The Past
Hunter age thirteen
Strange noises wake me up. Maria, my nanny, is in the next room beside me. She screams in Spanish at the telenovelas she watches there. Maria is good nanny to Naya, Hero and I. She even gives us Mexican candy—lollypops with spicy peppers inside instead of gum. Why do they have peppers in candy instead of gum? Gum is sweet, peppers are not. It doesn’t really matter, because in the end we eat them anyway. Maria teaches us Spanish too. Hero and I have gotten quite fluent in Maria’s native tongue. We talk about Mother at the dinner table, in front of her face and she has no idea. Mother doesn’t like it when we speak in Spanish. But we do it anyway because that’s the only freedom we have.
I love Maria, but she fails to keep me locked away in my room at night where my mother prefers me. At age thirteen I don’t think I need a nanny.
But whatever.
I hop out of bed and tiptoe to the door, pushing down on the latch and opening it slowly. Poking my head into the glowing corridor, I make out the railing of the grand staircase and the sparkling crystal chandelier beyond that. I’ve always thought of our house not as a home but as an extravagant and posh hotel that’s fit for the standards of kings and queens. Everything is superficially rich here, but underneath the diamonds and luxury is nothing sustaining like love or affection, just a heartless frigid coldness that winter would be afraid of.
I creep down the long golden lit corridor to peep on Hero and Naya. They both are asleep and cocooned in one another’s warmth. One can’t do without the other; it’s like they need each other to breathe in order to function. Knowing that they’re safe, at least for now, I turn back around, pausing at Maria’s cracked door. She sits in her rocking chair, scanning through the latest gossip magazine with her TV blaring while she laughs on her phone with her sister, I think, complaining about the Evil White Bitch.
I take in a lungful of breath and dash past her door, down the stairs and follow the path that leads to the cellar. They lock the door, but I’ve learned to pick the lock and spy on my parents. I blend in with the dim darkness and watch through the sliver in the door. My mother is chained to a wooden stake while my father stands before her, wearing some kind of weird leather mask like lucha libre wrestlers wear. He looks like those evil villains that are in my comic books. My body turns to stone when he deals out brutal open hand slaps across her face. She says nasty things to him and then he stuffs a rag in her mouth.
She wants him to stop, but my dad keeps hurting her. My mom does very bad things but she shouldn’t be hurt like this, even if I wanted to kill her myself. My dad picks up a thick belt from a hook nearby. My breathing is hard and my heart is beating so fast. I know what he is about to do. I know what comes next.
I squeeze my eyes closed when I hear the leather crack against her skin. Her scream is muffed by the dirty rag in her mouth. I ball my fists so tightly that my nails cut into my palms. I don’t intervene because I am a coward. I can’t bring myself to move any further.
I bite my lip so hard that I taste blood. He stops beating her at forty-two strikes. When I open my eyes, my father has my mother cradled in his arms. She cries and he shushes her with kisses like this is the most normal thing in the world.
Forcing myself to move, I head back up the stairs. My eyes sting so bad, but I refuse to cry. Fuck that.
I will not cry.
I will not cry.
I will not cry.
Why is my family so fucked up?
I make it all the way to my room without shedding a single tear. But in the refuge of my pillows, it rains. I must have made a noise because Maria is here, holding me while I thrash in her arms. I keep fighting, though all I want is to cry on her. She presses my head into her chest and holds me down until I give in. She’s a strong woman in more than one way. I cry until the tears run out. Only Maria knows how weak I really am.