assickasyoursecrets

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I can’t take sides, so let’s just leave it like that. God bless you for your help…”

Mila had recently written Mercedes a letter which included a brief mention of how abusive Apophis had always been, not only to her but also to their father and, in later years, even to Julia, his most ardent admirer.

Her voice message, not even an “I’m sorry that happened to you,” sounded as though she wanted to maintain control but couldn’t.

Her anger came across loud and clear.

And it was precisely that repressed rage that brought back recollections of odd mishaps Mercedes had claimed happened whenever Apophis was mentioned.

Recollections from when Mila was five and Mercedes was a budding, rambunctious teenager, loud at school, emboldened by Yvette, her even louder best buddy.

At some point, still at the Salaverry house, Mercedes gradually went from a good-natured, at times unruly child, to spending time alone. She drew beautiful pieces of ethereal women, faces from somewhere only she could see. She collected fan magazines and stayed in her room for hours on end.

“There she is, laying down. That’s all she knows how to do!”

Julia’s words, piercing as a razor, echo in their mind to this day.

In between evictions, the children were thrown out of the fancy schools their father had enrolled them in. Mercedes withdrew into her room, bothered by the most mundane things.

It was all attributed to her being “difficult.”

One of the lasting memories Mila has kept of Mercedes all these years is of watching Yvette help her climb onto the open back of a Jeep, the two of them laughing, full of purpose and possibility, heading off in pursuit of their grand idea to finish high school at night.

Soon after that, Yvette was never mentioned again.

Mercedes became reclusive, was allowed to drop out of high school, the drawings eventually stopped.

Apophis, just one year younger, roamed the streets late into the night, dispensing unsolicited advice pertaining to masculinity and the inferior nature of women.

This he learned from Julia, who insisted, “El hombre cae parado en todas partes.”

A man lands on his feet everywhere.

Much like a cat, which, in her mind, proved the superiority of men.

“If I had a do-over, I’d be reborn as a man and never have fucking children,” she’d say.

Often.

No exaggeration.

So while Mercedes was labeled “mental” for her social withdrawal, Apophis was admired for roaming the streets, preoccupied with his own sexual proclivities and delusions of superiority.

***

Mila had been at the Salaverry house for less than three years when, inexplicably, she made up a story about a man coming into the house at night.

A wild story.

Mila started telling Julia and the siblings that a man had begun sneaking into the house.

“He comes from the Continental Bank building, that one,” she said, pointing to a tall structure. “He talks with me. He’s nice.”

As ludicrous as the story was, the moment came when Mila was told to repeat it in front of her father, while Julia and Mercedes stood around, listening.

The girl, feeling empowered, added a couple of details to the already unlikely saga of the nightly visitor, which must have amused her father greatly.

She was well aware of her own lie.

She was also aware that through it, she was being heard and seen, if only briefly.

Her father leaned on a short wall, listening intently, while Julia looked on with disgust.

As he headed back into the house, Mercedes blurted out:

“That’s true, because some of my stuff is inside out…”

“What? What did you say?” he asked, much to Julia’s consternation and Mila’s delight.

The girl knew instantly that Mercedes’ claim was as fake as her own story of the visiting stranger.

“Yes,” Mercedes said. “I’ve had my underwear on backwards sometimes…”

Neither girl understood the implications.

Was she, too, made to play along with Apophis’ nasty bouncing “game”? Did it escalate?

No one thought her comment relevant enough to ask questions.

Mila’s story of the friendly intruder faded and was never brought up again.

***

The lack of cohesiveness and supervision made for a pattern of risk.

There was Apophis, overtly favored and sexually preoccupied. Julia, mocking instead of protecting. Mercedes, withdrawing further into herself, parents too quick to dismiss potentially disturbing claims.

No direct accusation.

Mere speculation.

Mercedes, throughout her life, was labeled as the “mentally ill” one before anyone ever asked what she might have endured. Everything she said, remembered, or protested got filed under that label.

