The first thing I noticed was the slippers.
My grandmother's slippers sat at the entrance like they always did - one leaning against the wall, the other slightly turned outward, as if she had stepped out of them mid-thought and never returned. They were old, faded, the soles thinning from years of pacing. That small, ordinary detail should have comforted me.
Instead, it made my chest tighten.
Because that's what her house did. It gave you comfort with one hand and took your breath with the other.
The compound was already loud when we arrived. A familiar kind of loud - the sound of a family trying to fill the air with anything except the real thing. People talking over each other, pots clanging, chairs scraping, children running barefoot, adults laughing too sharply at jokes that had no punchlines. Somewhere behind the house, a generator coughed and struggled, the way it always did, as if even electricity had to fight to survive here.
A funeral week always pulled us back. It didn't matter where we lived, what we were doing, how distant we had become. Death had a way of collecting us like scattered coins.
And my grandmother's house was the jar.
We came because that was the rule: when someone dies, you return to the place where you learned how to behave.
I hadn't been there in months, but the house remembered me. The narrow hallway. The heat that clung to your skin. The smell of dust and soup and old curtains. The way the living room always felt like a stage.
And the unspoken instruction that hung in the air like incense:
Don't make it worse.
My cousins were already inside.
I saw them the moment I stepped in - my people, my lifelong witnesses, the ones who knew the versions of me that no one else had. We weren't just cousins. We were a stitched-together survival group.
We had grown up braided into each other's lives.
Same Christmases. Same long holidays. Same bedtime stories told in whispers so adults wouldn't hear. Same shared trauma disguised as "family discipline." Same jokes that made no sense outside our circle. We could read each other without speaking. We had a whole language made of eye contact and tiny nods.
When we were kids, my grandmother's house was our world. We slept in clusters, shoulder to shoulder, like puppies. We fought over the same plastic cups. We dared each other to walk to the backyard at night. We learned the exact parts of the house that creaked and the parts that stayed silent.
Even now, older, taller, pretending we'd outgrown it, something about seeing them in that living room steadied me.
My oldest cousin, always the responsible one, pulled me into a hug that was too firm to be casual.
"You're here," she said like she had been holding her breath.
My other cousin tried to smile but her eyes were swollen. She squeezed my hand and didn't let go immediately.
And the youngest one - twelve years old, slim as a reed, eyes too serious - was hovering at the edge of the room like a cat that didn't trust the energy.
She caught my eye and came over slowly. She didn't hug me like she used to. She just leaned against me for a second, head resting on my shoulder the way she did when she was smaller.
That tiny act cracked me open more than the funeral had.
Because she wasn't a baby anymore.
And she was already learning the rules.
My uncle's death had done what deaths always did in my family: it had rearranged everyone's faces.
Some wore grief openly - crying, sighing, asking God questions out loud. Some wore denial, moving too quickly, organizing too much, acting like logistics could outrun pain. And some wore something else entirely.
A quiet relief.
Not relief that he was gone, but relief that the tension he carried could finally be distributed elsewhere.
I didn't have words for it yet. I only felt it. Like a draft through a closed window.
My uncle had been the kind of man people called "steady." The kind who didn't shout. The kind who didn't complain. The kind everyone leaned on, then mocked when his back started bending.
He used to sit in the living room with the TV on too loud, not because he was deaf but because noise was easier than conversation. He would look at all of us and smile the way tired people smile - like they're giving you the last of what they have.
For months before he died, every time I saw him, it felt like he was slightly fading.
I didn't know how to say that without sounding like I was accusing the family.
So I said nothing.
Like we always did.
The funeral was the next day.
Wednesday. Bright sun. Dust lifting from the road. Heat pressing down like a palm.
People showed up in their best outfits - ironed, perfumed, starched. We looked expensive and miserable. And there's something cruel about that - how grief doesn't stop people from being concerned about appearance.
The church was packed. The ceiling fans spun lazily, doing almost nothing. Someone fainted outside. A child cried and was hushed quickly. A woman behind me kept murmuring prayers between sobs, like she was bargaining.
My cousins and I sat together on the same bench, knees touching. That was instinct. When the world shakes, you sit close.
The pastor spoke about strength.
He used that word like it was holy.
"Your uncle was a strong man," he said. "He endured. He carried his family. He served. He did not complain."
Each sentence landed like a stone.
Because it wasn't praise.
It was a description of the curse.
The crowd responded in the expected ways. Some cried harder. Some nodded solemnly. Some whispered "Amen." My grandmother sat like a statue, eyes dry, face fixed in that expression she always wore at funerals - tight control, like if she loosened for a second, the whole house would flood.
My mother cried quietly. Controlled. The kind of crying that doesn't disturb anyone.
