by F. E. Arliss
“So, I think we have enough to file an arrest warrant for assault, don’t we Lulu Mae?” Zhara asked, nodding to indicate they’d all witnessed the slap.
For once someone in the family backed her up. Lulu Mae nodded, “We do. Elizabeth, call the police.”
As Elizabeth stepped forward to get her phone, Paula went berserk and flung herself on Elizabeth from the side. “You will not take Victoria away from me. I had to kill your bitch of a mother to keep her, I’ll kill you too!”
Everyone froze. Paula, yanking Elizabeth’s head hard to one side, sought desperately to slam her cousin’s head into the granite countertop. For once, Elizabeth’s physical fitness came in handy for something more than torturing her visitors.
Yet, Paula was strong. Years of farm chores had hardened her limbs into whip-like cords and her hands would not release the grasp they had on Elizabeth’s head.
“I fed her extra Warfarin in her ice-cream sundae. I just sprinkled them on top like confetti. She was such a gluttonous pig,” Paula gasped. “She wasn’t even supposed to be eating ice-cream with her diabetes, but she just couldn’t help herself. Absolutely - no - self - control!” Paula gritted out the words between violent attempts to twist Elizabeth’s head towards the granite. Paula’s words were laced with the zealotry of righteousness and that zeal lent her strength.
While Paula and Elizabeth tussled and grappled, Victoria sobbed frantically and Lulu Mae pulled her back out of the way, thwarting Victoria’s desperate attempts to go to Paula.
Zhara finally sprang to action and screamed, “Basilio!” At the top of her lungs.
Seconds later the tall young man burst into the room, took one look at the frenzied attack on Elizabeth and simply coshed Paula on the back of the head with the small, weighted club he carried on his uniform belt. Paula fell like a ton of bricks. Silence reigned. Only Elizabeth’s gasps for breath and Victoria’s wailing sobs filled the air.
Zhara called 911. It was the first and last time she would ever ask for the help of the police. Or at least she hoped it was.
Lulu Mae, ever worried about what people would think, shooed guests out with the platitude, “Poor Paula. She’s overcome with grief at Mother’s death.”
Poor Paula was knocked unconscious, so no one was going to believe that story. Though insistence often paid off in tiny towns and history was down to those who persisted in their lies.
Elizabeth helped Basilio zip-tie Paula’s hands behind her back, seeming to take extra relish in pulling the fastenings tight. After all, Paula had almost beaten her in a wrestling match. That would not do. Paula must pay.
Victoria sat and wept heartbrokenly. She loved Paula. Whether with something more than the love she might have for a cousin, Zhara couldn’t really say. Years of incest, a shared secret they had both survived, and decades of medications meant to bury the shame and pain of it, had eroded her mind. Either way, no love between the women was healthy, that much was clear. They were both too damaged to have ever been good for one another.
Zhara pulled Lulu Mae aside. “Victoria loved her. Letting Paula control her was easy. She doesn’t want to have to make decisions for herself now. Do you think she knew Paula was poisoning mother?”
“Of course not!” Lulu Mae said indignantly, but Zhara could tell by the look in her eyes that she had her doubts. Once again, that secret would be kept by the family.
“Whether Victoria’s sick or not, she just doesn’t want to have to do the work to think for herself. Don’t let her do that. She’ll want to put it all on you. You have a life too. Live it,” Zhara urged her sister.
Lulu Mae smiled sadly at Zhara and for once Zhara knew exactly what would happen. Lulu Mae wouldn’t be able to do that. She would worry too much about what everyone else thought of her.
“You need to leave, Zhara. You’ve exposed mother’s killer, which was what you wanted all along. You are also going to sue the city. I know you. You’ll get Officer Marant fired. You’ll clean out the treasury. You won’t stop until every single thing they’ve done to you or anyone else that wasn’t right is exposed. It will make our lives hell and you won’t care, because it’s the right thing to do,” Lulu Mae said sadly.
“I’m not like that,” Lulu Mae continued, a low moan accompanying her statement. “I want this town to like me like they loved Mother. They will too, as long as I don’t have anything to do with you and let them know how much I despise you,” Lulu Mae said with a slightly cunning smile. “I do despise you, you know. You’ve always had everything easy. You were always the special one. Get out Gertrude, or Zhara or whatever in the hell your name is. Go back to your pretty life and leave us alone.”
“You never were one of us anyway,” Elizabeth said vehemently, deciding to jump on the band-wagon and kick Zhara while she was down. So typical of the family, Zhara thought wearily. At least they were true to form.
