I never liked the smell of chlorine.
Since I was a child, that smell meant only one thing:
my parents.
My mother, Rosa, cleaned bathrooms at a public high school in the south of Mexico City.
My father, Manuel, swept streets from four in the morning, pushing his green cart with a worn broom and hands chapped from detergent.
I grew up watching them come home with bent backs and clothes damp with other people’s sweat.
I grew up hearing my mother say:
—Hang on a little while, son… this is so that you don’t live like us.
I nodded.
But from then on, something inside me began to feel ashamed.
In elementary school, people would ask me what my parents did for a living.
I would look down.
—My dad works for the municipality…
—And your mom?
—At a school.
He never said cleaning.
He never said bathrooms.
When I started university, my parents were proud.
They sold their old TV, pawned rings, and took on double shifts.
My father would get up at three.
My mother would come home with swollen fingers.
I was getting further and further away.
When I met Mariana, my wife, I lied to her from the beginning.
“What do your parents do for a living?” he asked one night.
“My dad’s retired… my mom stays home.”
She smiled.
So did I.
My parents never denied anything.
Never.
They knew.
I knew it the day my mother overheard me telling someone on the phone:
—No, my parents can’t come… they’re elderly, they prefer not to go out.
She was behind the door.
She didn’t say anything.
She just lowered her head and kept mopping.
Everything exploded on the day of my promotion.
A major company.
Cocktail party.
Elegant people.
Expensive suit.
My parents arrived unannounced.
My mother in her cleanest dress, carefully ironed.
My father in old shoes, but polished until they shone.
I saw them from afar…
and I felt panic.
“Who are they?” a colleague asked.
“Nobody…” I replied quickly. “They’re in the wrong place.”
My mother smiled when she saw me.
She raised her hand.
-Son!
People turned around.
I walked towards them angrily.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered through gritted teeth. “Are you crazy?”
“We just wanted to congratulate you,” my father said. “We were notified about the event…”
“GET OUT!” I said, no longer trying to hide it. “You’re embarrassing me.”
Someone heard it.
Then someone else.
“Are they your parents?” someone asked.
I took a deep breath…
and denied them.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” my mother said, her voice trembling.
“They’re not my parents,” I repeated. “They’re people who work for the colony where I grew up.”
The silence was brutal.
My father looked at me as if I had broken something inside him.
My mother didn’t cry.
She just nodded.
—Excuse me, young man… —she said—. We made a mistake.
They walked away.
Slowly.
Straight ahead.
Nobody applauded my promotion that night.
After that, my parents stopped calling me.
I didn’t call either.
I learned from neighbors that my father was still working, although he could no longer lift a broom.
My mother developed a lung condition.
They never asked me for anything.
They never complained.
One day, I received a call from the hospital.
—Your father passed away this morning.
I went to the wake.
My mother was sitting calmly next to the coffin.
She looked at me.
“Thank you for coming,” he told me. “You didn’t have to.”
That was it.
Months later, she died too.
At his house I found a box.
Inside:
my diplomas, my childhood photos…
and a letter.
“Son:
We always knew you were ashamed.
We never hated you for it.
We preferred to remain silent so as not to bother you.
If it hurts you someday, it will be because you still have a heart.”
Years later, at a family meal, someone mentioned my achievements.
“You come from the bottom, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Very bottom.”
For the first time, I told the truth.
—My parents cleaned toilets and swept streets.
I denied it publicly.
And they died in silence.
Nobody said anything.
I no longer felt shame.
I felt something worse.
Empty.
Because I understood too late
that the worst punishment wasn’t losing them…
It was living knowing
that they loved me even when I humiliated them.