approximately 3,300 words

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALICIA ©

by Mercedes Pecunia

 

I cannot believe what my eyes have seen.  I am still shaken and cannot grasp how this could possibly be.  Several weeks have passed since it happened, and I still cannot get over what I saw.  I know it wasn’t a dream, but that is impossible.  It just cannot be! She is dead.  She has been dead for so long¼how can this be? Maybe it was a dream.  No one else saw what I saw.  I fainted.  Maybe, I hit my head too hard.  Yes, it was all some kind of posttraumatic figment of my imagination.  No? I just don’t know what to think anymore!

I would like to share something with you that I am battling within myself in order to accept.  But I need someone to listen.  Someone that maybe can understand and help me make sense of all this and someone who I will not hurt by admitting how wrong I had been and the incredible things that I perceived in that house.

I need to sit down for this.  My name is Nilda and I lost my eldest daughter Alicia many years ago.  She passed when she was in her early twenties.  She was so vibrant and full of life, but unfortunately died so abruptly.  She was just beginning to acquire the recognition she longed for as a fashion model when her life was cut short.  Pardon me if I sound resentful, but I don’t think I will ever get over her death.  She was my brightest star and the sweetest of all my children.  Please do not misunderstand me.  I am grateful to the Lord for everything I have and everything I am, but I still cannot understand why he would take her away from me in such a horrible fashion.  It just does not seem right, but I do trust God and I know there is a reason for everything he does.  All I can do is place myself in the Lord’s hands and hope he will be merciful with me and someday end my suffering.

For now, please accept my apology for my digression; I will try to remain more focused.

Alicia had long flowing dark brown hair.  I still have some of her hair from when she had her first haircut when she was 6.  She was an excellent student; so intelligent and dedicated.  She was stunning and had inherited her voluptuousness from me.  She had the most beautifully shaped brown eyes and soft caramel skin.  She was not very tall, standing at about 5 feet 8 and ½ inches, but she had a personality that outshined all the other girls on the runway.  That was just the way she was.  She had a way of stealing the limelight from the others without even trying.  I knew they all wanted to be more like my Alicia.  My poor darling, she was finally on her way to fulfill her professional goals and then¼well, then, the accident happened.  She never had the chance to realize her dreams.

Again, I apologize.  I need a moment to compose myself.

Alicia’s father and I had gone through so many tumultuous times in our relationship.  We had been married for several years and although I bore him four children, he would hit me and denigrate me every chance he got.  He never did it in public.  We had an image to uphold and he always preached how image and contacts were everything in business.  He was a successful salesman dealing in all kinds of wares I purchased during my quarterly visits to Puerto Rico.  If I would have known the type of man he really was, I never would have married him, but he was so charming and handsome when we first met, I was smitten quickly.  We had a long courtship, as was the custom in the day.  For seven long years, we were chaperoned on dates and although he begged me to make love to him and promised we would soon be married, I could not shame my father and our family in that way.  I had been raised properly.  Besides, I had heard so many stories of sly young men filling a girl’s heart with amorous illusions, only to desert her once she had been deflowered.  I vowed I would not let that happen to me.

Our marriage was a happy one in the beginning.  Alejandro and I enjoyed two years of wedded bliss before he began drinking heavily and gambling regularly.  After that, came the other women and finally the physical abuse.  I was already expecting our fist child and he promised me he would change his ways once the baby was born.  He did change.  Alicia was the apple of his eye.  He was so proud of her and doted on her constantly.  But, in time, he gradually regressed to his fodmer self.  He began coming home later and the numerous anonymous women began calling him on the phone more frequently.  Then, he always had to leave due to some simulated emergency, and sometimes, would not come home at all until well into the following evening.  I was always making up excuses so that the kids would not see what their father was really like.  They loved him so and upheld the utmost pristine image of him.  I strived to never shatter it.

There wasn’t anything that Alicia would ask her father for that he would not give her.  I think our other children may have been slightly resentful, but if they were, they did not show it.  Then again, the other kids knew better than to confront or contradict their father on anything.  They were afraid of him and that is the way Alejandro liked it.  Fear equaled respect, except when it came to Alicia.  It was quite clear she was his favorite.

