As the jagged edge struck the crown of my head, the bundle of dingy white envelopes slipped out of the rubber band that held them together.

I hadn’t seen it there, on the top shelf of my grandmother’s closet. So when I tried to take down the Danish cookie tin Gran kept as a piggy bank, the stack crashed like thunder in the middle of a hurricane.

Rubbing my skull, I bent to retrieve the first letter, but paused at the familiarity of the sloppy penmanship. I held the paper up, took in my grandmother’s name and address, and flipped it to confirm my suspicion. Then, I released a deep breath and picked up another. It had the same handwriting and sender.

“Jus great,” I mumbled, and gathered them.

I grasped each with dutiful compliance before tossing them onto the creaky bed. All thirty-three correspondences were written by the woman who gave birth to me, during her stay in Venezuela.

While she visited the South American continent, Teresa did not contact me once. Three years passed without communication. Yet, my mother’s mail filled her mother’s closet.

It was during this absence that I decided not to care, and respect for Teresa dispersed into the wind like the Sahara dust in July. Gran tried countless times to rid me of my vendetta toward that woman. “Blood is ticker dan wata, Esther,” she used to say, but I was as stubborn then as I am today.

Why should I show my mother affection? At no time did she offer me any. Not once did ‘I love you’ leak from those wretched lips. When I broke my hand, she didn’t run to my side. She wasn’t the one who walked thirty minutes in the rain just to buy my cold medicine, or supported me after I cried too hard for Thecla. I was, however, berated for failing history and scolded because I couldn’t sweep the house without my lungs closing in, forcing me into coughing fits.

I could never figure out the reason behind Teresa’s aloofness, and at some point, I lost interest. In between the preteen who lingered near the phone and adulthood, I stopped needing her to be proud of me and ceased caring whether she was safe and healthy. In fact, I hoped she was somewhere tormented by her life decisions and regretted neglecting me.

Following Gran’s passing, it became easier to pretend I didn’t have a mother. If someone asked, I said, “She died,” which, technically, was not a lie. Still, I found myself people-watching from the veranda more often, and it brought me back to my days of wishing I had a sibling, to before Gran told me a story characterizing identical twins.

It was on a day similar to today—with the sky shifting from gray to a beautiful blue—that I sat in front of my grandmother as she braided my hair in two big cornrows. I hated those plaits since my friends at school teased me about them, but I never complained because that time was delegated for stories. And while I stared at the single breadfruit dangling from a branch, Gran undid my hair from the previous week as she introduced her characters, John and Joseph.

These twins were so identical that even their mother couldn’t tell them apart. However, their personalities weren’t the cute and sweet images sold on television screens. John, the eldest, had my mother’s cold nature, showing affection solely to the sibling he shared a womb with.

“Ah time, he push ah boy down Long Step and mash up he face for watchin’ Joseph cross-eye,” Gran said. “Everybody de fraid he. Bu’ not me. John kno which tree to climb.”

I wasn’t certain about the last part, but I let my grandmother’s word drop. Otherwise, I would’ve spent another twenty minutes listening to her justifications instead of hearing about the soft-spoken twin.

“Joseph. De nurse had to slap him tree times before he cry. But de delinquent, ah here he was a greedy baby. Always, hogging he modda milk.”

I thought back to my mother—how she refused to share with Thecla, the way John must have done with Joseph—and accepted the old wives’ tale: greedy babies grow up to be selfish or aggressive. Though Teresa wasn’t aggressive, she was the most self-centered person I know.

Gran often said, “Your make de chile, you ain’t make de mine.” I guess it applied in this case, although I believed the boys’ stepfather had a part to play. The moment Gran mentioned his name, she spat over the veranda railing. “Ah couldn’t stan da nasty ole rasta! Ah ain’t see how BeBe coud put sheself wid he.”

My grandfather responded by saying, “You cyan choose de woman man for she. Da who she love.”

“Is really true…All stinking bread have e cheese.”

