Fabiana

That same afternoon, Mercedes replied to the email: “Fabiana, I’ll be waiting for you in my office tomorrow, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Fifth floor of the Civil Registry. Bring your ID and your birth certificate.”

Without hesitation and without saying a single word to anyone, I set off. It was as simple as taking the train to Retiro. However, the possibility of the truth echoed in my head: “Was I really born on that day? Who is my mother? Is she a young girl or an adult? Is she from the countryside, a foreigner, or from Buenos Aires?”. So many unanswered questions: “What’s her name?”.

When I arrived at the Civil Registry, I went up to the fifth floor. I knocked on the door that had a sign reading: Human Rights.

Mercedes invited me to sit down and asked for my ID and my birth certificate; she examined them with a keen eye and said: “This birth certificate format corresponds to a legal adoption, which will help us find out more quickly who gave birth to you”.
“I’m going to check the archives,” Mercedes continued. “With this certificate number and folio number, as soon as I find it, I’ll call you.” “Can I go to the archives myself? That way I won’t bother you,” I said, driven by anxiety.

Mercedes smiled with a mixture of pity and authority.

“No, Fabiana. I’m the only one authorized to enter those archives. As soon as I get organized, I’ll go and call you”.

I rode the train back with my head full of questions that remained unanswered. All the monsters that had once reared their heads—and that I had worked so hard to lock away, one by one, in a forgotten box—had been awakened. Because you couldn’t play with those monsters; you couldn’t ask questions about them, and you couldn’t face the truth.

The next day, I was in the classroom, immersed in my work routine, when my cell phone broke the silence. It was Mercedes. Her voice sounded matter-of-fact, almost devoid of emotion, given the bombshell she was about to drop: “Hi, Fabiana. I already know who gave birth to you. Your birth mother’s name is Hilda. She lives in General Rodríguez. Come to the office and we’ll talk.”

That afternoon, I talked to my friends and told them about the show, the email, and the solitary train ride to Calle Uruguay. As they listened to me, they began to get worked up, their voices rising in pitch from a mix of fear and astonishment: “Are you crazy? How could you go off on your own to find that out? You’re out of your mind. Why didn’t you tell us?”. “It was just a fact-finding mission; it didn’t deserve all this fuss,” I justified, trying to downplay the internal turmoil. “Fact-finding mission?! It’s your life. It’s your truth. When do you have to be back?”. “Tomorrow,” I replied. “Tomorrow? Are you sure?”. “I think so. I’ll take the train—it’s easier”.

“No way,” they declared. “We’re all going with you”.

Those friends. The ones who had been there since my childhood and who, in a rare blessing, were still by my side. It’s a privilege few have—an invisible legacy. With no blood relatives in sight, I’d learned that family is chosen and built on the loyalty of friendship.

The next day, the “pilgrimage toward the truth” began. The four of us were ready to go up to the fifth floor of the Civil Registry.
I greeted Mercedes warmly, as if we’d known each other forever; it was the confidence that comes from the TRUTH. Mercedes invited us to sit down. She was amazed to see the group: “How lovely that your friends are accompanying you on this journey from darkness to light,” she said, letting herself get carried away by metaphors. “A lie is a giant monster sleeping in a stagnant pond. At first the water seems clear, but over the years it rots; and in that mud, the monster grows filthier and more terrifying. When it wakes up, it shakes filth in every direction and splashes mercilessly. But once the shaking is over, everything comes to light. The filth and the mud remain there, yes, but finally we can see them and call each thing by its name.”

Mercedes opened the folder and handed me the birth certificate—the first one. I could read my real name, María Alejandra, and a surname of Italian origin, and I felt an electric tingling that ran up the back of my neck to my temples. It was strange: those words belonged to me, but I had never heard them before.

“Your biological mother, Hilda Elvira, and the same Italian last name. She gave you her last name because she signed a document stating that you were born out of wedlock.”

As Mercedes spoke, the air in the office grew thick, hard to breathe. I looked at the ink on the file: the edges of the letters had smudged slightly with the passage of time, as if the truth itself had worn away in the archives.

My friends were crying nonstop; the sound of their sobbing pounded in my ears like an annoying noise.

“Come on, stop crying—it’s not like anyone died,” I blurted out suddenly.

Mercedes began reading the adoption file. I felt a wave of nausea and a violent urge to snatch those papers from her, to run out of that building and lock myself in my house to read it all in absolute solitude, where no one could see me so vulnerable.

She told me I could trace my biological mother’s history back by looking up information about my biological grandparents, and also forward to find out about her children, since they were listed on her medical certificate, which stated that Hilda had had two children before I was born.

When she asked me if I wanted to know about my biological siblings, the silence that followed was absolute. I looked at her and said a resounding “NO” to end the conversation, adding, “This information is more than enough for me. Thank you very much for everything.”

Several years passed, and in the summer of 2026, while listening to podcasts, I came across *La Voz del Hijo*—just as life sometimes presents you with a gift—and I discovered this podcast where Flor, so professional and impeccable, interviews people who have walked paths very similar to mine—paths of connections and disconnections, of abandonment and searching, of secrets and lies, of unspoken and unexpressed fears, of hidden truths. In short, everything an adopted person goes through that no one else can experience. Here, empathy became real, and I devoured almost all the podcasts; they all resonated with me, but the one with Luli Carbonel awakened a dormant curiosity in me, so I reached out to her. And so another journey began, full of lights that ignited my curiosity—which had been dormant and still until then—and it was on this new path that I found my biological siblings.

To be continued…