I still wonder what happened before the label hardened around her.

The sisters had been estranged for years, though estranged may be too clean a word for what existed between them.

Estrangement suggests a break.

What they had was older than that.

They had grown up in the same household of willful blindness and secrets, both shaped by it, though not in equal measure.

One learned to survive by silence.

The other learned the usefulness of piety.

There had been a time, as adults, when they tried to make something resembling friendship out of biology.

A few visits. Calendar holidays. Group vacations.

The kind of gatherings that looked like family, especially in photographs.

But even then, the arrangement had its own quiet accounting.

One sister doing most of the labor and paying more than her share.

***

Years passed.

There had been an early marriage, sudden and ill-suited, the kind families approve of because it looks like “the right thing to do” from the outside.

Another child followed.

So did disappointment.

Then came a relationship no one wanted to name except as accusation.

No one asked questions.

The relationship, as mismatched as the previous one, lasted for a bit over a decade.

But when we came to be, suddenly everyone found their speaking voice.

“If you marry that woman, you need to know I’ll be no part of it.”

The woman was me.

No one had asked her to be part of anything because, by then, the fragile attempts the two sisters had made at closeness had long faded.

Still, she voiced her opposition as though she had been personally wronged.

Her hostility toward me had the heat of a jilted lover more than a sibling.

***

There were suggestions, of course. Offensive, familiar ones.

Why not go back to someone from before? Why not choose the arrangement easier to explain? Why not return to a life that had already failed, so long as it looked more acceptable from the sidewalk?

That was the strange part.

Not the disapproval. Disapproval is ordinary.

It was the possession.

That is where the distaste remains to this day.

***

As their mother’s health deteriorated, the devout sister began making decisions quietly.

Strategic decisions, presented later as unavoidable.

Their mother, who had saved money in small, stubborn ways for decades, was moved despite her wish to remain home.

Cash that had been tucked away over the years was gathered in secret and controlled.

No conversation was had with the daughter who had also been born to that mother.

Later, the money was distributed with the same hierarchy that had always existed between them.

Gold pieces went here.

Larger sums went there.

The most favored were given generous amounts and a few pieces of jewelry.

The distribution followed categories invented by one person alone.

My wife received a small money order.

Not cash pressed into her hand with tenderness.

Not a sister saying, “This is what Mom left for you.”

Not even the dignity of a face-to-face interaction.

A money order.

Worse, relatives were turned into witnesses, made to confirm that the money had been written out and sent, as though my wife were not grieving but potentially troublesome.

As though the important thing was not what she had been denied all along, but that no one could later accuse the righteous one of having denied it.

The money order was torn and discarded.

It was not the amount that stayed with us.

It was the ceremony of contempt.

Still, even that is not the moment I return to most.

The thing that remains lodged in me happened at the end.

***

When their mother was dying, my wife was allowed into the room.

Permission granted.

Access controlled.

A daughter admitted to the final threshold of the woman who had given birth to her.

It should have been private.

Not perfect. Not sentimental.

Not the kind of scene people pretend death gives them.

But private.

A daughter beside her dying mother.

But weeks later, we learned that the moment had not been private at all.

Images had been made.

The room had been documented.

Pieces of that final intimacy had been shared beyond the room, beyond my wife’s consent, beyond ordinary decency.

I remember the sensation in my body when she told me.

Something heavier than surprise.

A suffocating disgust.

What stunned me most was not only that it had happened, but that my wife seemed accustomed to their intrusions.

I wanted to say, “Do you understand what they did?”

Not because she was naive.

Because she had been trained, for too long, to accept being managed.

Her grief had been managed.

Her inheritance had been managed.

Her access to her mother had been managed.

Even her final goodbye had been handled by other people, turned into proof, possession, preserved to maintain whatever story they needed it to serve.

And that, more than any insult directed at me, is what remains in my mind.

The intrusion.

The theft of a final moment.

Tag: assickasyoursecrets

Mercedes

The Ceremony of Contempt