If my eyes lingered too long on something better, Tina would smile in that sweet, surgical way of hers and say, “Don’t be greedy, Elena. You always want what someone else has.”
Trouble became my assigned role in the household. It was the label they pressed onto any movement I made that didn’t help the machinery run smoothly. If I spoke up, I was dramatic. If I asked for something, I was ungrateful. If I stayed quiet, I was sulking. If I looked sad too long, Tina sighed and said, “You’re so sensitive, just like your mother,” using the dead the way some people use fences: to contain the living.
After a while I stopped arguing because silence felt safer. It did not protect me, exactly, but it made me less visible, and invisibility in that house often passed for peace.
By the time I was eighteen, I believed more of their story about me than I want to admit. Chloe was the golden child, the promise, the one with polish and momentum. I was the comparison point, the cautionary tale, the warning given shape. Why can’t you be more like Chloe was less a question than family wallpaper. If someone gives you leftovers long enough, a part of you begins to suspect leftovers are your natural portion.