The click of the heavy iron deadbolt sliding into place is a sound that will be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. I was only ten years old, standing on the freezing, wet porch boards in the pitch black of an October morning, desperately clutching my two-year-old sister, Violeta, to my chest.
Just seconds before, my stepmother, Bernarda, had dragged me out of bed, shoved us out into the bitter cold, and thrown a small canvas bag at me. Her final whisper through the cracked door still haunts me: “Take her with you. Nobody eats for free in this house anymore.” It was October of 1894, and the morning hadn’t even begun.
The sky above the towering pine trees was completely black, and the agonizing cold cut through my nose and lungs every time I took a breath. I could still smell the old, warm smoke from the kitchen clinging to my clothes—a cruel, lingering reminder of the warmth we had just been banished from.
I stood there frozen in shock, waiting, desperately hoping it was just a twisted punishment and she would open the door. I listened for my father. I could hear his old mule snorting out in the corral, so I knew he was close. I prayed for his heavy footsteps.
I waited for a hand to pull back the curtains, or a voice to yell for us to come back inside. But nothing happened. There was only the dead silence of the woods and Violeta’s weak, rattling cough against my shirt. I lifted her higher so her bare legs wouldn’t rub against the damp, freezing blanket.
Her hair was stuck to her forehead from the cold sweat, and her tiny face was already turning a terrifying shade of gray. Her little fingers opened and closed, blindly searching for something warm and steady to hold onto. “If you come back,” Bernarda’s voice suddenly hissed from the other side of the heavy wood, “I won’t open it.” To understand how we ended up on that porch, you have to understand the slow, quiet way my family fell apart.
My real mother had passed away from a severe winter fever two years prior, shortly after giving birth to Violeta. My father, a quiet man who worked at a distant logging camp during the days, didn’t know how to raise two girls on his own.
Within six months, he married Bernarda. She was a widow from the next town over, and from the moment she stepped foot into our farmhouse, she looked at Violeta and me as nothing more than burdens. At first, it was small things. She would serve my father large, hearty portions of stew at dinner, while giving me and my sister nothing but the watered-down broth.
She took the thick wool blankets from our beds to use in the guest room, leaving us to shiver through the autumn nights. My father was a coward. I know that now.
