They had this habit, every Sunday, of calling their relatives abroad. Usually they did it from their house down the street, but that afternoon, some technical problem brought them to mine. It was my house by name only, though. They never really thought of it as mine. They came and went as if it still belonged to the grandparents. Even after I married their son and moved in, no one seemed to notice the change. When the deed was signed, my name wasn’t there. His father had made sure of it. Once, I asked him if he thought this was my home too. He said yes, but only as long as I was married to his son.
So that day, when I heard their voices from the next room, calling abroad as they always did, I thought it would be polite to go and say hello. They all knew I was there. I walked in, smiled, and pulled up a chair. For a moment, the screen filled with faces I half-recognized. Then everything went still. They looked at each other, confused, uncomfortable, waiting for someone else to speak. One person even left the room. I felt my throat tighten, as if I’d walked into the wrong house entirely. My father-in-law and his daughter watched me until I stood up and left.
It wasn’t the first time I’d felt unwelcome there. I had been ill for months. My husband said it was all in my head, his father kept informing me I couldn’t keep the house clean enough. I was losing hair, weight, and sleep, still caring for a baby, still cleaning every corner of that moldy place. My eyes were red even on my wedding day. I remember standing on the church stairs, right after the ceremony, watching him as he went off with the guests, laughing with a woman he once liked, and his father telling me, in a demanding voice, to not to make a scene. I didn’t. That was my first mistake.
The months when I was sick and everyone assumed it was my fault — that I was weak, dramatic, or conflictual. The house was falling apart then, full of mold and rodents, but the sickness they saw was in me. That Sunday call was nothing new. It was just another way of being reminded that I didn’t belong.
My husband got mad everytime I asked him to take my side for once, he felt I was asking him to choose, every time, between me and his family. Here I was thinking he already chose me. That we were, in fact, his family.
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