by Marie Simas
That night, I could hardly sleep. I was so excited!
The next day, I proudly announced to my family that I was famous, because I had found a seven-leaf clover, which was surely the world record.
Father laughed. “I found dozens of those when I was a kid,” he snorted. “They’re as common as dirt.”
I didn’t believe him. “No way! Father, I found a seven-leaf clover! It has seven leaves on it! No one in the world has ever found so many.”
“I have. Lots of times. They’re everywhere. You just have to look for them,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. I didn’t believe him. I was convinced that he was just being a jerk, as usual.
That night, I pulled out the most powerful clover of all— the seven-leaf clover. I knew that the clover was magical and it would grant me one wish. I had been saving this wish for something special, like a Barbie dollhouse, but I decided instead to teach my father a lesson. That night, I closed my eyes, clutched the magical clover, and wished that God would strike my father with two broken legs.
“I’ll show him!” I thought.
The next day, nothing happened. Father awoke and went down to the ocean to spearfish. His legs seemed to be working fine.
“Maybe it will take a few days for the wish to come true,” I thought.
Days passed, then weeks. Father kept coming home from snorkeling and fishing as usual. His legs were working fine. I was so angry! This was complete bullshit!
In the end, Father was right. My clovers were as common as dirt, and they weren’t magical at all. Nothing ever happened to Father’s legs, although eventually he did step on a sea urchin. Even that wasn’t enough to make me happy.
Disappointed, I shook all of the pressed clovers out of my books and never mentioned them again.
Years later, I opened one of my old paperbacks and found a four-leaf clover that had survived the trip back to the United States. There it was, pressed between the pages, as green as the day I picked it out of the ground. I took it out and placed it on my nightstand, where it stayed for a few years. Eventually, it was lost when I moved out of my house.
I guess I was still hoping that God would come through for me with those two broken legs.
Stolen Orphan Candies
1985, AGE 12
Growing up, I didn’t know much about my father’s family. My grandfather had one sister named Carolina (my great-aunt). Carolina became a Carmelite nun and went to work in an orphanage on the island of Faial. This caused a huge family rift.
My father’s family never forgave Carolina for entering the convent. Apparently, Carolina had begged her parents (my great-grandparents) for an education, which they provided at considerable expense. Carolina went away to college, which was unusual in those days, and earned a degree. Then, instead of going into politics or government service, which would have been the respectable thing to do, she became a nun. The family therefore considered the college money to have been wasted on someone who was never going to do anything productive with her life.
And by “productive,” I mean lucrative. And by “lucrative,” I mean to say that they were assholes. Honestly, who gets mad when a family member takes a vow of poverty, gives up all worldly goods, and dedicates her life to caring for orphans?
What pricks.
I only met Carolina the nun once, when I was twelve. My father took us to visit the orphanage where she worked.
I remember Carolina being very tall, much taller than my father.
All of the children at the orphanage were boys. It was sad. There were dozens of them and only a few nuns to care for them. They looked well-fed, but spent the entire time pummeling each other or standing around my father, desperate for some adult attention.
My father bought six or seven packages of candy to take to the boys. I remember the candy exactly. The package was blue and the candies were wrapped in wax paper. They were square, semisoft taffy with an orange flavor. How could I possibly remember all these details, you ask? Well, dear friends, it’s because I got my ass kicked into next week because of this candy.
I found the candies on the dashboard of my father’s rental car. I went into the car, locked myself in, and started to eat the candy in private. Some of the orphan boys circled the car. I opened the windows and began tossing some candies out for them. The candy would drop to the ground and they would snap it up, fighting over each piece.
Eventually, my father came looking for me. He caught me eating the candy and dropping pieces out the window.
“What the hell are you doing?!” He screamed; yanking open the car door, dragging me out by the neck.
“Owwwww! I didn’t do anything—I didn’t do anything! Please! Please!” I became hysterical. I knew I was going to get it.
Carolina was watching, so Father took me behind a building before backhanding me. I felt blood in my mouth. Then he started kicking me. All the orphans stared at me, sobbing on the ground and covered in dirt. My father was still standing over me, hand raised, twisting his tongue in his mouth. He was getting ready to hit me again. I was already curled up on the ground in a ball, which was my favorite protective position. He kicked me so hard he broke my tailbone.
Carolina ran over and grabbed my father’s hand out of the air. “Stop, stop!” she cried. “Just leave the child alone. Let’s just go inside. I’ll make some tea.”
We all walked into the building and the orphans followed. Carolina served us Portuguese sweet bread and milk. I couldn’t sit down because my ass hurt so bad. But I didn’t cry because I knew I would get another punch in the face. My mouth bled inside and I swallowed the blood.
That night, I cried all night long because my tailbone hurt like hell. I couldn’t find a comfortable position. It stopped hurting only when I was sitting on the toilet, so I went downstairs and slept on the toilet. The lady running the hostel gave me two Tylenol the next day because she felt sorry for me. It stopped hurting about a month later. I just dealt with it. My father never took me to the doctor, and I never complained because I was afraid.
