The Curse of the Flores Women by Lopes Angélica

Author:Lopes, Angélica [Lopes, Angélica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

13

Recife, 2010

Before Alice had even spotted her, Tia Helena was waving at the group of passengers coming through the arrivals door at Guararapes Airport. Alice had assured her aunt she didn’t need to pick her up. It would be much easier to just get a taxi, but Tia Helena insisted: “How could anyone do a thing like that? If you don’t show your guests a good welcome, they won’t come back.”

“A Flores woman returning to her homeland!” she proclaimed when she saw Alice, who smiled back at her, a little embarrassed. Though Alice was grateful for the welcome, she felt obligated to correct her: her legal name was not Flores.

“But I’m not a Flores, Tia. My name is Ribeiro.”

Only her father’s name was on her birth certificate, a man she, ironically, barely knew and who had moved to the United States when she was still a baby.

For the first few years after the divorce, her father would still travel back to Brazil to see her. Once she got a little older, Alice started to make the trip to Dallas by herself. She made this journey a few times, and those adventures were some of her most thrilling childhood memories. Being taken by the hand by the stewardess tasked with delivering her to her father on another hemisphere. She used to get special food on the flight, and they would give her a coloring book with pictures of little airplanes and a box of crayons. She had good memories of those times abroad, where she got lots of presents and heard people speaking a different language. But when her father remarried, to a Colombian woman he met there, and then had two more children, her American siblings, the daughter who lived in Brazil was no longer his priority, and their visits and meetings became less and less frequent.

Vera was overwhelmed, disgruntled by the unequal division of labor between her and her ex-husband, and took it out on her daughter, even if unconsciously. Now, as an adult, Alice sympathized with and even admired Vera’s efforts to raise and educate her without a partner. But deep down she couldn’t forgive her mother’s constant resentment for having only fulfilled her role as a mother. After all, she hadn’t asked to be born.

On the car radio, there was a discussion about a mother who was unable to regain custody of her child. Lílian, 27, accused her ex-husband, Alberto, 50, of domestic violence while they were married. Alberto, in turn, alleged abandonment and kidnapping of a minor by his wife.

“I had to run away and report him before he killed me,” she explained to the host of the radio program. “I couldn’t leave my son in that house.”

Her ex-husband was a successful businessman, and she was a former model. They met at an event he sponsored. It was love at first sight, and a marriage proposal soon followed. Lílian was treated by her husband like a princess—Alberto was the man she’d always dreamed of, opening car doors for her and leaving her love notes hidden around the house.

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