Grave Lies

I'll be good

"Sometimes we break ourselves just to let the light in."

  I had never been strong, no.

I had never managed to be.
"You have the spirit of a butterfly," my mother used to say, "you're a celestial being." She named me Nica because she loved butterflies more than anything else.
I had never forgotten.
Not even when her smile faded into my memories.
Not even when all that remained of her was her delicateness.
All I had ever wanted was a second chance.
And I loved the sky for what it was, a clear expanse with white clouds. I loved it because even after a storm, the clear skies always returned.
I loved it because when everything had crumbled, it remained the same.
"You have the spirit of a butterfly," my mother used to say.
For once, I wished she was wrong.
I remembered that face like the skin remembers a bruise: a mark in my memories that would never fade.
I remembered it because she had carved it too deeply for me to forget.
I remembered it because I had tried to love her, as if she were my second chance.
It had been my greatest regret.
I loved the sky, and she knew it. She knew it, just as she knew that Adeline hated loud noises and Peter was afraid of the dark

 She would arrive where we were most broken. She used our weaknesses, and those were the parts where even the strongest of us remained a bit like children. Like dolls, we had stitches of every shape and fear, but she always managed to find the thread, to unravel us piece by piece.

She punished us because we misbehaved.
Because that's what bad children deserved, the atonement for their guilt.
I didn't know what mine was. Most of the time, I didn't even understand why she did it.
I was too young to comprehend, but I remembered each of those moments as if they were tattooed in my memory.
They never went away.
When one of us was punished, we all huddled in our own stitches and prayed not to receive it anymore.
But I didn't want to be a doll, no, I wanted to be the sky - with its clear expanse and white clouds, because it didn't matter how many tears ran through it, how many thunderstorms and lightning marred its serenity: it always returned the same, unbroken.
That's what I dreamed of being. Free.
But I returned as porcelain and fabric when her eyes fell upon me.
She dragged me forward, and I could already see the cellar door, the narrow stairs descending into a dark abyss. That bed without a mattress and the belts that would bind my wrists all night long.
My nightmares would forever take the shape of that room.
But she...
She was my greatest nightmare.
"I'll be good," I told myself as she passed by.
My legs were too short to look her in the face, but I would never forget the sound of her footsteps. They were the terror of all of us.

 "I'll be good," I whispered, twisting my hands, wishing to be as invisible as a crack in the plaster.

And I tried to be obedient, I tried not to give her any reason to punish me, but I had that butterfly spirit, and the delicateness that my mother had left me. I cared for injured lizards and sparrows, I got my hands dirty with soil and flower pollen, and she hated imperfections as much as weaknesses.
"Stop with those bandages like a little beggar!"
I am my freedom, I wanted to reply, all the colors that I have.
But she dragged me forward, and all I could do was cling to her skirt.
I didn't want to go down there, I didn't want to spend the night there.
I didn't want to feel the iron of the bed scratching my shoulder blades - I dreamed of the sky and a life outside of there, someone who would hold my hand instead of my wrist.
And perhaps one day, that person would come. Perhaps they would have celestial eyes and fingers too gentle to leave a bruise, and then my story wouldn't be a story of dolls anymore, but something different.
A fairy tale, perhaps. With golden swirls and that happy ending I had never stopped dreaming of.

 The bed vibrated under the clangor of the metal links.