She was sitting at the massive table in our dining room, immobile and stiff as if made of stone. She had her back to the door. She resembled a marble statue mounted on a pedestal ready to administer justice. But she was neither made of stone nor marble. She was a mere mortal who, under the spell of madness, was about to become an executioner.
She had gotten off work and gone straight to the gun store to buy her weapon of choice, a silver small handgun with a pearly white butt, to end it all. Once home she locked the front gate, so I could not get out and run to my grandparents’ home for help.
But why had she locked the front gate if she was planning to shoot him? How was he going to get in? He didn’t have the key for the front gate, yet. He had just come back after almost two years of absence. Almost two years during which she was never told if he was dead or alive.
She had learned that she was pregnant with their fifth child right after he went missing. So the reasons that had pushed her to completely lose it that morning, to the point of having decided to murder my father, had been piling up and brewing for quite some time.
In retrospect, it was an established fact that both of them, individually, had brought to their marriage the heavy weight of mental illness. And it was an established fact that without my grandparents’ help and emotional support, the looming tragedy of this day would have occurred much sooner.
There was no doubt, however, that what he had done that morning had definitely pushed her beyond her limits. She had got home from work to learn that he had killed three of her five beloved dogs with rat poison in front of their little boy, Rori, age six.
I guess, given her state of mind, her plan was to shoot him from the yard while he stood there on the street by our front gate; her final words to him, “You will never again set foot in my house because now you will be dead, really dead.”
Still standing by the dining room door, I had not yet dared to move, the heaviness of the situation overpowering me. Sitting there with her back to the door, she had sensed my presence, and in a voice devoid of emotion she said, “Don’t even think about running off to your grandparents for help.” Her detached tone of voice seething with rage.
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t answer her because I had learned early in life to never contradict her when she was overtaken by one of her spells of madness. I didn’t answer because I had already decided what I was going to do to try to stop what was about to happen. I had already decided that, even though I hated both of them at that very moment, I did love my siblings, so I was going to do whatever I had to do to protect them.
I went to the family room at the back of the house where my siblings were watching cartoons. I told my sister Gaby, who was a year younger than I, to look after our three brothers since I needed to run to the store to buy something for Mom.
I slipped quietly away through the kitchen door and onto the side yard. I climbed the tall wooden fence that separated the side yard from the front one. Then, I jumped our neighbors party wall and once on the sidewalk, I ran as fast as I could to our grandparents’ home less than three blocks away. Once there, I told them in a trembling, and out-of-breath voice what was going on.
Five decades have passed since then. Five decades and the expression of alarmed desperation on my beloved grandfather’s face while trying to put on his shoes is still very vivid in my mind.
There it was: my mother’s dear old father, age sixty-seven and suffering from excruciating pain in his legs, trying to keep up and walk as fast as he could a few steps behind me; trying to hasten his pace to reach her eldest daughter’s home before tragedy got there first.
And I still see him; many decades later, I still hear him pleading with his eldest child to come out of the house and talk to him; to come out and surrender the firearm she was clutching tightly inside her overcoat’s pocket, before it was too late. To come out, so they could talk and try to work something out. One phrase stuck in my mind forever, “Sweetheart, please, come out. Think of your children! They will become orphans! Please, Mija, I beg you!”
Standing next to him, I could hear the anguish in his voice waiting for the front door to open to see her coming out of the house.
Minutes passed ever so slowly; they lingered, as if a heavy fog had just descended upon us, until the iron cast door finally opened. And there she was. Her left hand stuck to her side and closed in a tight fist, a tight fist that was cutting her circulation giving it an ashen, cadaveric look; and the right hand, the lethal one, still inside her overcoat pocket holding the gun.
And I could also recall the terror I felt when, for a moment, I dared to look into her eyes and saw the familiar, still petrifying expression of a rage, ready to explode; ready to cause so much pain and suffering. My grandfather asked her if he could open the gate with his set of keys. She looked at him, her eyes vacant and lifeless, and nodded affirmatively.
I had always admired my grandpa whom I had never seen losing his composure. But right now, his hands were shaking, and he was having trouble putting the keys in. The silence surrounding us felt heavy and suffocating and for a moment, I thought I was on the verge of an asthma episode. Meanwhile, my mother stood there motionless.
My grandfather was finally able to open the chain-link gate, and with an unsteady gait, he walked toward his daughter with his arms wide open. She walked to him, and at that moment, as if she had been long waiting for the safe harbor of his embrace, she reciprocated; she reciprocated to allow herself into the sanctuary his protective arms offered.
And they stood there holding each other for a couple of minutes, until my grandfather, disengaging from their embrace and looking into his eldest child’s eyes with utmost tenderness, asked her to give him the gun. Docile and obedient, she reached into her overcoat’s right pocket, and pulled out the shiny silvery gun with a bright pearly white butt and gave it to him without saying a word.
Suzanna is a published writer and poet. After the tragic death of her youngest son, she published, in 2021, a memoir, “This is your story, Spin,” in English and Spanish. Suzanna can be contacted at [email protected].
