive to her feminist side. More than anybody, Linda had to acknowledge the efforts her own mother had made to raise her.

As for the Weinberger’s, no one was so stupid as not to know what was happening in the world, but neither were they fully informed. In fact, all those lunches were nothing but food and news and comments about everything they considered absurd, but never delving into anything. However, no one expected that a “bomb” like this would be dropped on their family. “Not my daughter, not her,” Ruth thought for too long. So long that she had lost precious years of Linda and her own life, and she became older than ever in that short time.

Walking helped Ruth clear her mind, and so she continued to walk in circles around the park. Trying to ease her anxiety but returning nonetheless to every conversation she had with Linda that Saturday.

“You know you’re not living in America! This trend is all coming from there! This ideology that they are putting into your brains… it’s getting ridiculous,” exclaimed Ruth speaking her mind while trying to understand what was happening. Almost on the verge of tears, Linda was too nervous to say any word, and thus Ruth kept talking.

“I don’t understand where I went wrong. I know you don’t have a father, but love was always there. Is it because of this? Is it my fault?” wondered Ruth.

Linda, for her part, afraid of speaking and fading away right there, just moved her head into a negative mode.

“I am your mother. I know you have never been the girlish person in the world, but so never did I. Maybe that’s why I wanted you to wear prettier dresses because I had been too slouched during my life. I never cared too much for my looks, and I wanted you to be prettier than I was”.

Ruth’s mind remained in a high-speed spiral, ready to derail, as suddenly she was also being assaulted with other thoughts about her own past. Thinking that Linda’s father had abandoned her for being exactly too careless with her appearance. Thus, afraid that her beautiful daughter might face such misfortune as she had, Ruth wanted Linda to be more cared for and more feminine than Ruth had ever been. The day had suddenly become hotter despite them being in the middle of the Fall. The granitic rocks spread out disproportionately over the terrain appeared to fall now on Ruth. As well as the hills she had always cherished seemed to move to swallow her up together.

“Mom,” finally said Linda with tears in her eyes and her voice trembling.” This is not about you. This! This is about me!”

As she said those words, both sat on a firm rock on the Weinberg’s farm, overlooking the mountain, as Ruth began gasping for air.

“These teenagers!” Ruth thought to herself as she caught her breath. “How dare she tell me it’s not about me? I’ve devoted my life to her, and now she comes along and says it’s not about me?” Ruth kept on thinking as Linda, concerned about her mother, held her hand in an attempt to calm her down.

“I’m sorry mom, I didn’t mean to disappoint you. But I’m not taking back what I said. I’m sixteen, almost seventeen years old. Next year I’m going to college, and I want to finally break free and be who I really am….” However, Ruth began to cry and asked Linda to run and get her a bottle of water.

And as she ran, Ruth considered all the things she could tell her. That she was being deeply influenced by a political agenda. That no one was stopping her from wearing boy’s clothes or making her hair shorter than it already was. That she probably was bipolar, and she needed to see a psychiatrist. Ruth understood that society was all in chaos. Therefore, she considered that Linda’s feelings were just being triggered by gender patterns that Linda thought she could not break.

Ruth wanted to tell her that Linda could be whoever she wanted to be. She didn’t have to wear colors of pink or blue or whatever the hell she wanted to wear. But just the idea of Linda going through medical procedures, hormones therapy, or whatever was needed gave her the creeps… She could not even process what she should or not think about that.

As Linda walked toward Ruth, already opening the bottle, Linda calmed down and rationalized her mother. Ruth spoke her mind and asked her all those questions, to which she listened. However, all of that seemed to be in vain, so Ruth tried something else, at least so that Linda could feel sympathetic about her own mother.

“Linda, do you remember that scene in Back to the Future II, when Martin McFly walks into that futuristic coffee shop in 2015 and orders a soda?” She asked, trying to both appease the conversation and be able to vent to her daughter about what she was also feeling.

“I can’t picture it, mom. I don’t remember,” said Linda asking herself what the link with the whole thing was.