Father wouldn’t stop talking about those fucking candies for at least a week. I never said anything back.
In retrospect, I guess it was pretty shitty of me to eat the orphans’ candies.
Old Beggar Woman
1987, AGE 14
Mother always wanted to visit Fátima, which is a Catholic pilgrimage site on mainland Portugal. Our Lady of Fátima is a Virgin Mary that appeared to three children in the early 1900s in mainland Portugal. I say “a” Virgin Mary because there are numerous holy pilgrimage sites like this all around the world and, in each case, the Virgin is described differently and the story of the apparition is different. Don’t ask me why —I’m not an expert on Mariology.
Mother finally got her wish and we all flew to mainland Portugal in 1988. It was the first time we had traveled to the “continent,” although we had already made numerous vacation trips back to the Azores, which are the Portuguese islands where my parents were born.
Mother, stricken with brain cancer, was already bald. She lost all of her gorgeous black hair. It never grew back. Instead, a scraggly ring of fine gray hair grew at the bottom of her head, near the base of her skull.
When we went in to renew our passport photos, my mother pinned those scraggly remnants of hair to the top of her head. Passport regulations forbade the wearing of a hat. The scars from her brain surgery were clearly visible—the place where the doctors had tried unsuccessfully to remove her tumor. The guy at the post office saw my mother’s old passport and didn’t believe she was the same person.
“Hey lady, I can’t take this.”
My mother just looked at him and said, “I’m dying.” She took off her hat and showed him her bald head.
The postal clerk stared at her for a moment with his mouth open. Then he looked down and accepted my mother’s passport application. He never looked Mother in the eye again and he processed our remaining applications in silence.
A few months
later, we flew into Lisbon. We took a shuttle to Fátima and checked into a tourist trap hotel close to the cathedral.
The Cathedral of Fátima is enormous, even by Catholic standards. There’s a marble walkway that goes right up to the church so people can crawl up to the massive doors on their knees in penance without really hurting themselves. The old diehards crawl on the concrete, just to show they’re really serious about penance.
When we entered the cathedral, the first thing I noticed were all the crutches that lined the walls—evidence of the hundreds of miracles that had been performed here, undoubtedly by the Virgin herself. I really believed.
There’s a fountain of holy water in front of the cathedral. Mother went there every day to wash her head and drink. She poured the holy water into little bottles and tucked them into her purse.
We went to the shrine twice every day. Mother loved it. She was the most devout person in the family and she really felt at home.
We bought candles and rosaries, some of which were beautiful. Mother bought a silver rosary at the shrine. It was beautiful: handmade with silver beads shaped like rosebuds. Mother fingered the rosary breathlessly—it was the loveliest rosary she had ever seen. My father scowled, because he didn’t want to pay for it, but even he was too ashamed to refuse the purchase in such a holy place. Mother’s eyes glistened. Then she kissed the rosary and tucked it lovingly into a light blue box with a gold seal. I still have it.
We stayed in Fátima for a week.
While we were there, I noticed an old beggar woman sitting outside the hotel. She was at least eighty. Her spine was twisted, and she had a hump the size of a football on her back. Mother begged Father to give the old woman some money.
There are a lot of beggars in Fátima, but this little old lady was our favorite. She never spoke, but she smiled toothlessly at me when we gave her money. It wasn’t much—maybe a few dollars each morning.
On our last day, my mother asked my father for $20 to give to the beggar woman. This was an enormous sum, not because we were broke, but because my father was monstrously cheap and the thought of giving $20 to a stranger and getting nothing in return was unfathomable. My mother never had any of her own money—it was just another way that my father controlled her. Mother asked again and again for money to give the old woman.
Father finally relented and gave Mother the money. The last time we went to visit the shrine, Mother personally handed this princely sum to the old woman. Then Mother tried to embrace her. As my mother rose up from the embrace, she frowned. We visited the shrine for the last time and returned to the hotel.
Once we got to our room, I could tell my mother was upset.
“Why are you mad, Mother?” I asked.
“The old lady didn’t have a real hump on her back. When I touched her, I felt the hump and it was made of paper. It was fake,” she said.
“Does it matter? She was so old,” I said.
“Yes, it matters. Twenty dollars is a lot of money.”
And there it was. Mother never mentioned it again, but it was obvious that she felt betrayed by this old beggar woman. It was because my mother initially felt kinship with this wretched creature, but discovering the “paper” hump shattered the illusion.
After that, we left the mainland for the Azores islands. We never returned to mainland Portugal. It was the first and last time my mother saw Fátima.
The Argument with a Hotel Clerk
1987, AGE 14
After leaving the mainland, we took a tiny propeller plane to Horta, Faial. The weather was terrible and the plane was bobbing up and down. All the people on the plane were vomiting into little white barf bags. Father promised God that he would kiss the ground if we landed safely.
We landed in a shitty little airport and walked off the tarmac. Father didn’t kiss the ground. He was too embarrassed.
“I thought you said you were going to kiss the ground.”
