The Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold

✖ Chapter 14 ✖

I watched the lights from through the window, casting bright trails of different colors against the night. Toni was released after they'd restored her strength and assured us that the baby was fine. That it'd just been a fainting spell that occasionally happened during early pregnancies and nothing really to write home about.

By the mood in the car as papa drove mama, Toni and I home, you'd think that someone had actually died.

It was so bad that no one said anything even despite the fact that the radio station that was dialed on the car was one of those that were more static than anything that made sense. But tonight was the first time in a couple of weeks that we were all together and that was a good thing. Even if at the end of the night Toni and I died from our eardrums splintering and leaking out all the blood in our heads from all the screaming our parents were sure to do once we made it home.

I felt something nudge against my thigh and when I looked down I saw my sister's outstretched hand. Toni faced forward, serene. Or maybe resigned to her fate. I clasped my hand in hers and squeezed. As I swallowed past a lump in my throat I decided I had to do something. This couldn't go on like this any longer. If not for them, for the fact that I wanted my big sister back. I was done with having to sneak around our parents to see her. Yes, she'd done a terrible thing and the consequences were hers to bear for life, but it wasn't fair that I had to pay for our parents anger as well.

Toni and I took a deep breath as if choreographed when we got out of the car outside our garage. I sent her a little smile and offered my hand. We walked behind our parents like that until we were in our living room. They turned around, ready to unleash a world of suffering on us. Except I was faster.

"Are you really going to do this?" I asked, as if I didn't fear the chancletazos that mama could unleash on me. She'd never hit Toni now, but I was fair game. Still, my boldness caught them off guard and I took a step forward. "We just came back from the hospital and thank God everything's fine. But what if it hadn't been?"

The lump in my throat was back, this time in partnership with a certain sting behind my eyes that I had to work hard to blink away. Toni's hand reminded me that this wasn't about me. I didn't have a right to make a scene and make this all about me.

But our parents didn't, either.

"What if something bad had happened to Toni and the baby?" I shook my head and said, "What if the last words we said to her were the harsh things you said that drove her away two weeks ago?"

She tugged at my hand and said my name with her soothing voice. She'd never had the nerve to say this to our parents, having grown up as the obedient and deferent daughter. It had earned their approval up until this happened, and even though I'd always craved that and tried to follow in Toni's footsteps as much as possible to get it, I'd never really receive it because our parents simply did not hold me to the impossibly high standards they held Toni at. The ones she'd always surpassed.

I studied hard. I didn't use foul words. I hung out with good kids. I didn't date. I dressed conservatively. I aspired to go to the best business school in town. I put all of this pressure on myself from seeing what they demanded of Toni. The second she'd made a mistake, they'd turned against her. Their perfect daughter had embarrassed them, made them feel nowhere near as perfect as they portrayed themselves to our community.

How would they react if I screwed up?

Did I have any hope that they'd forgive me, support me, embrace me, if they hadn't done the same to Toni?

And ultimately, that was why I lifted my chin up and said, "Wouldn't that have been so much worse than the embarrassment of having a grandson out of wedlock?"