Victoria simply moaned, too distraught now to talk after the loss of her one true soulmate, crying out in despair as Paula was carted off, still unconscious, to be booked for assault. Zhara strongly suspected that Victoria had known Paula was giving their mother an overdose. She had simply wanted to have Paula and the oblivion of her dominance, more than she loved their mother.
Zhara, looking at her three sisters, realized that what they said was true. She never had been one of them. She was the only one who had escaped the onslaught of their pervert grandfather. By escaping his abuse, she had excluded herself from the club of this family. It wasn’t enough that she’d lived through sexual advances by teachers, neighbors and camp counselors. She’d escaped incest. She was an outsider.
One of her friends had once quipped to Zhara, “You’re just not screwed up enough for them,” when she’d been complaining about her family. Weirdly, it was turning out to be true.
“Yes. Of course. I’m not one of you,” Zhara said sadly. “I have always loved you. That was the problem. No matter how many ways you were cruel to me, I always hoped to be loved by you. I see now that will never happen.” Turning towards the door, she hesitated a moment. “I hope you will all be happy,” she said to them slowly. “You have each other. I hope that will be enough.”
Zhara knew it wouldn’t be. They were too warped to be happy. Keeping secrets made people sick inside and twisted. It was sad. It was also, not her problem any longer. They’d asked her to leave. She didn’t even feel angry or disappointed or sad. Well, maybe a touch sad. They’d never loved her anyway. She had to keep reminding herself of that. They didn’t even really love each other. They were just “in it together”. “It” being incest survivors. Maybe an outsider could never really understand. Zhara suspected that was true. An outsider could empathize, try to comprehend, consider the horror of it - but truly understand - probably not.
Zhara turned and left. Basilio held the door for her, then ran ahead to the Mercedes and opened her car door. He closed it ever so gently behind her. Beatriz slid in the other side of the backseat as her son held the door for her a moment later. The great black Mercedes slid out of the drive and turned onto the highway to the North. As the city limits slid past in the rearview mirror Basilio heard his mother murmur quietly to Lady Zhara, “We’re your family now.”
He heard Zhara whisper in return, “You always were.”
Zhara had an epiphany, she’d been so afraid for so long. Afraid of being alone and abandoned. And she had been. She had been alone with Carlton and she had been alone with her family. She’d always been afraid of that aloneness. Now it was over. The loss was not really the loss of reality - it was the loss of a dream of what reality should have been.
She might have no family, but she had herself, and she had Beatriz and Basilio. That was far better and far more reliable than her family or husband ever had been.
In truth, no one could love her better than she could love herself. In her family’s world self-love was a sin. In the real world, self-love was the only way to heal and be whole.
A few minutes later Basilio gl
anced at the seat behind him to survey his passengers. Lady Zhara had turned sideways, her head laid gently on his mother’s lap, a feather pillow his mother had traveled with for her bad back tucked under madam’s head. A single tear track had cut through the last of the makeup Zhara had so carefully applied that morning. Her eyes were closed, and observing a satisfied nod from his mother, he realized that the lifting of her familial burden had already allowed her to slide into the depths of sleep.
He could still remember the feeling of relief and release he’d had as the plane they’d taken from Culque to Washington D.C. gained altitude half a decade ago. The excitement of his first plane ride had finally been overwhelmed by the realization that he and his mother were away from the endless demands of his aunt and uncle.
Basilio and Beatriz had climbed the steps from their damp, lightless basement apartment under the upholstery shop, quietly closed the door and never returned. They’d been living the three months prior to that flight in the dry, sunlit rooms the Lady had prepared for them in the back of the big apartment off the downtown plaza near the capitol building.
Her kindness in training them and consistent good humor had been a welcome balm after years of thankless labor in the upholstery shop and his uncle’s home.
As the plane dove through the cloud-layer on its way to North America, Basilio could remember looking out once at the endless, rolling white sea of billowing clouds and then falling almost instantly asleep, the relief of escape weighing his eyelids down more surely than anything had ever done before - even the exhaustion of endless work.
Lady Zhara Hope Six had finally been released from the hell that was the tiny town of her birth. She slept the sleep of the escaped.
She was free.
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There is very little scientific data available on the treatment and effects of incest due to the amount of secrecy that surrounds it.
See the article below for more information on the ramifications of incest.
www.psychiatrictimes.com/sexual-offenses/ramifications-incest