The Wedding

Flowers are supposed to be light. They are supposed to be beautiful, aromatic, and bright. I am holding lilies and lavender, flowers so large they trump my body and cascade down onto the floor, and I am standing there with my father thinking not on the man at the end of the aisle waiting for me- but how heavy these flowers are in my arms. These flowers remind me of the shackles that have been placed on me by two families I never considered my own. I was a lone person, fighting in my own ocean to stay afloat, and these people, they were all just characters in a play I never wished to be cast in. They were just two families begging to put an end to a violent feud that I was never even part of. I would be in prison for the rest of my life for crimes I never even committed, and I had to skip down the aisle happily, smile plastered on my face, flowers in my arms, and dress fabric draped at my waist. 

Flowers are supposed to be light. I am supposed to be light. I am supposed to be happy, and gleefully skip down the aisle onto the next chapter of this novel I call life. I am not light. I am encased in stone and dropped into water. I am sinking. 

My father is happy, his smile reaches his ears and his hands come out to me as the music begins to play. 

“Let’s go,” He says and for a moment I think of running. I think of leaving this all behind and running so far away that my name no longer means something. Until I am voided as a member of this organization. I could be something new. Someone new. But I don’t run. I place my hand in my fathers outstretched palm like the good little girl I have been born to be. I am nothing more than a puppet on a string, and now I am standing at the curtain separating me from the crowd waiting to see how my ropes will be pulled. I look to my father once more, a quiet desperation played out through my eyes and he shakes his head. This is happening. This is really happening. 

When I was young I used to dance in my mothers wedding gown and envision my own. I would be beautiful, and graceful, and so deeply in love. The thought makes me want to vomit and I bite my cheeks so hard I taste blood. This is not what I wanted. This is force. This is cruelty. This is a crime. 

But this family is crime. We are all pawns in a game our fathers play. Who owns what, and who controls who is what they play all day and night. And their children? They are just tokens of power. I was just a pawn. And now, I am being played. 

Three days. I have known I was to be married off for three days. To a man I had never seen, never met, I had never even heard the name of. I did not hate him. He was just a player himself. Just another voided piece.

“This is needed for peace,” My father whispers as he holds my hand tighter. There is no fatherly warmth, no wedding advice. There is nothing but a don making his move. He is not a father. He is a boss, and I am just an employee who was born into the company. 

Peace comes with a price, everyone knew this. But I was not currency to be swept away. I could not be a statue of peace only because I looked innocent. I had virtue. I was everything a prude, virginal, pure daughter should be. I would be offered up like art to a museum. Peace talks were useless when they were still spilling blood. Every person in this church had a weapon on them. That was not peace. That was temporary civility. 

We begin our walk down the aisle and I want to choke. I want to throw up these petals and plant roots so deep in the ground they cannot make me complete this mission. My feet give me away. They walk forward like casual traitors, over and over until I see the wooden step in front of me. That is where I keep my eyes. 

This dress is itchy. I am itchy. But I do not dare to raise my arms to scratch at the lace. My father pinches me hard in the back of the arm, a movement no doubt seen by everyone, and likewise ignored. I jump. My eyes peel from the floor and I look up at him. I take in his deep set brown eyes and the wrinkles that have adorned his face. The years have aged him. He is seventy this year, no longer young and athletic like he once was. Instead he is overweight, and his teeth have a yellow sheen to them from years of cigars. I am only nineteen. Barely old enough to understand that my mother was married to him not for love but for money, and that money did nothing to save her life when she got ill. Barely old enough to know that the weathered hand that held my arm had let her go so easily into the night, her looks faded. I never got to know my mother. But I knew my father. And he was no father of mine. 

“Who gives this woman?” A priest says somewhere in the background of my tormented thoughts and my father speaks up, the first bit of pride in his voice I had ever heard. What a waste it was, to be the only child born to him, and a girl at that. I would not inherit his kingdom. I would sit on no throne. I was nothing but something to be married off. But my father- he was a poor man who had become a rich man. A man who wore rags and now had a closet of suits. A man who had smoked cigars on the dock and begged for change who was now the don. He was respected, and feared. And he was proud to give me away. I was beautiful and graceful. And I was his daughter. He would show me off like a trophy at least this once.

His new wife pretends to dab at her eyes, reveling in the spectacle of my departure. Her one hand rests on her flat belly that she prays will one day swell with a son. A son that will inherit this enterprise he did not earn. I bite my cheek again. I hate this. I hate everything about this. 

“I do,” Says my father and places my pale, boney, hand into a olive toned, rough one. It is then I look up. He is not ugly. His eyes are grey, with tiny flecks of gold throughout and I am entranced in them for a moment. Not in their beauty, but in their callousness. His plump lips are not smiling, they are scowling. His cheekbones are not lifted in joy, instead they are angular and his jaw is clenched. He is beautiful. So very beautiful. But I am the daughter of a don, and I know the devil when I see it. 

Moments pass to quickly and the priest is blessing us, his hands forming a cross on his body. I feel as though my soul has been swallowed whole. I am nothing but a hollow shell of what was once a person. I was raised with an education, I was taught humility and grace. And I was taught what it meant to put emotions somewhere deep within. So deep they stopped existing. I have seen blood on floors and walls, heard screams that would give people nightmares. I have heard the begging of desperate people. None of those things ever prepared me for the shattering of my soul as my lips formed the words I did not ever wish to say.

“I do.”