“Maybe later,” he said.
I reflected on the possibility that God might strike him dead for breaking a promise like that.
No such luck, though.
Father had reservations at Hotel Pousada, a beautiful fivestar hotel overlooking the ocean. But he was such an asshole to the hotel desk clerk that they refused to admit him to the hotel. He screamed for the manager, who came over and told him, “We don’t have any rooms.”
Father started the argument over money. We were blackballed from that hotel forever. We ended up staying in a shitty hostel for the remainder of the trip.
Four years later, Father returned to Faial and tried to get a room at the Hotel Pousada. The desk clerk remembered him and told him, “We don’t have any rooms.”
Classic.
Anyway, while we were staying in our shitty hostel, Mother and I had opportunities to talk. Father left with my brother and explored the countryside and I stayed behind with Mother.
We talked for a long time. I told her that I was afraid all the time. I complained about the beatings. She was sympathetic, but I knew she was powerless. We continued to talk, but the conversation deteriorated from there. I loved my mother, but I couldn’t forgive her weaknesses.
After a while, Mother hung her head and whispered, “I really want to die, Marie. I just want to die.”
I put my face in my hands and cried.
Rape in a Wine Cellar
Catholics have a love-hate relationship with sex. In most European and Latin American countries, it goes like this: the women are discouraged from having sex until marriage. The men, however, are encouraged to get laid as much as possible. This creates a real conundrum because, if all the women are waiting for marriage, how are the men going to get laid?
The answer is simple! You find a mentally disabled girl, get her drunk, and then gang rape her. Repeat. Problem solved.
My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen children. In those days, thirteen children was considered an average-sized family. It was common for women to die in childbirth and at least one of my grandmother’s siblings died before the age of two. Amalia was actually the second baby in her family named “Amalia.” The first Amalia died as a toddler, overcome by intestinal parasites. Serious illness was commonplace and medicine was scarce and expensive.
My Grandmother Amalia had an older sister, Lumelia, who contracted scarlet fever as a child. The fever was so bad that Lumelia suffered permanent brain damage as a result. Lumelia was a pretty girl, but she was simple-minded.
Unfortunately, Lumelia became a sexual target for all of the men in the village. They would shower her with compliments and then ply her with alcohol. By the time she was in her late teens, she had been sexually assaulted by many men. Sometimes it was consensual, if you can call it consensual sex when the victim doesn’t understand what’s happening.
Later, the assaults progressed into all-out gang rape. A man would try to find Lumelia where she was washing clothes, or simply walking though the village. He would isolate her and force her to drink wine until she passed out. Then he would go get his friends and they would take turns sexually assaulting her in private.
Europe is dotted with little wine cellars and cottages. The Portuguese call these adegas. They are private, one-room structures about the size of a large garden shed. Families use them to store their wine barrels. Most of them are secluded and, therefore, make the perfect setting for a sexual assault.
The rumors started to circulate and word of the rapes trickled down to my great-grandparents. The family was crushed by this horrible gossip; it was a smear upon the entire family. Everyone knew what was going on and the rumors and the attacks escalated. My great-grandfather caught a few of the men and there were some physical altercations.
Lumelia was beaten for her behavior, but she was slow and didn’t really comprehend the gravity of the situation. Lumelia was an irresistible target and men continued to victimize her. She began having illegitimate children. In the end, she gave birth to eight children, all with different fathers. Each subsequent bi
rth drove her into a deeper depression.
Lumelia understood enough to know that she had become a pariah. She had destroyed the reputation of her entire family.
At the age of thirty-six, Lumelia walked barefoot into a farmhouse and hung herself. Lumelia’s twelve-year-old daughter Sofia found her swinging gently from the rafters. Her youngest child was only two years old when Lumelia committed suicide.
Sofia, devastated by the discovery, was forced to become a mother to her much younger brothers and sisters. My cousin, Sofa, is now sixty-one years old—the age my mother would have been had she lived. Her face shows years of heartbreak and backbreaking labor.
I telephone her often and I send her some money sometimes to help pay for some little necessities. She cleans houses for a living and makes 198 Euros per month, which is roughly 400 American dollars.
I called Sofia a few months ago to ask about the suicide. “Cousin Sofia, do you remember your mother’s suicide?” I asked.
“Yes...I do. Of course. How could I forget? I was twelve. I discovered her...hanging there. I am the one who found her. It was hard for me, after she did that thing. There were three [siblings] below me, so I had to learn how to be a grownup woman very fast.”
“You took over the household?”
“Yes, I washed clothes; I cooked and cleaned and took care of the little ones. I had many, many bad years. In those days, there were no washing machines. I had to wash the laundry in a stone tub.”
Sofia talked to me about her childhood for a long time. Her voice was sad, filled with longing. Something had been stolen from her. She never said the word “suicide.” She just kept referring to that thing.
It makes me wonder about all the women in my family and women in general—women demoralized by their own lives and choices. It was like our family was a party to a slow death. No one talked about it because each discussion pointed a spotlight on one more shameful memory.