Previously:

Carol had the boyfriend, the image, and the future people expected. Andrea’s summer away made the performance harder to hold.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 2: Unsaid

Content note: This chapter contains domestic violence and verbal abuse.

Carol

Carol watches from her porch as bruised Lucia stands by the gate in a light floral dress, the two women locked in a tense stare.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves…

~Oscar Wilde

Something shattered next door and jolted me upright. Both of my parents froze.

Lucia lived next door, but to them, she might as well have lived in another country. Her screams crossed the wall without permission. They entered our living room, climbed over the furniture, and settled among us like an accusation.

Six years of listening should have taught me how to ignore them. Another cry tore through the plaster. Ignoring it became actual labor. The sound cut straight into the pit of my stomach.

Across the room, my parents exchanged a tired glance. Resignation looked so much like wisdom when cowards wore it long enough. My father kept his attention on his Reader’s Digest.

My mother’s knitting needles kept clacking. “Elenita, we cannot get involved.”

It was the first of the month. Doña Eva had received her retirement check, which meant Bruno had crawled out of whatever cave he drank in to collect his tribute. Money for liquor, card games, and whatever else he had not earned but still knew how to demand.

Bruno understood the barrio better than anyone. He knew where every boundary ended and every excuse began. No one interfered with another family’s business. No one called the police. Everyone listened through the walls, lowered their voices, and thanked God the violence belonged to someone else.

A fresh wail ripped through the room. I shot to my feet.

Before I reached the door, my mother caught my elbow. Her grip was rough enough to bruise, which felt almost insulting considering what was happening next door. “Elena Carolina Herrera, stop.”

Yanking free, I pushed past her.

“José!”

My father understood the command before she finished his name. Strong and quick, he reached the door first and planted himself in front of it. “Mija, this is a family matter.”

“How can it be a family matter when the entire street can hear her screaming?” My arms flew wide. The gesture was dramatic, fine, but the truth deserved presentation. My parents became the audience. “What does he have to do before someone stops him?”

“We do not have to approve.” My father’s voice remained gentle. That made it worse. “But her uncle has the right to discipline her as he sees fit.”

Lucia did nothing wrong. Doña Eva had shaped her into a grateful orphan who studied, worked, attended Mass, and apologized for occupying space. Whenever obedience failed, the old woman dragged out her dead daughter’s memory and wrapped it around her grandchildren’s throats. Johnny occasionally slipped the leash. Lucia carried hers like a cross.

Parents like mine dreamed of daughters like her. Devout and silent, the perfect Mexican girl, trained to accept suffering as proof of character.

Meanwhile, they had me.

Another scream broke through. My mother raised the volume on the television even as tears gathered along her lower lashes. Her knitting needles continued their stubborn little rhythm.

Click. Loop. Pull.

My father lowered his magazine. One hand tightened around the arm of his chair, and for a moment, I saw the man he wanted to be. A man who didn’t need his wife’s permission to be a protector.

Then he looked at my mother, and as expected, he remained seated.

Trapped, I told myself. He was trapped, too. The lie almost comforted me.

Silence fell without warning. Through the window, Bruno staggered toward the truck waiting crooked at the curb. The engine coughed twice before catching. He tore I stood, sat, then stood again.

Calling the police would do nothing unless someone pressed charges. Doña Eva would never permit it. Lucia would be told to forgive him, pray harder, cover the bruises, and remember everything her grandmother had sacrificed for her grandchildren.

By next week, the marks would turn from purple to blue. Green would come after that. Finally, the yellow-brown shade that made damaged flesh look rotten.

There was nothing I could do about it.

At twenty-one, I was old enough to drink and vote, but adulthood meant very little in the barrio. A woman remained a daughter until she became a wife. Marriage was the only respectable escape. Another cage, perhaps, but some cages came with large houses, private bedrooms, and bars that knew how to shine.

Across the room, my mother pretended not to notice me watching her. Perhaps she felt my judgment anyway. I wanted it to mark her with two words: coward and hypocrite.

Better her than me.

The thought arrived so quickly I almost missed it.

I had tried to reach the door. That mattered. Surely intention separated me from everyone else in the room. Courage still counted when someone stronger stood in the way. I was not responsible for my father’s body, my mother’s grip, Doña Eva’s silence, Bruno’s fists, or the entire barrio’s devotion to looking away.

Lucia’s bruises would fade. They would return. Next time, I promised myself, I would do something. Promises were beautiful that way. They required nothing until later.

