Our mother passed away early, and while I was more prepared for it, knowing how much she suffered from kidney disease and the agony she had to endure every day, Melissa, five years younger than me, was completely confused. We were left with only my father and grandmother, who could not replace my mother in any way. My sister often got mad at me and resented the fact that I was older and spent more time with my mother, that I knew her better and she only had pictures. Mostly they were pictures from old albums, among which there were most of the pictures from the wedding and when I was pregnant. And we hadn’t noticed this before, but Melissa was obsessed with the idea of being like her mother and getting married as soon as possible, and having a baby, and living in her own little utopian world, recreating the family that she lacked in some way.
Melissa did get married before I did, in her early twenties, and a baby was on the way. Who was happy and who was surprised by this news? I did not understand what the rush was, if she had not graduated from university, was working part-time, and her husband was working for two. But things got weirder and weirder with each month of pregnancy. At first Melissa was just happy, but then I noticed that she was really worried about her unborn child, wanting the best for herself, because the health of both of them depended on it. And there was nothing wrong with that, it just got to the point where Melissa would throw a tantrum at the table (at home or in a cafe) if they didn’t serve her what she wanted or if it didn’t taste the way she imagined. Once, in anger, she turned a plate of fish over on a waiter at a restaurant that my father and I used to go to when we were kids because she had a bone in it.
And now she’s become withdrawn, too. She always stays at home, for her there is only her belly and her husband. She refuses to see anyone else, and she suffocates her husband with her excessive attention. He sometimes comes to my place after work with his boyfriend to take a break from Melissa. He says she is unbearable, talks to the baby all the time, tells her husband his moods, from extreme to extreme, then seeking every day to go to hospitals and take tests, then thinks that doctors will ruin her and will give birth at home …
I think Melissa has problems, and that’s why I’m scared for her unborn child. Daddy doesn’t notice anything strange, Grandma thinks it’s hormones, and her husband just tolerates it, but it’s obviously not normal. Really, no one knows who to turn to or what to do.
