Five days before the broker was scheduled to show the old family house to the buyers from upstate, you decided to clean the room under the stairs.
You saw the little bride made of bone china among the black-and-white family photographs, love letters, discount slips cut out from magazines, and game show ticket souvenirs. Your grandfather held it with rough hands many years ago when voodoo was still a family vocation.

Its tiny disfigured face felt of snow and salt, remnants of the rubble with no hopes of being rebuilt. Its hair was made of grass, long-dried and stained by pungent herbs and powdered nocturnal insects. Its mouth was painted with dried blood, now blackened and congealed into a final crooked O.
They had screamed long enough – this dirty bride and your memory of it.

Your little sister, wailing. In the corner, your parents were devouring her unborn child. They said to her: to never spread your thighs before the man of your dreams for you will have nightmares all your life. But we can start all over, darling. The only way to defeat this evil is to consume it in its weakened form.

And just a glimpse of all your nightmares to come: your father caught you on the very day you thought that for the first time in your life, nobody was paying attention. He chastised you when he saw you swallow the mutilated dragonfly: "What do you know about hell?" he said. "You haven't lived forever."

And then you understood that there was no way out of this filthy house.

And they had screamed long enough – this dirty bride and your memory of it.

And if you destroyed it, burned it outside, under that same sky which terrified you as a child, would you feel safe then? Would you forget what your grandmother did to the cleaning lady who seduced your uncle? Did the cleaning lady resemble the bone china bride in your hand?

Did she?

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