“Come on, we used to watch it all the time. Martin asks for a soda, but everything is new to him because he comes from 1985! So, he has no idea how he can ask for what he wants. A tv screen appears out of nowhere in front of him while two different sellers try to convince him of their products. The chaos is such that the screen freezes, and he simply says, “All I want …”

“Yes, I remember it, mother. But I don’t know what that has got to do with any of this conversation.”

“You know I love cinema. I just wanted you to put yourself in my shoes and understand that I feel like Martin. It’s too much of a mess,” Ruth said, with Linda joking immediately about it.

“So, you feel like a boy, mom,” she giggled.

“Oh, Linda… that’s not it… Anyway! You know they did a good prediction, for sure the world he’s so confusing, there are too many options.”

“Too many options, mom? That’s your point of view. As for me, I see everything in two options, men and women, pink and blue; long hair, short hair; skirts or jeans, victims and oppressors….”

“Oh… Linda,” Ruth stopped sipping the water, and suddenly she thought that her reasons for her change were connected to something else, power. “Do you want to become a man because you will be less likely to be a victim? Is that what you’re saying?” asked Ruth, almost choking in the water.

Linda looked at her mother surprisingly. First, she had never told her that she wanted to be a man, but Ruth assumed it immediately. Also, because knowing her mother was a wise woman, she was puzzled by how silly her speech sounded.

“What are you saying, mom? Men are never victims of violence? Come on! Since you love cinema so much, take the example of The Graduate. I’ve never seen a character as horrendous as Mrs. Robinson. Seducing that young man graduating from high school and spouting hateful words all the way through when he wanted to be her daughter! Elaine! Elaine!” shouted Linda mimicking Dustin Hoffman’s performance.

However, Ruth ignored Linda’s words when the subject was not of her interest. The conversation dragged on, with wise examples from both sides being thrown around to prove each other’s point.

“We live in Portugal, in a small village. I thought you were always an introvert and a bit masculine. But so was I. I don’t know where this came from out all of a sudden”, Ruth sighed with no more words to say.

“Do you think everybody is straight and catholic in this Portugal? Take us, for example… half Jewish, half Catholic, half nothing. And it is not because we live in a small village that people like me don’t exist. “

“Ok, so once and for all, Linda. What do you mean, people like you?”

“Non-binary, mother. Not a man, not a woman, and mother, definitely not a lady.”

Ruth shut up for a while. She considered herself intelligent, but, after all, she was also the result of a lifetime on a mountain in the Portuguese countryside. Living off wine and olive oil sales and tourists who had nothing very relevant to say despite coming from all over the world. So, the first time she heard about this, she was slightly hesitant to ask Linda what that meant. When her daughter explained her, a million questions popped up in her mind. In fact, the more Ruth listened to it, the more she started thinking that these were all problems from a spoiled education. And if she previously had questioned if it was her fault, now, she was sure.

“You are telling me about all those new pronouns in the English language. So, tell me, if someone wants to get outside of some characteristics assigned to a man or woman, what makes them decide on the pronoun “co” you told me about? Suppose one chooses this word and not another. In that case, it is certainly because there have to be some characteristics assigned to it. Wouldn’t this be perpetuating the problem? Create a more divided society? Don’t you think the problem is that society has all these stereotypes assigned to gender, and the problem is that, not you?”

Linda did not answer Ruth’s questions but began getting emotional and telling her what her life was really like.

“Mom! I am in pain! “ She cried lastly. “ Listen to me! One of these days, like every normal human being, I was at the mall and had to use the restroom. Even the damn bathroom is assigned pink and blue. I considered going to the man’s restroom for a while and stood there looking at it. But I was afraid, as a woman, to go there. However, I might as well have gone there. When entering the women’s restroom, an older woman and her friends started pushing the door to block my entrance, assuming I was a teenage boy. I honestly did not want to speak about my identity with a 16 strange ‘lady.’

