One Polaroid
I have this picture of my parents young, from when they wore still dating.
They look like a couple of supermodels, withe their eyes shining and casual postures.
My mom is smilling and her teeth looks just like in a toothpast comercial. All withe ad perfect.
I cann’t see my dad’s smile. Half of his face is hiding at my mom’s head.
He is behind her and, for many years I though that they wore arrange this way cause he would like to let my mom get all the attention.
He is behind her, his face is hidden behind her head. I can only see his eyes and perfect hair. One of his arm is around my mom’s neck. Like a gentle choker.
I think this was the only time he didn’t finish this move, didn’t close her neck so stronge until she pass out.
You can not image this things from the picture.
My father killed my mom.
He killed her many and many times, tireless.
He killed her of shame every time he yell at her for no reason.
He killed her of misery every time she locked her self at the bathroom and cry until fall sleep.
At the picture, my mom is holding my father arm. I wonder if she kwen that this would be her way of trying to relese from him many and many times in the future.
Did He hided his face because he kwen that the picture would capture his real face, his real intentions?
There was a time where my father used to kill my mom of happness.
She feeld so fullfied of live that sometimes she put her small hands in her chest, just to make sure that her heart was still working. That all that fantasy was actually reality.
One day my mom decide to turn the game. She would kill him for once.
She was staring the window of our kitchen. It was a cloud day. I was next to her.
I remember her eyes wore without collor, almost like she had become blind. She was grey as the sky outside.
After I left for school, She called the police.
When they get at our home she had already killed her self.
It hurts me see her at this picture. I never meet this woman. This collerfull and alive woman. I fantasy about meeting her at a random bookstore and ask her for a coffee. What are her favorites books and movies? What is her perfume? How does her hair feels at the point of my fingers?
My memories becomed fragments of this day. If I cloose my eyes strong enough I can force my mind to delivery some of this pieces of memories.
A metalicall smeel all over the house, a lot of blood shinning at the floor of our bathroom. Her body was so cold and forbiden of be touched. Many fatty cops arguing or taking notes. My father crying and them yealing cause the acusation of being the reason of her suicide. A secret box with her diaries, ful of pictures and depositions of her years of physical abuse. All this years sufred in silence.
She was dead inside and so incapable of feeling anything that the only revange she could think about was that if she killed her self, he would be punshed some how, hunted for her gosth. If she suciede well enough to call the attention of the autorities that refuse to take her serious so many times, them mayb she would be able to save her lived daughter.
I keep this picture with me all the time. Is the only picture I decide to take with me before left my old life behind and follow the social service agent that supposted to delivery me to some distant relative or to some temporary family.
I keep this picture as a reminder of how fragile first impressions are. Of how people are acttually home-made bombs ready to explode at crowd and public places. Of how relations suck every good thougth that you may have in your mind. It’s a reminder that we are all alone in this world, exposed, sold to chance.
I look to my parent’s picture and beside the irracional desire of cut my father’s face off and yeld to my mom for gived up, what I fell is despair. Am I the only one here seeing between the lines? Am I the only one that wanted that who tooked this picture could predic the future and change it?
I stop stearing the faces at this photo and focous my eyes at the wall behind them. Uniform, light blue.
I stear this deep and andless wall for enough time to start wondering how many secrets they keeped away from my childsh understandment?
Can you imagine my surprise when i received your letter, claiming to be my mom’s kid, born after me?
I have no memories of a second kid, a brother or sister or even of a pregnant mother. But I also never notice my mom’s abuse before her dead. As more I think about, more I upset about my ignorance at that time.
I am swimming at a ocean of questions and it seens that the only person who could help us at this investigation is dead.
Even so, I decid to join you at this crazy/irracional investigation into this dark and uncertain past. I just pray that we come back alive and with no sanity injuries after this excursion to hell.
Farewell, from your new discovered sister…
P.S: I decided to to send you with this letter the picture my parents. The picture of our mom. I had enough time to memoriezed it so, enjoy.
