“You’re the new owner?” she asked.
Teresa nodded without pausing her work.
“Alone. Two children. On this land.” The woman clicked her tongue. “Nothing grows here. The last owner fled. You won’t last.”
The words landed heavy, like stones dropped deliberately at her feet.
Teresa straightened, inhaled deeply, and replied quietly, “I don’t quit easily.”
Doña Petra laughed—a dry, humorless sound—and walked away.
Teresa kept going.
For weeks, she carried water from the communal well nearly half an hour away. Ana walked beside her, proudly hauling a small can. Rosa slept in the shade when the heat became unbearable. Teresa planted corn, beans, and squash, spending her last coins on seeds as though she were purchasing hope itself.
She watered. She waited.
The sprouts appeared… then withered. One by one, they died, as if the earth itself were rejecting her.
Whispers spread through the village.
“Poor children.”
“That woman is stubborn.”
Teresa heard them all. But every time she saw her daughters laughing, playing in the dust, she remembered why she stayed: because they would not grow up believing the world decides a woman’s limits.