The years went on and times changed.  I joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  They gave me solace and courage to go on while married to this man.  Alejandro was highly opposed to me joining the church.  He wanted me home with the children and not exposing them to ‘Bible Humpers’ as he called the congregation members.  A 10% donation seemed outrageous to him, but you cannot place a price on God so I continued my reverie in secret.  I would coordinate my church activities around his vices and by this time, he had overtaken our importing venture altogether.  He burned my Bible several times until I learned to find hiding places he would ignore and his interests increasingly were directed elsewhere.  As these events unfolded, a sexual revolution was commencing.  More women began working and soliciting babysitters.  I was slowly becoming a recluse and I was being left behind by the new wave of feminists.  As far as the children, they were getting older and were not blind.  They began to really see what had been going on.  I somehow gathered the courage to free myself from him.  I had to rebel against everything I had been taught; a woman was to be subservient to her husband, but I also knew that I could not endure this life any longer.  I certainly did not want my children to continue to endure the underlying discord which lurked in our household that would certainly one day explode and blow away their romanticized preconceptions of their perfect father.  God would be behind me and he would give me courage and protect my children and me.

A few years before my decision to leave him for good, we had separated for over a year, but he convinced me to come back to him and we remarried, but his violence escalated until he shot his own son in the abdomen six times as he tried to defend me from his father’s beatings.  I don’t know what Alejandro was thinking, but it was clear that if I did not leave him for good, someone in our family would surely die and I could not bear to lose any of my kids that way or have them orphaned due to one of his unpredictable rages.  As a result of the divorce, I kept the summer home, two of the cars and an insignificant amount of the money we had made together.  He had a very good lawyer and I was not interested in prolonging the proceedings any longer than necessary.  I just wanted the nightmare to be over as quickly as possible.  I knew life would go on and I would just have to learn to make due with what we had.

During the summer of ’68, Alicia drove her two sisters and brother to our summerhouse in the outskirts of Santo Domingo.  They made it there safely and Alicia made sure she called me every day so I would not worry.  She was such a responsible girl. However, they never made it back! Another car crashed into them and sent the compact car whirling and crumbling until it landed in a ditch.  Hilda was paralyzed for six months due to spinal injuries and I could not be certain if she would ever be able to walk again.  Wilma, my youngest suffered second degree burns on her legs and arms since the door on the side where she had been seated had jammed and the kind souls that had rescued them, could not get her out sooner.  My son, Magno, suffered minor fractures in various bones in his body, but worst of all I had lost my beautiful Alicia.  She had been my comfort and inspiration during all the dark periods in my life and now she was gone.  And, how would I tell Alejandro? I knew he would blame me for her death as he had blamed me for everything negative that had ever happened in our lives.

I did not have to tell Alejandro about the accident.  The media had picked up on the story and Alicia’s picture was on every local channel for several days after.  God granted me the strength to call Alejandro and try to comfort him.  I knew how much he loved his daughter, but of course, as I had suspected, he did blame me for her death and cursed me in front of his new beloved.  I turned the other cheek, but also hung up the phone.  In my heart, I forgave him, but I would not allow him to make me feel any worse at a time like this.  I was beyond his choke-hold now.

Trying to live a normal life again was the hardest thing I had to do.  I could not stop thinking about her.  I just could not forget.  The kids missed their sister terribly and our happy façade would crumble on her birthday and on the anniversary of her death.  For a long time, I could not get myself to dispose of her personal belongings.  I would clean her old room and hope one day she would come home although I knew she no longer could.  I knew it was a sin to question the Lord and not be content, but I could not contain myself.  I was having a difficult time selling the summerhouse.  None of us wanted to go near it anymore.  There were too many painful memories there, but no matter how much I lowered the price or how many real estate agents I contacted to help me, no one wanted to buy it.  It remained boarded up and began to deteriorate.

The phone rang and Wilma answered it.  I saw the dismay on her face as she slammed the receiver down.  I asked her who it was, but she revealed it was some tasteless prankster.  I left the alone, but the calls continued every night after.  She always answered the phone and then would hang it up violently.  I was beginning to think it was a jilted lover of hers and she was too embarrassed to fill me in on the details.  Hilda had married by now and Magno was living in a dorm with his girlfriend.  Wilma was the only one that was still living at home.  Sometimes I thought she just did not want me to be alone.  I was grateful for her company despite the circumstances so I chose to not press her  whenever the issue surfaced.

This time, the phone rang and Wilma was not home yet.  I picked up the receiver.  The caller remained silent for a few seconds.  I heard a man’s voice say, “Ms. Nilda?” “Yes, who is this?” I inquired.

“My name is not important.  I have something to tell you about your daughter.”

“About my daughter? How do you know my daughter? Who...”

He interrupted my questions, “I never met your daughter, madam.  I have seen her walking down the highway.”

I was trying to make sense as to why someone would call me to inform me they had seen Wilma walking down the highway.  What was he trying to tell me?  But in an instant, my mind concocted overwhelmingly numerous scenarios to correlate the information this man was about to reveal.  I was preparing myself for the worse and sat down on a chair nearby.  The caller continued, “I am referring to your dead daughter.  She has been seen at the house by the beach and sometimes walking on the highway near the scene of the accident.”  How could someone be so cruel to call me to try to fill my head with this nonsense.

