Radici marce

Relatives. The further away they are, the better — especially when there are many of them. As a child, I did try to reach out to my countless uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces. But I was never good enough for them. Don’t worry — this won’t be one of those teary, self-pitying tales. I’m not the sentimental type when it comes to family.

Still, no matter how much distance I put between us, I can’t deny I’m one of them. Their toxic blood runs in my veins. My childhood and especially my teenage years were spent suffocating in rage. I took a perverse pleasure in hating them and feeding our conflicts. In the end, love and hatred are the two forces that drive almost everything we do.

Over the years, my burning hostility has cooled. I succeeded in keeping most of them away from me and my own family. The occasional gossipy phone calls still reach us, of course, keeping us vaguely informed of their lives. But I no longer drown in resentment. I’m not that frightened little girl who could be silenced with a scolding or a slap. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m in charge now.

Yet they still managed to sting me — like a swarm of wasps. And they couldn’t have chosen a worse moment than my wedding night. But before I tell you what happened, let me sketch who these people truly are.

My father is the eldest of six siblings. He married my mum ten years before I was born. He started as a shoemaker and later opened his own business selling custom-made shoes. My mum was a nurse, but she gave up her job when I arrived. In our small, so-called family, she and I have only ever had each other to rely on. My father and I were never close. From a young age, I understood I could expect no help or protection from him. A harsh realisation for a little girl. Nor was my parents’ marriage any model of a healthy relationship. To me, it was a cautionary tale.

The first years may have been our happiest, though I remember none of it. According to my mum, everything changed for the worse when my father’s brothers came to town and he took them in. They began “working” for him — or rather, for themselves. The business grew, money flowed in, but it was strictly divided among the brothers. What my mother and I received was barely enough for bills and food.

My mum is a proud woman. Eventually she grew tired of it, returned to nursing, and found a good position in an upmarket kindergarten where she managed to get me admitted for free. Everyone knew we were on our own, despite being the wife and daughter of. There was no strong male presence to hide behind, so we learned early to stand up for ourselves.

Things grew worse when I became a teenager. The fights with my father became more frequent and more violent. I learned to predict his outbursts of hysteria. He never took my mother’s side or mine, especially when his siblings were involved. He showed no interest in my world or my problems — except once. When I was fourteen and started wearing red lipstick, he saw me and shouted at my mum: “If that little slut gets raped, it’ll be her own fucking fault!”

I finally found some peace after graduating from college and starting work. When my father retired, he handed the business over to me. The first thing I did was kick out his brothers. The scandal was enormous. By then we were so estranged that he knew there was no point arguing; he could no longer threaten or control me. His brothers tried to sue, but they had no legal rights and lost. We moved to another city, and I hired reliable people to run the business.

My uncle Allen — whom my mum and I mockingly call Monsieur Alain — is an idiot of rare quality. Somehow the fool has still muddled through life, largely thanks to his formidable wife, Clarisse. The two richly deserve each other. For years they lived off shady dealings and money stolen from us. They have two children, Amelia and Amal.

Actually, Allen has three. There is an older son, also called Amal, from a previous relationship. Clarisse made sure the boy became little more than a vague rumour, even in his father’s memory. I doubt his younger siblings even know he exists.

Allen and Clarisse played the part of the glamorous, successful couple whose daughter excelled at gymnastics. On every visit, they forced Amelia to perform her routines like a trained monkey. Guests were then expected to applaud her “talent” for doing the splits.

I once loved Amelia. Two years younger than me, she was the cousin I desperately wanted to play with. But Clarisse never allowed it; Amelia always had to “focus on her performance.” Instead, we were parked in front of the television to watch gymnastics competitions. One day I finally convinced her to come outside. She told me her mother said I was useless because I never brought home any medals. That was the last time I spoke to my niece.

