Page 36 of This Could Be Us
Thoughts of my parents compel me to the closet when I reach my bedroom. I drag my step stool out and climb up to grab Mami’s chest. Sitting on the floor and lifting the lid, I breathe her memory in and draw her close for comfort.
If she were alive, she would heap a stream of curses on Edward’s name. She would threaten him with my aunt Silvana, who embraces the old ways and still practices Sanse. Mami always said none of that vodou stuff was real, but let somebody mess with us. She’d call Aunt Silvana back on the island so fast. A solitary tear coasts down my cheek and slips into the corner of my mouth. It’s not salty. It’s bittersweet with the remarkable years I had with my mother and the years I’ve had to live without her.
When we were a little older, she talked more about her life with Bray before my father. She told us he’d cheated on her once, and that was it.
“You accept a man shitting on you,” she used to say, “he’ll make himself at home. There’s no three strikes. You use me, take me for granted, you prove you don’t deserve to be in my life.”
She would dust her hands together. “You’re gone.”
Her sassy sagacity teases the edges of my memory, reminding me of the truth. It’s not that I failed Edward. Not that I wasn’t sexy enough or didn’t do enough. It’s not my loose pussy, my almost-forty-year-old self, the fine lines creeping around my eyes. It’s him. His sorry, no-character, vow-breaking ass. Men married to the most gorgeous women in the world still cheat.
Hello,Lemonade?
And yet this wave ofnot enoughwashes over me as I stare down at the chest through a scrim of tears. I lift the flag and press it to my face, letting the flag of the Grito de Lares absorb the dampness of my pain. This flag hung in myabuela’s house on her wall. It was a symbol ofrighteous rebellion and a declaration of war in the name of independence. As I hold the flag, its pride, its anger, its fierceness blanket me.
How dare he?
How could he?
The hurt spreads so deep and so wide, it threatens to swallow me. I’m drowning in it, but I reach for my rage, and like a lifeline it rescues me. The machete glints at me like a wicked smile from beneath Mami’s journal. I push aside the leather-bound book and grab the knife. I hold it flat across my palms, and my mouth waters for vengeance. For retribution. If Edward were standing in front of me, I might chop his dick off and hang his balls from my rearview mirror as souvenirs of how I felled him. How I unmanned him.
But he’s not here.
His things are.
The thought of destroying his expensive wardrobe and slicing up all his handmade shoes hasn’t even fully formed before I’m on my feet with the machete, slicing off the arms of his Armani, tearing through the back of his Marc Jacobs, and amputating the legs from his Gucci. I take my knife to his shelves of shoes, dicing them like vegetables until leather confetti litters my closet floor. I grab that tacky tie Edward’s mama gave him with the red polka dots andchop chop chopuntil it bleeds all over the closet floor in a mound of ruined silk.
More.
Even taking in the destruction I’ve wrought, the beast in me hungers for more, like Edward’s entire wardrobe was merely the appetizer and I’m starving for the main course. I rush down the stairs and tiptoe past the living room so the girls won’t see, and then I streak out to the backyard. I stand there a moment, glaring at the structure where Edward spent so much of his time. I stalk through the door and assess the space Edward wanted for his “sanity” in a houseful of women.
“Motherfucker,” I growl through gritted teeth, bringing the machete down on his mahogany desk. It chops into the wood with a satisfyingthunk. I raise the knife again and again and again in a blur ofblades, frenzied in my fury until I stand over it shoulders heaving, sweating.
Sobbing.
“Why are you crying?” I scream, tears running in rivulets down my hot cheeks. “You stupid bitch! For him? Dry your fucking tears.”
The desk lies at my feet in a heap of broken wood, but it’s not enough. I rush over to his pool table and use the machete to chop into the green felt. I can’t do enough damage, so I pick up the balls and hurl them into the wall, leaving dents and holes. One flies on a wild trajectory to the window, shattering the glass.
Something about the shards of glass on the floor feels right. Feels like the way I am inside. Large, sharp pieces of myself on the floor beyond repair.
I need more glass.
My gaze falls on Edward’s most prized possession, the signed, framed Larry Bird jersey. Destroying that would be like slicing his jugular vein. I charge toward it, leaping over the rubble of his desk and swinging my machete into the glass frame. It shatters, shards flying all around me. Heedless of the danger, I reach into the frame and yank out the jersey, spreading it on the floor and tearing into it with my knife. For three generations, the women of my family wielded this knife. The machete is not just a line of steel, but a lineage of it. I use it now to cut down the insecurities, the shame, the hurt that will eat me alive if I let them.
Finally spent, clothes soaked through with perspiration, throat raw from screams and sobs, hair tangled around my shoulders and down my back, I collapse on the floor and sit with my back to the wall, knees pulled up. During the adrenaline-fueled rampage, I didn’t notice the pain, but as soon as I sit, I assess my throbbing hand with a shard of glass buried in the soft flesh of my palm. I jerk it out and toss it onto the shredded jersey at my side. Strips of Celtics-green cloth litter the floor, mixed with glass and wood and plaster. Grim satisfaction fills me at the ruined space Edward used to deem sacred.
I push to my feet, but a sliver of silver glinting in the debris gives me pause. Rolling my hand into the hem of my T-shirt to stop the flow of blood, I reach down to pick through the wood and find the silver. It’s a tiny rectangle of metal attached somehow, maybe glued, to the collar of the Celtics jersey. Or what’s left of it.
A flash drive.
I stare at it for long seconds, afraid to hope it holds any significance.
It could be nothing.
Or it could be exactly what I need.
CHAPTER ELEVEN