The Family Business

Up the Stairs, Down the Stairs

I remember the first time I ate a pineapple.
I had already known I was allergic to those prickly mounds of fleshy mass. But I was curious, and since my cousin was so intent on poisoning me anyway, I took advantage of the situation. I was four.
That first experience landed me in the ER while cousin Daniel snickered in the waiting room with this sick grin on his polished olive face. They tied my hair into what was supposed to be a bun while I heaved up the soft remains of that dastardly fruit -- I still can recall the nurse as she tore the elastic band from her own hair and attempted at keeping my wild red locks away from my face, murmuring "Look at that hair!" to her colleagues, "Just like her brother."
Oh yeah, I failed to mention that the nurse was also my auntie Anastasia's wife. They were pretty normal, apart from the fact that their son, Daniel, still wet his bed at twenty-one and often left the entrails of the numerous small animals he tortured on my bedsheets for kicks when he slept over. But besides that, they were all okay.
Looking back on that incident, I think it taught me a few things about life. In this cosmological mess we live in, you either swallow or die trying. You either take the pain or try half-heartedly, choke and die. I swallowed a lot of things during my short lifetime: that pineapple, my cousin Daniel's abuse and everything else that came with living with my family. With the Bolohans, you have two choices. You can grin through it as much as you can run from it. But when you are a mere sprout from the fertile dirt of my psychopathic brood, you have absolutely no say in what direction to take. It's like anchoring a pup to a tree and expecting it to chew off its own leash. It needs to learn to weather the rain, the snow and the storms of its existence. Only then can it truly withstand the world beyond its lonely tree, beyond the limitations imposed by its own superiors.
My tree is not what most people would assume it is. You might believe my tree is my love for my family, the guilt of leaving them. No, that is absolutely not the case. My tree has taken on various forms across the years -- the small ginger kitten I had saved from Daniel (only to find its intestines strewn across my pillow), school, my first boyfriend, Adrian. But now, it's something entirely seperated from what seemed like the mundane struggles of a preteen. It's my last year of highschool, and I have a more pressing issue at the moment: money.
It's not that I'm selfish. It's not that I want them dead. It's just that I need the money, and the only person standing in my way is the one thing I have been chained to all my life.
My sweet, loving family.
To be wholly frank, there isn't a lot of them left. Uncle Nicolae has found his peace in solitary confinement and left his riches to his dearest nephew, Daniel. My foster parents haven't been an obstacle in two years -- my father ended his newfound wife's existence with a little pressure on the trigger, then buried the head of his beretta inside his mouth. They both went quietly, and left a newborn that Daniel took care of before I even knew of its existence. At the end, the only ones left are Daniel and our two wonderful grandparents, both ex-jail guards that often take offence if you didn't laugh at their tales of torturing convicts and snogging during office hours.
Yeah, now that I put it on paper, it doesn't even seem that hard. If it weren't for my experience with Daniel's callous and terrorising personality, I think I could have ended them long ago.
My tree is Daniel, I ruminate as I lean back in my father's signature mahogany crossback chair and sigh. As I tap my fountain pen against my ruddy cheeks, I come to the conclusion that throwing my grandparents in a senior paradise is much easier than paying for bullets. I hardly have enough cash for bubblegum, I realise, the only thing that can keep me calm, and my heart rate picks up once more. Today is my eighteenth birthday, and I've already packed the necessities for one hell of a road trip: Bucharest. I already had my plan in place.
I just needed to find Adrian.