Honorable Mention – Flash 405, August 2025: “Normal”
Nonfiction
During her last days, when Mami didn’t want Papi near her, we thought it was Mami being Mami.
She knew before any of us that Papi’s family had found her replacement and he was smitten, head over heels in total like with the woman.
The signs were all there: the quiet conversations in the garage, the frequent trips to Santo Domingo, carefree, whistling or singing the boleros of his youth.
One of the rare times that she let Papi sit with her, he called her “Mi amor.” She erupted like a faulty pressure cooker, blowing off her lid, splashing the scalding residue of everything that had been simmering inside. The pent-up rage from her shitty marriage and the injustice of why her and not him splattered all over the walls.
I resented her anger, but never let on. Not because Papi didn’t earn it but because her kids didn’t deserve its side effects. I stayed quiet and let her vent while my siblings talked back.
“Yo tengo derecho a desahogarme,” she said, defending her right to undrown herself.
Once she unchained her fury, it ran wild like the diablos cojuelos popular at Carnaval in Santo Domingo. The limping devils run amuck during the main parade on Independence Day smacking anyone in their way with knee-high socks full of flower or rice. Mami’s anger was like that, creating pandemonium to anyone or anything on its path.
She read my silence as encouraging her desahogo, telling my siblings that I was the good daughter because I understood that bottling up her feelings would kill her faster than cancer would.
What she didn’t know is that I’ve always been very good at pretending to listen while daydreaming with my eyes open. That’s how I survived my childhood with her constant yelling, and overstayed in my first marriage to a narcissist who called me a stupid bitch daily.
I pray, meditate, and see a therapist to dismantle the traumas I’ve inherited. I let my desahogo out on the Peloton or the hiking trail so my children don’t suffer its consequences.
I vow to call it quits if my marriage turns shitty so I don’t send my daughter running into the arms of a sociopath who diminishes her self-worth.
Judge’s Comments: Desahogo. To undrown. I imagine a tape rewinding itself. Its swimmer, once thrashing, resurfacing to the light, sun on their face.
Most of us are born into this world flailing and screaming alongside our parents, and we flail there together for so long the ache in our muscles becomes normal, a family trait.
This story resonated with me as a daughter, as a child of parents who I have seen flashes of in my thoughts and actions. For every three positive behaviors is one that threatens to undo me.
In the absence of models, many of us never recognize we are drowning. Even fewer begin to undrown. It can take generations to figure it out.
Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley is a nonfiction writer, filmmaker, and mother of two. A Dominicana via Washington Heights residing in Long Beach, California. She is a PEN America, Tin House, Macondo, and VONA fellow. She advocates for representation of BIPOC women and nonbinary writers in literary spaces and holds a leadership role in Women Who Submit. Her work is featured in HarperVia’s Somewhere We Are Human, The Latinx Project at NYU, and Myriam Gurba’s Tasteful Rude among others. www.lucyrodriguezhanley.com
Photo from Wikimedia Commmons