So, I forced the entrance. They all started shouting, scared of God knows what, and only rested when my voice gave me away. And even If I were a teenage boy, what would I do in front of five older women? But they knew I was not a boy. They knew I was a weirdo. They just wanted to pick on me for the sake of it. Everybody thinks women aren’t mean and that men are. Well, those women were nasty as hell”.

Despite being overwhelmed by Linda’s secret, Ruth could not stop feeling emotional about Linda’s secret stories. They would go from bathroom episodes to being a victim of aggression from girls who asked her at school if she were a lesbian, to which she would reply, “ I am me, leave me alone!”

Still, clinging to the argument that non-binarism was offensive to feminists, Ruth, who had strongly advocated for women’s rights all her life, would turn the conversation around. However, the more Ruth stated how women had suffered and been excluded, the more she unwittingly confirmed what Linda had tried to warn her about gender patterns.

Her stubbornness thought would cease, yet something lingered in Ruth’s mind, like a background rumbling that never stops to hush and nag. That rumbling was the simple, single question Linda had asked her, which she couldn’t have answered without saying clichés.

“Mom, why is it really that important to know if it is a boy or a girl? Like really, why? Why?”

Everyone’s life had changed. Yet the Weinbergs went through hell without Rita thinking it was all divine punishment for having made a child out of wedlock. Linda’s move to college would have been joyous had she not felt like being kicked out of her grandparents’ home. It wasn’t enough everything going on; the pandemic that followed brought everyone to the highest possible state of nerves. Saturday lunches ended abruptly, with everyone stricken with fear of contracting the disease. Mauricio, the most relaxed of the family, would carry with him for life the burden of having contracted the disease to his father. Salvador, failing to resist, was buried on January 10th, 2021. If funerals are already sad, Salvador could never have imagined that his own would be so unprecedented.

Not only had he lived a different Jewish life, but now, at his last moment, he had been deprived of a proper Jewish funeral. A closed casket, men in masks and white suits who would not let anyone near the corpse. His poor wife Rita kept away, and Ruth and Mauricio were also distant from their own mother. The tears were silenced. Death had been around everybody for so long that they didn’t feel that Salvador, the family’s patriarch, lay inside that coffin. It was as if it were just another death, one of the hundreds that were being reported on television every day. As for Linda, far away and living in the country’s capital, she would remain aloof throughout. Afraid that she would contract the disease or that her relatives would give it to her. Grieving for his grandfather would be done privately, as Linda had always done with her feelings all her life.

“Almost eleven o’clock and no news,” Ruth said impatiently.

And then the church bell, not so far from the park, finally rang eleven o’clock, with Ruth counting on her fingers the eleven chimes that could barely be heard on a rainy day. As Ruth looked at her watch, it was at this moment that a young man approached her and, opening an umbrella, covered her.

“You’ll catch a cold! We don’t need any more diseases! I think we’re done with that already!” said the young man.

Ruth stared at his eyes, and then holding to her umbrella Ruth started weeping. If the eyes are the doors to the soul, Ruth could prove it right there.

“Can I hug you now? We have all been vaccinated. It’s all fine somehow!” Said Ruth. And then, not being able to hold back the tears, he said: “Please, mom! I’ve been waiting for that hug for more than two years!”

As they walked together outside of the heavy rain, Ruth was happy to see him and finally said the words Leo wanted to hear.

“I love you, son….”

Leo smiled, not without feeling anxious. He had wanted to hear this for so long. However, now that it was becoming a tangible reality, he felt trembling even though he didn’t show it. How could he show any sign of weakness? Not after all the nightmare, he had been through. As far as Ruth was concerned, she was delighted to see him. Still, in her mind, the sentence she had uttered to him seconds before had continued only for herself “…but I miss my daughter deeply.” And Ruth held on to that feeling as they continued to stroll through the park.

• * The word — connected to the Jewish community — is quite demeaning in the Portuguese folk culture. It became linked to shady and mischievous actions.

Hello, I’m Araci, a female writer from Portugal navigating her thirties. If you have enjoyed this article, maybe you would like to buy me a coffee here https://ko-fi.com/joanaaraci

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