A few years ago, we learned Clarisse had been cheating on Allen with a lieutenant. She had claimed her annual trips abroad were for business, when in fact she was enjoying herself with her “sandpit general.” Divorce seemed inevitable, but Allen — moron though he is — realised he needed her cunning to keep their affairs afloat. They lived apart for a while, but Clarisse, a control freak, couldn’t bear the thought of her family existing without her surveillance. She bombarded him with declarations of love and addiction until he gave in. They reconciled.

Uncle Randy is a talented painter and an outstanding arsehole. More than anyone else in this charming family, he suffers from delusions of grandeur. He was handed opportunities other artists would kill for — exhibitions in prestigious French galleries — but refused them because they required actual work. His motto was simple: “Just because you don’t have a job doesn’t mean you don’t have an income.” He lived well by draining anyone gullible enough to listen to his “you’re helping family” routine. For years, my father’s business was his personal cash machine.

My mum and Randy have been archenemies since before I was born. One freezing winter, he and his wife turned up asking for a place to stay. My mother returned from work one day to find Randy painting on the open balcony with an electric heater blazing for hours. We were already struggling financially. When she confronted him, he pushed her and called her names. From that day on, he was my enemy, too. No one treats my mother that way.

Uncle Nathan is a drug addict. As a child I called him Lucky Luke because of the resemblance — especially the nose — though there was nothing cool about him. He has been married twice to decent women, both far too good for him. He destroyed both marriages. His brothers and sister always took his side and branded the wives sluts. Curiously, Clarisse — who actually earned the title — was spared. Go figure.

Like Randy, Nathan was no friend of work, though he occasionally held a job for a few months before being fired. His first wife threw him out after he sold her belongings for drugs and verbally abused their son. Later, he set her new boyfriend’s car on fire. She cut off all access to their child. Nathan barely cared; he had never loved the boy.

His second wife fled after the birth of their second child, exhausted by his absences and endless lack of money. My father let him stay with us and work in the shop. When my mum once caught him yelling at me while smoking weed in my presence, she threw him out. My father protested but ultimately agreed — no drugs in the house. Years later, I finished the job and kicked him out for good. From then on, I too became a “slut,” even though I wasn’t an in-law.

Uncle Ned is perhaps the least harmful member of this horror show, though it took him years to scrape together any decency — and even that rests on the shaky foundations of a religious cult. Our family has always been fiercely opposed to cults and any deviation from the five main religions, yet Ned became an evangelist.

He is married with five children, all much younger than me. He too lived with us for a time and quarrelled with my mum. The cause was as ridiculous as it was bizarre: whenever she was out, he would sneak into her bedroom and use her expensive French perfume. When she noticed it vanishing and later smelled it on him, she confronted him. He denied everything, of course. After that, she began hiding her perfumes and lotions whenever she left the house.

Aunt Sera is a special breed of evil. All my life she was held up as the perfect woman I should emulate. My father painted her as a model of respectability, intellect, and virtue. It was all lies.

Sera lived abroad with my grandparents, thoroughly pampered. She was never taught basic chores because she supposedly needed to focus on her studies. The result was a woman who could barely use a vacuum cleaner. She once took it out just to scare me away so she could be left in peace. Yes, I was afraid of the vacuum cleaner. And of pillow feathers.

She claimed to have studied law. In reality, she worked in the accounts department of a law firm and was involved in a bribery scandal from which she escaped unpunished. She married a much older man and had a son with autism. When she learned of his condition, she demanded money from all her brothers for “the best treatment.” Only my father, ever the Good Samaritan, kept sending funds. We later discovered none of it went to the boy. Sera and her husband simply lived well at our expense.

When my mother and I put a stop to the payments, all hell broke loose. Sera came to stay for a month and turned our home into a battlefield. Sweet as honey around my father, she cursed us the moment he left the room, wishing us dead. She terrorised us with deliberate filth: leaving the toilet unflushed, spilling sauces on the furniture, traipsing through the house in muddy shoes. One day something in me snapped. I don’t remember the details, only my mother’s voice suddenly breaking through, begging me to stop. When I came to, I was standing over Sera with a kitchen knife in my hand. She left the house the same day.

That’s my family portrait.