We want to give you a boost so you can start your adult lives well.”
Mariana opened hers first. Inside was the key to a new apartment in Providencia, with an elevator, balcony, and parking space. She screamed, hugged my mother, and even cried with excitement.
I opened mine. A rusty key. A paper with an address on the outskirts of Tonalá. Nothing else.
“What is this?” I asked.
My father didn’t even blink.
“A house. It’s run-down, but you know how to fix things.”
“Fix things.” That was how my family summed up my work. I was a carpenter and furniture restorer. I had a small workshop behind a hardware store, hands full of calluses, and clients who actually paid for what they called “my hobby.”
Mariana looked at my key and smiled sideways.
“At least you got something, Vale.”
I didn’t answer. I never answered. That was what everyone expected of me.
The next day, I drove 40 minutes to the address. The house was almost dead. The roof sagged on one side, the windows were broken, the door eaten away by dampness, the yard full of waist-high weeds. Inside, it smelled of mold, wet earth, and abandonment. There was no water. The electrical wiring hung like old intestines. The floor creaked so much I was afraid I would fall through.
I sat on the least broken step of the porch and called Daniel, my best friend since university. He was a real estate lawyer and the only person who had never made me feel less than.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“As if someone had chosen it just to humiliate me.”
There was silence.
“Do you want me to check the deed?”
“Later,” I said, swallowing my tears. “First I need to breathe.”
And I breathed. Then I did the math. I had 220,000 pesos saved. It wasn’t enough for everything, but it was enough to start. I bought wood, cement, paint, pipes, nails, gloves. For weeks, I slept on a cot, cooked on an electric hot plate, and bathed with buckets of cold water I brought from the neighbor, Doña Ruth, a 65-year-old woman with glasses hanging around her neck and a honesty sharper than any chisel.
