Chapter 3

3: 3

Once I was home, I could finally breathe.

I didn't want to worry my parents, so I just told them the pregnancy had me emotional and homesick.

I thought I'd shaken off Peggy, at least for a while.

But that same afternoon, she came after me.

She stood at the foot of my parents' building with a bullhorn, shouting for everyone to hear.

"Sister-in-law, come home with me, please, I'm begging you. If you drive me out by running back to your parents like this, you'll really be the death of me."

"I just want to stay in my own home. Is that really so unforgivable?"

"It's been three seconds and you still haven't come down."

"I get it. You're using the silent treatment to force me out."

"Fine, if you've made up your mind, fine! Then I'll hold my breath right now and choke the life out of myself!"

With that, she took a deep breath and started holding it.

Ours is a subsidized-housing complex, so most of the relatives live in the same place.

Before I even heard the commotion and got downstairs, my Aunt Debra and the others had already gathered around Peggy.

Her whole face had gone red from holding her breath, tears sliding down her cheeks, looking pitiful, like someone who'd been badly bullied.

They rushed to talk her out of it.

"Sweetie, stop holding your breath, you can't actually die that way, you'll just make yourself sick."

Peggy couldn't hold it any longer and broke all at once.

She clutched her chest, gasping in big gulps, crying so hard she could barely breathe.

"You're lying! How could I not die from it? I almost... I almost just died."

"Don't try to stop me. Just being alive gets in my sister-in-law's way."

"That was only luck this time. Sooner or later I'll hold my breath till I'm gone."

Someone in the crowd sucked in a sharp breath.

Others watched her hurting herself like that and muttered under their breath.

"She may have gone about it wrong... but she does just want Maria to come home."

"No real malice in her. Family always has to work things out."

"Poor silly girl."

I came down right at that moment, and when my Aunt Debra saw me, she sighed.

"Maria, why don't you let it go?"

"She means no harm. She probably just slipped up somewhere and upset you. She's a young girl. As her sister-in-law, you should give her some room."

"She came all this way to find you. Both of you give a little, and just go home."

Here it was again.

She's young.

In my last life, it was those two weightless words that made me swallow my own broken teeth, again and again.

Peggy threw herself into Aunt Debra's arms, eyes red, gazing at her with gratitude.

"Auntie, thank you for taking my side. I only want this family to be better."

I turned to face Aunt Debra.

"I threw out the trash at her door, and she says I bullied her."

"I keep the house in perfect order and don't let her lift a finger, and she says I do it to shame her out of the house."

"Auntie, so who exactly can't tolerate whom?"

Aunt Debra faltered under my stare, her voice dropping.

"So are you going to live at your parents' forever and never go back?"

"Look at the state she's in. Do you really want to drive her to her death?"

Before I could say a word, Peggy suddenly dropped to her knees in front of me with a thud, pulled a filthy cloth bundle from her pocket, and opened it with trembling hands.

Inside was a stack of crumpled small bills.

"Sister-in-law, I know you look down on me for having no job and earning nothing."

"This is seventy dollars I saved up collecting bottles in secret. Take it. I'll try hard to find work and give back to the family, just please stop hating me."

She shuffled forward two steps on her knees, holding out that little bit of money to me in both hands.

The whole scene, topped off with the fat tears rolling down her face, played out like a full tragedy of the bullied.

The relatives swung to her side in an instant.

"Oh come on, Maria, it was just a few words back and forth, is it really worth all this?"

"You're the sister-in-law. What's wrong with giving a little to your husband's sister?"

"All right, let people off when you can. Look what you've driven her to."

I looked at Peggy kneeling on the ground, her face streaked with tears, and I was shaking with anger, tears welling in my eyes, but the chorus of blame pressed down on me until I couldn't get a single word out.

My mother had come down from upstairs at some point, and she snapped, "Nothing you people love more than a good show, is that it?!"

Then she took my hand and led me toward home.

We'd gone a couple of steps before she spoke again.

"Stop kneeling, what does that even look like. Anything to say, say it inside!"

Peggy braced a hand on her knee and got up, wearing the look of someone who'd just been scolded, and trailed close behind us every step of the way.

But where no one could see, the corner of her mouth curled, and a strange smile flickered in her eyes.