When I knocked on my grandmother Bertha’s door, she opened it the way she did everything in life—without hesitation, without pause, with nothing but love. Before I could even step inside, she pulled me into her soft arms, her warmth wrapping around me like a cocoon, like something I had been missing for so goddamn long that I had forgotten what it felt like to be safe.
She stepped back, looked me over, her eyes scanning my frame, concern settling into the lines of her face. “Mijo, you’re so skinny! Are you starving?” Her voice, rich with her thick Spanish accent, wasn’t just asking—it was accusing the world of failing me.
Maybe it had. Maybe I had failed myself.
Bertha, my mom’s mother, was the kind of woman who could put a meal in front of you and somehow serve you safety alongside it. She had soft skin, like aged leather warmed by years of kindness, and eyes that held every secret in the universe but only offered up love. When she looked at you, you felt seen, really seen, like you were something worth keeping around.
She took me in without hesitation, without questions, without making me feel like I owed her an explanation for how I ended up at her doorstep. That was Bertha—her heart too big, too full, to waste time on the details of a broken kid’s past.
Before I could sit down, before I could say anything, she sent me straight to the shower. “Go, go,” she said, waving me off, as if the dirt and exhaustion on me were a temporary curse she could wash away.
I let the hot water run over me, let it sting my skin, let it strip away whatever filth clung to me. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel clean afterward, but it didn’t matter. When I stepped out, there was food waiting for me—a plate so full of beans, rice, and tortillas that it could’ve fed three people. I ate without speaking, without looking up, just shoveling food in like some rabid animal that had forgotten what it meant to be full.
When I was done, she sat across from me, her fingers laced together, her expression kind but firm. “No friends over, no drugs, no drinking, no partying,” she said. “You’re here to focus on one thing—your high school diploma.”
That was it. No long lectures. No interrogations. No shame. Just expectations and the belief that I could meet them.
That night, something in me cracked open. Maybe it was the food, the safety, the sudden shift from surviving to existing, but the weight of it all hit me like a freight train. I found myself standing in the bathroom, rifling through the medicine cabinet, looking for something—anything—to end the pain, the shame, the unbearable weight of just being me.
I found sleeping pills. A different brand this time. Maybe these would work better than before.
I took them all and climbed into bed, sinking into the mattress, waiting for the world to disappear.
Somewhere between slipping under and slipping away, I felt Bertha’s hands tucking the blanket around me. I felt the soft press of her lips against my forehead, her whispered Spanish floating through the haze of my mind.
I woke up.
Another failed attempt. Another morning with a pounding headache, a thick fog behind my eyes, and the unbearable truth that I was still here.
The next day, my grandfather greeted me like nothing had happened, calling me his “little man” and pulling out the deck of cards like we hadn’t just brushed past the edge of something irreversible. We played gin rummy for hours, our scores stretching absurdly high, as if the longer we played, the longer we could avoid reality.
Then my brother Nick showed up.
I hadn’t seen much of him since I had gone to live with my biological father. Distance had made us strangers in ways that blood wasn’t supposed to allow. But none of that mattered when he walked through the door. He loved me the way Bertha did—without conditions, without needing explanations.
For a while, it felt like I had something close to a family again.
But I wasn’t blind to the strain I put on Bertha and my grandfather. They didn’t have money. They barely had enough to get by. Taking in a starving, half-dead teenager was a burden they didn’t ask for, but they never made me feel like one.
Unbeknownst to me, my stepdad—yes, the same man who had once made my life miserable—stepped in quietly, covering the costs of my existence without expecting anything in return. He never asked for praise. He never made a show of it. He just did what a father was supposed to do, something my real father had never bothered with.
Bertha had rules.
No milk—only “Bertha juice,” a strange concoction of iced tea and powdered lemonade. Meals were predictable—beans, tortillas, beans, tortillas. It never changed, but it was everything I had ever wanted.
Under her roof, I started coming back to life.
I went from a skeletal 132 pounds to a solid 210. I felt stronger, steadier. The weight of starvation, both physical and emotional, began to lift.
Bertha gave me more than food and shelter. She gave me the chance to believe in something again.
One day, while folding laundry, she looked at me with that knowing glint in her eyes and said, “Mijo, have you ever thought about the military?”
The idea hit me like a slap and a solution all at once. I had never considered it before, but suddenly, it felt like the only answer. A way out. A future. Something beyond just surviving.
With her encouragement, I made up my mind.
The military was my next move.
And just like that, Bertha had done something no one else had ever managed—she had given me a reason to move forward.
I walked into her house as a ghost.
She made me human again.
