I returned without warning after four years in Canada and found my wife with a shaved head, skin and bones, eating scraps in the backyard. My mother said she had brought this punishment upon herself. I didn’t yell. I announced that I had just received a million-dollar settlement… and let my family’s greed trigger the trap.
“That bald woman shouldn’t let herself be seen when we have company!”
I heard my brother Godfrey shouting before I even stepped through the door.
In the backyard, Phedra was on her knees picking up pieces of a shattered plate with her bare hands. Her head had been shaved. Her cheekbones were painfully visible, and a bucket of filthy water stood beside her feet.
“Pick up the pieces properly, Phedra,” my mother, Selina, called from the living room. “If someone cuts themselves, I’m taking it out of your food.”
I froze behind the fence, suitcase still in my hand.
