A Letter to Katie

A Letter to Katie 

By S. L. Edwards

Dear Katie,

            The question that you’ll be asking the most is, “Why?”

            I am ashamed to say that I don’t, and probably never will, have an answer good enough for you.

            What I do know is that all started with your mother.

            You’ll never be able to truly understand how much I loved her. The way we grew up, I was both her brother and her father. Neither of us ever talked about your grandparents, and it because we never knew them ourselves. They were killed when I was 11 and your mother was 4. My father, Raul, was big, strong and (I believe) a good man. You’ve probably only ever seen one picture of your grandmother, Juana, who died when she was 32.

            I remember her face, right before she hid us.

            She was smiling, though it was obviously hard for her to do so. Her smile was something weak and strong all at once, if you can imagine that; A resolute façade ruined by weeping, wide eyes. She folded a photo of all of us into my hands, stroked your mother’s hair and put a finger to her lips.

            “Shh,” was the last thing she said to us.

            Not “I love you,” though we knew she did. Not, “take care of each other,” though she knew we would.

            Only a simple demand that kept us alive.

            I don’t know where the soldiers took them, where they executed them. But I remember the yelling, the screaming and weeping. They never looked for us, those soldiers. I don’t believe that they knew what or who they were looking for, only that they were ordered to kill anyone who put up a fight. Anyone with certain books on their shelves and anyone who had ever known names on a secret, fatal list.

            But our parents never came back.

            Gabbi and I slept under the floor for two days, drinking the rainwater that seeped through.

            I try not to remember what came next. I don’t like talking about it. Sometimes, it is good to leave things behind, especially when there is so little to learn from them.

            What can I tell you, that it is easy for an 11-year-old to grow up overnight? It is. Your mother and I dodged bullets, we slept in trees, we buried ourselves in the dirt next to dead bodies in the hopes that soldiers would look us over. Jaws were open wide on both sides, the rebels and the government alike had their arms aimed at any and everyone in the countryside. We heard that the cities were safe, but then there were stories about war-orphans who were picked up by black cars and never seen again. Stories about boys who were forcefully tattooed by carnivorous alleys, and little girls who became at once mature and broken in the matter of hours.

            So, we rode the train into this country.

            Your mother never did anything wrong in coming here. But I won’t lie to you. Not now, and not ever.

            To keep your mother safe, I did many, many things that a man should never do.

I stole, I lied.

I killed, Katie.

Do not ever let anyone tell you that this country is not great. We found an aunt of ours, Tia Carla, and she did her best to raise children whose hearts were far too old. Tio Adolfo died before we came here, a car accident with a drunk driver.

Over time, Gabbi became a girl again. She was young enough to adjust from what she had witnessed. She brushed the hairs of dolls, she made her room pink, she giggled and laughed when she teased her “too serious” brother.

I couldn’t follow her.

Tia Carla did her best by me, but I had already become someone else. I struggled in school when I was there, not understanding how I would ever need Math or Science. But I buried myself in learning English, in understanding the literature and history of the country that I so desperately wanted to be a part of. I forsook my mother tongue, divorced myself from my history entirely.

This broke Tia Carla’s heart, but I believe she understood.

I never wanted to go to college, to be anyone other than the man I was. But Gabbi, your mother, she had dreams. God, what beautiful dreams…to go to college, to so thoroughly understand all the charts and math that I found so useless, that she would command them.

“They’re not useless!” She told me once, angrily.

“You could be so much more if you understood them, Javi!”

She made me smile. No girlfriend, no wife ever made me smile the way my strong little sister did. And I believed that she would be worth more than both of us, worth every moment of horror that we endured.

Valedictorian. Medical School.

It was going well. And, if I had to wash dishes or fix cars so that Gabbi could afford a private tutor and SAT classes, well so be it. There was nothing that she couldn’t do, that I wouldn’t do.

Then she met your father, Rodger.

Growing up as I did, you develop a series of senses which normal people do not have. One of those is a keen, almost supernatural awareness of a person when you first see or meet them. You can tell from their walk, from the angles of their smile. You know immediately who is a threat, who is a friend.

You might feel that I denied you the right to know your father, just as I was denied the right to know mine.

You would be perfectly right to feel that way.

I feel differently.

