Page 43 of Tell Me Softly
I remember one day she was at breakfast wearing a pretty gold bracelet with tiny pearls. I wondered when I could have something that nice. My father asked her, “Where’d you get the fancy bracelet?” It was an innocent question, but my mother got all defensive.
“Again with the interrogation, Roger?” she shouted rudely.
My father dropped his silverware on the table and looked up.
“Oh, sorry. I guess I was just a little worried at two o’ clock this morning when you still hadn’t come back from your friends’ house.”
“I told you: we were drinking margaritas and we lost track of time.”
“Yeah, at least half of that I’m willing to buy. You stank like a distillery when you got back.”
“How dare you! Do you even know how to do anything besides criticize me?”
“I’m not having this discussion in front of my girl,” my father said, taking a bite of his sausage.
“Kamila, go to your room! Your father and I need to talk about adult stuff,” Mom said.
“Anne, don’t shout.” I’d rarely seen my dad so serious.
I got up and walked out, but I didn’t go to my room as Mom had ordered me. Instead, I just hid behind the door to eavesdrop.
“If this goes on, I’m asking for a divorce. I’m tired of living this way,” my father said. His words terrified me. I knew what divorce was. Some of my classmates had told me about their parents’ problems at home. I prayed I wouldn’t have to go through that too.
“Oh, so you’re threatening me now? I can’t believe you,” my mother screeched. “Look how low you’ve fallen.”
“I can’t stand living with a woman who prefers going with her friends to the spa over spending time with her own daughter. A woman who’d rather slurp margaritas than be with her husband. And in the meantime, I’m working like a goddamn dog…”
“Don’t you even! I’m a far better parent than you! At least I’m actually here every day…”
“Please!” my father shouted. “Tomorrow our girl’s got a play at school and you’re going to be off at some stupid resort. Four days you’re going, and I told you I had a business trip! How many weekends this year has Kamila spent with the babysitter?”
“I deserve my free time too!”
“I don’t have any free time! I’m constantly at work! In the meantime, you’ll use any excuse you can find not to raise our child…”
“Are you calling me a bad mother?”
I held my breath in the ensuing silence. Strangely calm, my father said, “Yeah, I guess that is what I’m insinuating. Honestly, if it weren’t for how much I adore Kam, I’d regret ever having her with you.”
My mother laughed bitterly, and I heard her chair scraping on the floor.
“It’s a little late to change the past, big man…
but go ahead and get your divorce and see who ends up with custody.
Because I’ll tell you one thing: if you get a lawyer, I will do everything in my power to make sure she never spends another day in her life with you. If you don’t believe me, try me.”
I remember hiding in the hollow under the stairs as she stomped out of the kitchen. Then I heard her footsteps above me.
That night, I looked up the word custody on the internet.
I remember the definition perfectly: The protective care or guardianship of someone or something.
That didn’t sound so bad. But as I looked around more, I found accounts of divorce, people posting on message boards about how their parents wouldn’t stop fighting, horrible things that had torn families apart.
The more I read, the more frightened I got. Custody meant you might not see a person you loved ever again. And people got divorced for so many reasons. One of them was adultery. I didn’t know what that was either, so I looked it up.
That night, I must have learned all there was to know about cheating.
I read real-life accounts. I read articles by therapists talking about how cheating was bad.
I read about people lying and sleeping around who had traumatized their partners forever.
I read about how divorce could turn your life into a nightmare.
And then there was something I saw on one of those pages where you ask strangers questions.
Would you prefer to live a lie or know the truth?
That made me reconsider whether I should tell my parents.
That was the start of the nightmare—that nightmare that made me want to scream and wake up so everything would go back to normal.
But I was so scared. I was terrified my mother would separate me from my father.
A lot of people online said judges tended to rule in favor of mothers.
I knew how she was––if she’d told him she intended to keep me away from him, I was certain she meant it.
In a sense, it was all their fault. Somebody should have put some controls on what I was doing online. But there were no filters, and no one thought to come to my room and ask what ten-year-old Kamila was doing up at two a.m. on a Thursday.
And that was the beginning of the end. The end of our friendship with the Di Biancos. My parents’ near-divorce. The end of Thiago’s parents’ marriage. And the end of her.