Excerpt: Unravelled

At home, we waited. We went about our daily lives and the daily tasks of work and laundry and making dinner, and I continued to write the letters, this time addressed to “MY BROTHER WHO WAS LAST SEEN IN AUSCHWITZ, POLAND” or “MY SISTER WHO MAY NOT BE HERE, GERMANY ”. I kept updating my family of my daily struggles, of the ins and outs of raising a teenage daughter and wondered if they had struggled in the same way with defiant outbursts and sneaky behavior. Surely my mother and sister hadn’t remembered us being like that! My family’s ghosts had become tangible to me, living beings, as real to me as any of the friends I had made in the United States. They accompanied me to the supermarket, they hung in the air as I fell asleep, and I breathed them in and out. I could confide in my sister about my marriage troubles and ask my mother for advice. I could ask my father why I wasn’t good enough and he would answer me, only looking up from the wooden carving he was making for a few moments to tell me from the side of his mouth that it wasn’t me who wasn’t good enough, but those who didn’t see the beauty in me.