     “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything at all.  I just wanted you to know your daughter is not at peace.  I think she may be still looking for you.”

I still held the receiver as the line went dead.  I sat there thinking for a long time as the obnoxiously loud tone of the phone continued climaxed and then ceased.  It took me quite a few weeks to tell Wilma about my conversation with this stranger, but I had to say something to her.  She had noticed how easily distracted I had become since then.  Wilma and I agreed we would drive to the scene of the accident to disprove this outlandish claim.  And, if it was true, I could see my Alicia again if only for an instant, but I knew that would not happen.  I was trying to not get my hopes up too high.  I knew better.  After all the church teaches that once we die, we return to ashes until Jesus’ return, Judgment Day when we are reunited with our savior.

It was difficult initially to find the exact location where it had happened, but once I saw that they had not replaced the dented guardrail, I knew we had the right spot.  We sat there for several hours and watched the cars speed by hoping to glimpse the now infamous specter.  Once or twice drivers would stop and ask whether we needed help.  We waited for over five hours, but nothing happened.  I knew this would not hold true.  God, please forgive me for doubting your word.  I knelt down on the grassy sandy floor and prayed.  Wilma walked back to the car to wait for me.

Wilma wanted to drive back to the summerhouse itself.  I was tired of all this and knew it would be fruitless, but I wanted to please her so I nodded in approval.  This little adventure had taken up almost an entire night, and so far there was nothing to show for it besides achy feet and emotional turmoil.  I hesitated to express my reservations.  I could tell she had set her mind to do this.  We walked across the driveway and headed towards the house.  I was surprised to see that Wilma had the keys in her pocket and began unlocking the door.  She had obviously planned to come here.  We entered the house.  There was dust everywhere and you could hear the scurrying of little rodent feet when we entered.  Wilma had two flashlights with her and lit one.  She handed me the other, but I refrained from turning it on.  I wanted this to be over as quickly as possible.  The house looked exactly the same as we had left it when we had last tried to sell it.  Nothing was out of place.

Wilma wanted to go upstairs and I slowly followed behind her.  I was reliving forgotten memories at every turn.  I hated being in this house again¼so many excruciatingly hurtful memories.  I saw the oak table where we had played board games and cards on so many occasions.  I traced my finger along the edge of it and the coat of dust clung to me.  I wiped it on my skirt and continued walking.  The sound of my shoes reverberated in the empty hallway.  A few yards away hung the giant black and white portrait of Alicia that photographer boyfriend of hers had surprised her with on her twentieth birthday.  She was sitting outside near the palm tree on a picture perfect day.  He had done such a wonderful job capturing the essence of her.  It pained me to look upon this image and I began rushing towards the bedrooms and away from that very intimate portrayal that sparked nothing but brokenheartedness inside me.  I then realized I had lost track of Wilma.  She had wandered out of my sight momentarily, but I knew she would soon return.

I was now in front of Alicia’s room and stood in front of the door for some time.  I found myself unable to rush in there.  I took a deep breath and steadied myself before turning the knob.  The creaky door gave way and swung open.  The room emanated a musky flowery scent; the remnants from Alicia’s favorite perfume, the one she wore faithfully, and dankness.  I walked about the room inspecting everything.  I picked up some of her trinkets and cherished souvenirs and indulged in recalling how she had acquired them¼our trips to Spain, Italy, Puerto Rico, New York, France, Washington, DC, and other places.  We had had such happy times all of us together.

Her canopy bed still had the mosquito netting hanging over it and the pillows still recorded her scent.  It disturbed me to not have cleared out this room sooner.  I just could not get myself to do so then, and I wasn’t sure I still could.  A picture frame stood on the nightstand.  I wiped the dust off the glass that covered it; a picture of Alejandro and me during happier times.  I was pregnant with Magno in it.  I smiled to myself and reminisced for a moment longer.  Wilma had returned.  I could hear her footsteps drawing closer and apologized for losing track of her.  From her silence, I gathered she was not pleased.  I could not help myself and as I held the picture, began to cry bitterly.  It seemed surreal as if it were another couple in the picture, another life entirely.  I held the picture close and pressed it against my breast.  I was certain I was unnerving Wilma with my display of weakness.  I needed to be strong for her and wiped the tears from my face before I came around to face her.  I turned my body in her direction and bowed my head.  I wanted to give myself a few more seconds to hide my obvious sorrow.  I looked up at her, but it was not Wilma at all! I froze and my chest tightened.  I desperately gasped for air.  But the more I concentrated on breathing, the less air I managed to draw in.  I fought to remain upright, but the room began spinning until I lost control.  I could not stop my body from collapsing, and everything swirled into complete darkness.