I was wrong. When it came to this girl, I was always wrong.

Everyone pretended a quinceañera was the moment a Mexican girl could begin dating. Not that I had ever followed that stupid rule.

A ridiculous Cinderella gown swallowed me whole. White, of course, traditional and immaculate, which only made the punishment more insulting. Buried beneath layers of tulle and fake magic, I struggled to move all night.

Lucia wore the court’s mermaid dress in Mexican pink, and my eyes followed every line the dress refused to hide. The fitted skirt hugged her hips and thighs before the double hem opened around her narrow frame. A halter neckline widened her delicate shoulders, while the razorback left the long line of her spine bare.

The dress required no cleavage. Good thing, because she didn’t have any. The color warmed her olive skin until she seemed lit from within. Lucia was stunning.

As if that weren’t enough, a parade of boys asked her to dance. I told myself I simply couldn’t tolerate them choosing her over me. It was my day. Yet she moved from one boy to another as though she had forgotten I existed.

Only when Lucia was ready to leave did she remember whose party it was. She rushed over and told me I looked like a beautiful princess. No one was more beautiful. I was a storybook dream.

My heart did a backflip. Just like that, I forgot I had been angry.

By the next morning, she was back in her ill-fitting hand-me-downs, hiding everything worth seeing. You would think I’d have gotten over it. I couldn’t. Lucia had become interesting.

I caught myself leaning closer whenever she lit up over some revolution or tragic queen, even though I hated history. Asking her to read her dull novels aloud. Laughing too hard at the ridiculous things she found funny. Each time she looked at me like that, nervous energy overwhelmed me.

Nothing made sense. I did what I always did back then and turned to my mother.

I wasn’t stupid enough to say it outright. Just a hint. Girls seemed smarter, sweeter, and prettier. Easier to talk to.

She waved the whole thing away and assured me it was normal to find girls more interesting at my age. Fifteen-year-old boys were boring. They matured slowly. She solved the problem by telling me to date eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds.

A typical Mexican mother’s response. No talk of finding yourself. Just find an older man.

The news kept showing gringas marching and burning their bras, but in our barrio, that meant crazy White girls with money to waste. No one I knew burned hers. Bras were expensive. That wasn’t freedom. To us, it was stupidity.

Gringos simply didn’t know how to parent.

We heard even less about gay people. The television argued about homosexuals, priests muttered about them, and adults lowered their voices, but in our world, gay meant men. Men like Lalo, the best seamstress on the Southside of San Diego. Girls? No. Not in our telenovelas or the barrio.

College gave me what the barrio never could. Freedom.

It did not take long to realize my mother had been wrong. Boys became guys, but they never became more interesting. Girls were always more. More beautiful. More complicated. More of everything.

The first real secret had pink gloss and sparkling fingernails pressed into my thighs. I gasped as though she had stolen the air from my lungs.

So, I stopped pretending and gave in to girls who made boys feel decorative. After the third girl, I stopped going to confession. I would not repent, so there was no point in asking for forgiveness.

At home, those types of girls never entered the conversation. Still, my mother began watching me more closely. The unspoken question sharpened every time she looked at me.

Naturally, I gave her an answer she could tolerate. I became agreeable. Flirted with the right guys and dated the boys my mother could survive.

It helped that Lucia was still in high school when I began attending Collwood State University. No one there knew her, and I rarely saw her when I came home.

As the old saying goes, never dip your pen in company ink. Apparently, that included girls next door who hummed over real-estate law.

The realtor’s exam refused to respect my ambition, so I finally admitted I needed help. Lucia had always offered to help me with anything school-related, so I finally turned to her.

She said yes.

Her fingers moved across the page as she made that little hum of hers. The sound came whenever she worked through a difficult section, soft and distracted and somehow capable of getting beneath my skin.

Of course I regretted asking. By then, she was already too close.

Too often, I became lost in her gestures. The shape of her hands. The funny way she pronounced the “ch” and “v” sounds in certain words. That was when the old problem found its way back in.

Perhaps there was something in my voice or in the way I looked at her. Something gave me away.

Doña Eva, her grandmother, began insisting we leave Lucia’s bedroom door open when I was there. Later, she decided we should work at the dining-room table. Her eyes followed me before shifting toward Lucia, who remained blissfully oblivious.

My mother noticed, too. I saw it in the way she looked at me whenever I mentioned Lucia. Heard the silent objection beneath her words, “you are spending too much time together.”

I had to protect myself. There was nothing else I could do. So I became the sharpest thing in the room.