Bebe’s cheese was a middle-aged vagabond whose only real purpose was to act as a cautionary tale to the younger women in the village. Like the string of men that ran through Teresa’s life, he first showered the children with gifts, declared them the future, then forgot they existed.

At fourteen, the boy’s two-month-old sister died from a heart defect, a tragedy that made John retreat further into himself. He stopped going crayfish hunting at the river in favor of smoking his stepfather’s blunt on the rocks. If someone greeted him on the street, he held their gaze, daring them to voice their displeasure.

It was because, “Dat dirty foot rasta tell John it was he fault. Him tell de boy is all the trouble he give dat stress the modder out.” But Gran believed the little girl died because, “de heartless ligaroo who know nothin about lovin’ and raisin’ a child,” caused the hole in the newborn’s heart.

Still, it was not until a trembling idiot threw money at eighteen-year-old John and begged the twin to leave him alone while crossing paths on the streets that the tyranny escalated. Suddenly, the neighborhood residents had to pay a protection fee.

Things at home grew more intense, as well, with John assuming control from his mother. She tried to throw him out a few times, but the moment he stamped his handprint across her face, she opted to lock her bedroom door instead. By that time, the nasty rasta was long gone, left after John chased him with a machete through the fig trees. Still, it was only following the incident that a hysterical wariness settled on the village.

As Joseph practiced his usual afternoon routine of shooting hoops on the basketball court, three boorish men in their twenties entered.

Gran said, “Dey outsiders, cause no body stupid enough to harass John’s twin.”

From where he leaned on the abandoned shop, blowing smoke, John watched as the men snatched Joseph’s ball and seized the court, but didn’t say a word. Then he walked to the farthest side, where they stored the materials needed to build the new bleachers, and picked up a cinder block. He remained composed and stoic until he smashed the construction material across the head of the plumpest assailant. With a powerful slam, he brought the second opponent down and relentlessly pummeled the man’s face. Then John flung the third guy, who was slender, against the metal pole of the fence with a cracking thud.

By the time he was done, his fists and clothes were spattered with blood. The two smaller victims fled the scene, running for their lives, but one remained. He was incapable of doing anything from the moment he received the cinder block to his head.

A startled silence fell over the area, with onlookers shivering and unable to walk away. A ten-year-old threw up on his feet, and a woman carrying a bundle of sugarcane fainted.

The police arrived much later, as they usually did, and took the lookalikes into custody. Though everyone knew who did it, eyewitnesses could not undoubtedly identify him, and Joseph, who was close enough to get blood splatter on his clothing, was as loyal as his brother was evil. He did not betray John, not even the following year when John stabbed George, the mechanic, over spilled beer.

So, with no confession, cameras, or forensics to speak of the police had no way to differentiate the twins. The judge threw the case out since they had no evidence, and John remained free.

In the midst of harvest season, as a farmer headed out to dig up turmeric, he found a man hanging from a Ceylon mango tree. Later, they identified him as Joseph from the letter in his pocket. His final words. It read:

Dear John,

Sorry, but I can’t keep doing this. I can’t watch innocent people die anymore. But I can’t send you to jail either. And the pain just won’t go away. I am so tired, and everything’s stifling.

Live a life you can be proud of.

Love you always. Joseph.

Gran said that after John heard his brother had passed, he cried like a baby, and the instant he read the reason Joseph took his life, he wept even more. It surprised people that someone so coldhearted could love another so wholeheartedly. Despite their reaction to John’s emotions, residents maintained a hyperawareness of him. They avoided eye contact, crossed the road, and shifted their routines to evade his path.

With his only connection to society gone, John adopted the lifestyle of a hermit. His once neat appearance deteriorated as his hair grew wild and his clothing turned ragged and dingy. Gran said, “Ur coulda smell im before ur see im.” John drank until he passed out across the road and mumbled as he walked.

Although John Phillip got away with murder, losing Joseph may have been a far worse punishment. This made me wonder how my mother would react upon hearing of my death. Would it affect her since she was born with the same selfish baby nature as John? Then I remembered that to her, I was never a daughter. If I were, she would have addressed at least one of those letters to me.

Editor: Shannon Hensley