I do not expect you to forgive me. I do not need you to forgive me.

Katie, I know the following words will hurt. And I will not forgive myself for writing them but you must know:

Your father was evil.

He was not the sort of evil that I was used to, the kind that carefully and ruthlessly targets and destroys. No, your father was a chaotic, careless evil; a black hole with tendrils that ensnared and swallowed anyone who let it get close enough.

But he was quite an actor. He had a very nice smile, a soothing voice, a certain poetry and cadence that melted too-trusting hearts and won him many false friends who he would exploit along the way. Rodger was not stupid, by no means was an idiot, though sometimes he wanted people to believe he was. And he was afraid of those who saw him for what he was.

So, he told your mother lies, lies about both myself and Tia Carla. And she was young. I don’t blame her for believing him. At that age, it is so easy to believe that your family does not care about you, especially when they so adamantly oppose someone who you love. It is easy, when you feel love, which is so intoxicating and wonderful, to follow it.

And so, your father took her from us.

And it was a long time before she looked back.

I’ve loved too, Katie. I’ve been married twice now, and I loved both of my wives with all my heart. Allie left me because I was morose and poisonous, and I left Deb because she cheated on me, probably for the same reason that Allie left me.

I am telling you this because as horrible as things may get, I never want you to blame your mother. You too, will grow to be wild and foolish. You too, will make mistakes. We all do.

If you must hate anyone in all of this, I pray that it will be me.

Never, for even an instant, should you blame your mother, who loved you more than you will ever know.

She had you after she had been with Rodger for three years. Rodger had indulged in every vice you could imagine, because he had your mother as a tether and pillar of stability. Drugs, prostitution, nothing was too low for Rodger.

When I first saw your mother with a bruise, I did not give her the chance to answer a question. I did not ask her one.

A door comes off its hinges with one strong kick to the right place. A man who is high is not fast enough to dodge a fist. If his mouth is swollen and bleeding, he will not be able to ask why.

I let him know that if he ever hurt my sister again, I would kill him.

I had done it before, I told him.

This scared him enough, I believe, for two years.

And you were born.

God, your mother loved you so much. I loved you so much. So did Tia Carla.

Your mother wanted a baby to do good in this life, to make someone better than herself. Someone who she could to right by.

Rodger wanted leverage.

You are too young to remember, the way he used you to extract money from us. He would tell us things you needed, supposedly needed, and he would use the money to find his high. He would threaten to stop me from seeing you, to stop Tia Carla from seeing you.

I wasn’t going to let that happen.

And…Katie, it broke your mother’s heart how he began to treat you both. He ignored the two of you, leaving you with a dirty diaper for hours while your mother was at work. He would scream at you when you cried, if you can imagine something so horrible.

Gabbi would tell me all of this, crying in the dead of night over the simple cup of tea that I made her.

And I would tell her, beg her to take you and run. To come to us, to live with us.

But she couldn’t. And I knew that.

So, she began seeking her highs with Rodger.

Maybe she was too sad. I wonder if I had stolen you, if I had forced her to leave him, would she still be alive? If I had acted sooner…would you have ever known the incredible woman your mother became?

You’ll hate me for that, too.

Her death was hard on me. Hard on Tia Carla.

We tried to get custody of you, but there are so many laws and all of them are slow moving. And all the while, Rodger kept threatening to neglect you and take him wherever he went.

He had forgotten to be afraid of me.

And I used that, the way he used so many people.

I hope that, one day, you’ll visit me in jail. I hope that you’ll put your little hand up to the glass, and I’ll put mine there with it. I hope that it will be just like when your mother held my hand, when she smiled and told me that I was far too serious.

If you don’t, maybe you’ll see me when I get out, be it in 10 or even 30 years. I have daydreams of you having a family of your own, of Tia Carla having raised a woman who will be worth every ounce of pain that came into making you. I pray for a woman created by destiny and nurtured by incredible love.  

And you may not believe it, but I love you.

I don’t know when, or even if, Tia Carla will show you this letter. I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t know my name, if Tia Carla has told you a loving fiction to shield you from the truth. But I want you to be able to know, if you so choose.

I’ve already denied you so much, it’s not fair that I deny you anymore.

Please be good, be kind to others, and be better than we ever were.

Forever with Love,
           

Uncle Javi.