Teased her mercilessly, told her she dressed like a scarecrow, called her Crater Face, anything ugly enough to make distance look accidental.

She needed to step away before I reached for her. Before I pulled her against me. Kissed her. Told her the truth.

Instead, I dated Andrea.

I got my Cartier watch, my Hermès silk scarf, and all the couture makeup I could wear. But no ring.

When I stepped onto the porch, Lucia was rushing from her grandmother’s house. She wore a peach floral babydoll dress, too sheer, too light, too frayed.

The cool breeze caught the fabric and, just like that, revealed every welt. Old bruises. New ones already forming.

There was one on her face.

Shit.

Lucia looked at me, and I forgot how to breathe. It wasn’t the flip in my stomach that frightened me. It was the drop. Her eyes held what her mouth refused to give me. You didn’t help. You let it happen again.

I opened my mouth. Her fists clenched at her sides, telling me to shut up. She didn’t want explanations.

Lucia didn’t care about what I had tried to do. All she wanted was the one thing I had failed to give her.

Guilt slid down my throat with the bitter burn of cheap wine. My world was tilting, as though gravity had forgotten me, and somehow she was the cause.

The girl who wasn’t anyone’s choice.

Lucia was far too smart, possessed the wrong kind of stubbornness, and wasn’t pretty enough to get away with either.

Her face? Interesting. Large, dark-brown eyes that gave away feelings, secrets, and every thought better kept hidden. High cheekbones framed a mouth that formed a perfect heart when closed, but that she rarely used to smile. A waste, honestly. Also a mercy.

She did nothing with her frizzy curls, letting them fall freely to her waist. Her olive skin looked sickly, and the dark circles beneath her eyes did not help. They made concern too obvious, and I hated obvious things. Worse, she was too thin. All angles, until her hips ruined even that argument.

The hand-me-downs she wore clung or sagged in all the wrong places. Summer was the only season when I didn’t see holes in her sneakers, and that was because she wore sandals.

Yes, the girl was a tragedy with bad shoes. Case closed.

And yet, one glance from her was enough to wreck me. Maybe that was why we called it a crush. It crushed every sensible thought right out of you.

My gaze dropped to the straps of my Italian sandals, desperate to escape her eyes. She had never looked at me that way before.

Like I wasn’t the prize.

Author’s Note

In 1985, corporal punishment of children remained widely accepted in the United States. A lot of people believed that children sometimes needed a “good, hard spanking” as discipline. Americans had made physical punishment ordinary enough that nobody needed Mexican culture to explain its presence.

The distinction matters because ethnicity cannot explain Bruno’s violence when the bruises are hard to defend. Once violence enters under the label of discipline, people can argue about methods while avoiding the harder question of what the child is actually enduring. Discipline sounds responsible. It suggests correction carried out for a child’s benefit.

Bruno began hitting Lucia when she was young, giving the adults around her an explanation they already understood. Years passed, and the explanation stayed put. Bruno kept hitting her. By then, the supposed connection between punishment and correction had become impossible to defend without considerable imagination.

A neighbor who called Bruno strict could condemn his methods and still leave the matter inside the family. Someone who described his temper could dislike him without accepting responsibility for Lucia. Calling what he did abuse would force a different calculation, because adults who recognized the danger would also have to account for their own silence.

Adults often imagine that complicity requires malice because it feels easier to identify. Ordinary fear can accomplish the same damage with far less drama. People worry about overstepping, insulting an elder, provoking a violent man, or becoming responsible for whatever happens next. The child keeps paying for that caution while everyone else debates jurisdiction.

Lucia reached nineteen with the evidence written across her body.

Words such as correction, strictness, and family problems can keep serious harm inside familiar categories long after those categories have failed.

Sources

General Social Survey, NORC at the University of Chicago. “Favor Spanking to Discipline Child.” GSS Data Explorer: Spanking Trend

Buriel, Raymond, Rosa Mercado, James Rodriguez, and John M. Chavez. “Mexican-American Disciplinary Practices and Attitudes Toward Child Maltreatment: A Comparison of Foreign- and Native-Born Mothers.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 13, no. 1 (1991): 78–94. SAGE Journals article

Calzada, Esther J., et al. “Incorporating the Cultural Value of Respeto Into a Framework of Latino Parenting.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 16, no. 1 (2010): 77–86. PubMed record and Free full text at PubMed Central

Which bothered you more: Carol’s family looking away, or Carol convincing herself that trying was enough?

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