I was a child who was not allowed to participate in anything by my parents and sister.
At the age of 19 when I moved out, they have gone no contact.
They would not even take the trouble of calling me on my birthday. My mom recently called me.
Her voice is sickly sweet as though nothing had ever happened and she says, Honey, your sister is getting married. We would like to have a visit of you.”
I simply sat there in paralysis. All this time after all these years of silence, of being regarded as though some unfortunate accident, now they wanted me smiling in family photographs?
I swear, I could not remember the last time she used my name.
Even so, some of me… the child who sat down all by oneself in family gatherings as they wordlessly talked behind my back… that some of me wanted to answer yes. Not due to a forgiveness on my part, but because I was in want of answers.
So I said I would come.
It was being done up in a town I had never even heard of like some lakeside vacation thing where everyone was drinking stuff with mint in it and wearing linen. I was the target of eyes when I arrived. My mother had kind of hugged me as though she had seen me the previous week. My father gave a straight nod. Astrid, my sister, was scarcely able to look me in the eye.
It was all artificial. I smiled, however. I played neat. I waited.
The night of the rehearsal dinner, I was sitting on a table at the back- by myself. I heard one of Astrid friends say, who is she, and someone shut down, she is her other sister.
Other. As though I was mere technicality.
I took a walk next morning, where the water is, to get some fresh air. That is when he discovered me, Carver, the finance of Astrid.
He was glad that she had come, he said, not loudly. You Astrid never speaks of.
Well, I was not surprised, I said, and laughed with bitterness.
According to her, when you were just a teenager, you moved away. Troubled you… were?”
I stared at him. “Troubled? Why did she say?”
He was awkward. No…. just that it was difficult to be growing up with you.
There was a break somewhere in me. I had always grown up lonely, scapegoated, and shoved aside it seemed and now they were re-scripting what had happened?
Have you ever heard the story when I stayed with Grandma Marla two weeks long because they forgot to collect me at school? I answered, as steadily as I might, I asked.
He blinked. “No…”
Or when they celebrated Christmas without me as I was in my room catching the flu?
He nodded his head with a slow movement.
And I said I did not know what prompted me to do so, but I said, Ask her about the letter she had hidden. The one of our aunt in Norway. I discovered it during the year I was sixteen in her desk.”
That night everything went up in smoke.
After dinner Carver took Astrid aside. I did not hear the conversation but I saw her face–shock then anger. Then she stormed up to me at the hotel lobby.
Why are you telling him so? she said in a hissing tone.
I thought, and answered, Why, because it is true. You painted me all as a crazy bear, and I believed I was crazy for years. You see, I was not. I was only… forgotten.”
Her lips parted, and came together again. She did not deny that.
and at last she said, You were always the more needy of attention than I was. Mom and Dad were not able to deal with both.
And therefore they took thee.
She did not answer.
Later after dark Carver came to my room. He was sorry–for believing and being ready to believe everything. He said he spoke to my parents, and they confessed that they had excluded me, had done what they considered wrong decisions. they had no wish to speak of it.
I thanked him, not, however, as a matter of apology. I simply required the truth.
A day later [the next day] I did not attend the wedding.
I ran off the hotel, and left a note to Carver: Good luck. You are marrying into a family where the family keeps secrets. So, just do not lose your voice as I did.
and in three months I received a letter.
From Carver.
He canceled the marriage.
I added, the more questions he would ask, the more lies would be unplugged. He had seen that Astrid had lied about other things–about things which had nothing to do with me. He appreciated the fact that I gave him the confidence to go digging deeper.
He explained that I had made him get out of something he did not even know he was trapped in.
It did not save the history.
I have not heard the phone of my parents yet. Astrid emailed me a cold, two-sentence message saying, I should stay out of her life.
Nevertheless, something has changed. I really felt like it was not me who was the broken one.
Truth always has a way of righting things even though it takes away everything you ever thought you wanted.
In some cases, the family, into which you are born, is not your natural one.
It is not always the best to be included.
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