and everyone recounted a different story of the past

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am" --Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

That's what you just reminded me of.

My maternal ancestry is like one out of a story; like some warped Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel mixed with Oliver Twist. It's crazy.

Once upon a time, my grandfather was born in the Dominican Republic. It is said that his father was of Cuban descent, and it has always been assumed that his mother was Dominican. They were a biggish family, we're not sure how many siblings exactly. But we do know of two sisters and two brothers, for sure. When my grandfather was young, his father passed away and his mother remarried to man that was not liked by the children. Soon after, the mother passed away and my grandfather and his siblings were basically orphans. So goes the story in our family, that the stepfather had children of his own who he naturally preferred over my grandfather and his siblings. They put with the stepfather as much as they could after the mother's death, but I guess my grandfather had had enough one day. They had to walk to school barefoot everyday and it was this circumstance precisely that allowed my grandfather to run away.
He left his home, friends, and siblings behind; he also left the pain and memories that day.
The story of how he met my grandmother is another, very distinct, and also very twisted one. I'll save that for another post. Anyhow, he distanced himself from the past and only kept contact with two of his sisters who were also of his age.
One day when my mother and her siblings were young, a lady came to the door asking if an "Anjito" lived there. They were home alone and didn't know of anyone by that name, so they closed the door on her. She said she came from Puerto Rico and was looking for her lost brother. My grandfather's name was Angel, but in retrospect my mother and her siblings say that "Anjito" is probably what they called him when he was younger.
He never got in contact with her. Neither did he with his other siblings, except for those two sisters (not counting the one that showed up at the door). My grandfather does know that the older brother inherited the family property and wealth, and he used to say it as if he was resentful. But he's moved past that now.
It's interesting and sad to see how the family was separated by the death of the parents, and deep inside it even scares me to think I have a bigger family than I have now.

"There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road" --Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

L||A
9||10