María´s story. A real tale.

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I have told you several times about Marco, a man ( not young anymore I have discovered) that comes to help me once in a while. I know him since he was born and his mother helped me raise my kids a long time ago. Thinking about it, all of it happened over half a century ago. Maria was a young woman many years ago. She lived with her family and was waiting for a job at the telephone company as she had finished school. She had a BF and they were getting married. All that, and a lot more, finished on a Sunday, on May 22, 1960. Then the earth shook in the worst ever recorded and María was left with no house and not even a change of clothes. They could barely go to the boats María´s father had and to to the other side of a river before the tsunami that came after the first quake hit land. She was then pregnant (although she didn´t know yet) with Marco. And the BF was in no position to take care of her. In a year, they became part of a lot of people that had barely survived here. They had nothing. And María´s father died of cancer on top of it all. María got a bit of saved money she had and came north. The money she had was not enough to reach Santiago, but she got to San Fernando. There she walked in the streets and suddenly she saw a paper pasted in a beautician´s window that a maid was needed in Santiago. She opened the shop´s door and went in.