Thorns

His gaze, focused on the center of the table, gave away his agony. It seemed like he was looking at the saltshaker, or maybe the knife next to the salami, and wondering if it were sharp enough, but this I could not know for sure. Not because of the distance, nor the tumult of cousins, uncles and other irrelevant relatives that were among us; but because, by all accounts, my father was himself far away. However, it was certainly not out of whim, but out of need; the need to ease the pain once again became present, in the same way that it had before since he was a child. Absent, his strong man essence became dim amid the heat of mouths reddened by liquor and outrages served at the dinner table. He became tiny, self-contained; like a cocoon that froze in winter and never got the chance to open. His crooked fingers, mistreated by his years as laborer, as it had been the only possibility for a young man to survive, were stuck with each other like the weeds of a garden abandoned to its fate; growing in despair and without any flower that rose to the sun to the tune of an "I love you, son". The mark of a childhood uprooted; pruned of all tenderness.

She is your grandmother, and you are going to respect her whether you like it or not - he told me once, rebuking me for my insolence, with that bland phrase he knew by heart and fear. But despite that warning, and as the years went by, every time she showed up with her smug face and her venomous eyes in front of me, it became increasingly difficult for my body not to tremble with impotence. A sort of secondhand resentment for someone who, by her actions and words, seemed careless of the damage that she had triggered. Ignorant, violent, absurd. Her chubby hands, full of liver stains and damage caused by prolonged exposure to chlorine and lonely motherhood, waved in all directions as she shot gibberish with her cannon mouth. Memories loaded with anger about the past and all she could invent to make her full of synthetic grace. Raising children with a man of the sea hurts more than anything. No one is going to tell me what I did right or wrong. None of you. Her face seemed to burst into fury whenever she felt someone reproach her for her role as a mother. And though I never mentioned something in her presence, she seemed able to read the you-are-a-bad-mother that my eyes were so avidly showing.

For sure, she would never forgive her husband for the absence that let her into knowing fear, shame, and helplessness. The looks of the neighbors, the indiscretions of the women who called themselves their friends. And unable to understand what to do with all those feelings, she poured it all out upon her children, devoid of anyone to let them know they were not guilty. Devoid of someone to tell them they cared. Her thorns cutting them from within.

Suddenly, silence flooded the entire room, and sentiment full of melancholy reigned that old wooden house all over again. Somehow, everybody knew it was the sign to leave. My father stood in his place, solemnly. The voice of a T.V. news anchor appeared, as it was the sports segment; as well as the buzzing sound from the overly iridescent and nauseating lightbulb above all of us. The stains of red wine on the tablecloth were like the evidence of a battlefield, were no one left alive. And at that moment, with a distant sight from my father, I knew I had to leave too.

That evening, my mother drove us back home. My siblings were asleep, as well as my father from the moment he sat. I stayed awake, wondering what had happened between the moment I left the table and said goodbye to my grandmother; but even though she was cold at our farewell, I understood where that was coming from – the young girl that never stood a chance to face this world. The cold of winter slipped through the car, reminding us that warmth would mostly be found among us family.

At night, after our regular Sunday baths, and as we all were preparing for a new week, everyone seemed spaced out. Like as what we had witnessed that afternoon never had really happened. Like everything that had been happening for so long was a mere mirage. For such a young age, I would be confused by this, as I was told to always face the truth, even though it would destroy me at the end, because it would never really go away if you transform it into a ghost. Like those that awaken my father every night. Like those that never let him sleep. And as I went to bed with this anxious feeling inside me, I could not help but cry. I would do this silently as I shared my bedroom with my older brother, who probably was dealing with his own teenage demons. As tears ran down my temples and wet my pillow, I imagined my father as a child like me, tormented by his own existence. I asked myself into understanding why everything happened like that and no one really did something to make it right. I wondered why anyone would let children play grownups at such short age. I wondered if that would happen to me. And then I realized that it was hurting me too, as I was growing through that same garden. A sprout covered in cement. And that thorns were inside me too all along. The feeling was so unbearable that I had to go to get some water to the kitchen; and as I wandered in silence through our small apartment, and saw my father at the end of the corridor, I saw him for the first time as what he was too – my own ghost.