The Wonders by Elena Medel

Author:Elena Medel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Dream

Madrid, 2008

“I’ve dreamed about my father’s suicide every night since I was thirteen. I’m going to fall asleep soon, and I want to tell you about it now, because tomorrow that’s how I’ll wake up: having just seen my father hanging from a tree. Don’t be scared: I don’t talk in my sleep, I won’t burst into tears when the alarm goes off; I’m used to it now. Some men have told me I snore, others that I toss and turn; what happens for me is that every night, my father crashes his car— intentionally—but when that doesn’t do the job, he goes and hangs himself from a tree instead. They probably already told you. It’s always the same: they say my name, my age, maybe where I’m from or what I do, if I’m working at the time, and then they lower their voices and say my dad killed himself. It’s like they’re feigning a hurt they can’t feel; they didn’t know him, and they don’t know the circumstances, either, or the reasons he did what he did. Or maybe it’s pity that makes them lower their voices: maybe they see me as victim of the moment my father killed himself, of everything that act set in motion, and any wrong move I make, they trace back to that decision of his. For years, I took a kind of comfort in that: my father’s suicide gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, with the pain and grief of it all as my excuse. But the truth is, even before it happened I liked being cruel, even as a kid. I mean, I took pleasure in it. I couldn’t, I can’t help it, to this day: I enjoyed making fun of classmates who didn’t have as much money as me, or who weren’t as smart. Back then, that was pretty easy, and it didn’t bother me when I got left out of all the playground games, or when I didn’t get invited to their birthday parties. They also probably told you I’m not a very good person. Your friend must have warned you, at least. I have a younger sister. No, we hardly ever talk. I’ll tell you about it another time. Eva, her name is Eva, she’s four years younger than me, and we’ve always been complete opposites: she’s incredibly outgoing—she used to love spending the weekend at one of our father’s restaurants, running from table to table and playing waitress. When my father died, Eva went deep inside herself, she hardly spoke, but she would draw all the time; that was her way of expressing everything, not that I know, or really care, what she was trying to say. My mother was raised by an aunt and uncle of hers, and it always seemed strange to me that before the suicide, my sister was so much like him, like Chico, and after, she turned into a carbon copy of Aunt Soledad—such an apt name, she’s the most solitary woman I know.

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