My father stared straight ahead with a jaw that looked locked.
And I noticed something that bothered me so much I couldn't stop watching:
No one looked surprised.
Sad, yes.
Shocked, no.
It was as if everyone had been waiting for the body to finally catch up to what they already knew.
And if I was being honest, I hadn't been surprised either.
That's what scared me.
Back at my grandmother's house, the performance resumed.
Food was brought out like a shield. Plates were filled aggressively. You didn't get asked if you were hungry - you got fed like hunger was the enemy and swallowing was the solution.
Women moved through the kitchen in quiet coordination, like a well-trained army. Men sat in clusters outside, talking about politics and money and anything except the coffin they had just watched disappear.
Children ran around, laughing too loudly, because children can feel tension even when they don't understand it.
Someone turned the television on. Louder than necessary.
My grandmother's house always had sound. It was part of the design. Noise prevented questions. Noise prevented reflection. Noise made it easier to pretend.
And for a while, I let it work.
I laughed when someone cracked a joke. I helped carry plates. I answered greetings. I hugged aunties who smelt like perfume and hot tears. I told people I was fine even when my mouth tasted like metal.
But every now and then, I would glance at my uncle's door at the end of the hallway and feel the air thicken.
His room had become a forbidden place.
Not officially. No one said that.
But no one walked past it casually either.
It was like the house itself was holding its breath.
That night, the cousins' room became ours again - the back room where we had slept as children, where we had planned escape routes and invented stories and promised each other we would never become like the adults.
The mattresses were laid out. Blankets thrown down. Fans whirring. Mosquitoes whining like tiny threats.
My oldest cousin was trying to keep the mood normal. She always did that - she played the role of protector like it was her full-time job.
She cracked jokes. She teased us. She told the youngest to sleep before "spirits carry her away." The youngest rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.
We all laughed.
But it wasn't the laughter of relief. It was the laughter of people standing in a burning room pretending the heat is fine.
I knew because I'd done it my whole life.
Later, when the lights were off and the room settled into quiet, I felt someone shift beside me. The youngest cousin.
She whispered my name.
I turned slightly.
In the dark, I could still see her eyes. Wide open. Watching.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Mm," I replied.
Her voice was small. But not childish.
"Is this how it's always going to be?"
I didn't answer. Not because I didn't hear. Because I did.
She continued, like she had been holding it in all day.
"Everybody is saying he was strong. But…" She paused, swallowing. "But he looked tired. Like… like he didn't want to be here anymore. And they're acting like it's normal. Is that what happens to people here? They just get tired and then they die?"
My throat tightened.
Because she was describing something I'd been refusing to name.
And because I suddenly realized she was watching us the way we used to watch the adults: collecting evidence.
That was when I felt the curse. Not as a concept. As a living thing.
The curse wasn't a monster in the dark.
It was the way the family trained you to keep quiet when the truth showed up.
I heard myself almost say something comforting. Something safe. Something that would keep her calm.
But I couldn't.
Because I could feel the lie forming on my tongue.
She waited.
I gave her the only honest thing I could manage.
"I don't know," I whispered.
She nodded slowly, like she already knew the answer was bad.
Then she said, almost to herself:
"I don't want to be strong like that."
That sentence did something to me.
It wasn't dramatic. It was worse.
It was clean.
It made everything in my body go still.
After a while, everyone slept.
I didn't.
I lay there listening to breathing - my cousins, the house, the distant murmurs of adults still talking outside, the faint hiss of the generator dying down.
And as I stared at the ceiling, I realized something quietly horrifying:
My youngest cousin was at the age where I first started learning how to pretend.
Where I first started swallowing questions.
Where I first started becoming manageable.
And she was beginning too.
Not because she wanted to.
Because that was what this family taught children.
That was what we inherited.
I got up.
Not with a plan. With a feeling.
I walked down the hallway toward my uncle's room.
I didn't turn on the light. I didn't need to. I knew the path by muscle memory.
The door creaked softly, like the house was warning me.
Inside, the air smelled like him - soap, dust, faint cologne, something metallic.
Everything was arranged too neatly, like he had cleaned up so no one would have to deal with his mess. Like he had made dying convenient.
That thought made me angry in a way I didn't understand.
I opened drawers. Not searching, pretending I was just… looking.
Then my hand stopped.
A notebook.
Thin. Plain. Not hidden. But not displayed either.
The kind of thing you keep when you don't have anyone safe enough to talk to.
I sat on the edge of the bed and opened it.
It wasn't a diary.
It was a record of surrender.
Dates at the top. Short lines beneath. Like someone trying to compress their pain into something small enough to carry.
February 3 - Stayed quiet. Again.
February 10 - Didn't say what I wanted to say. Not worth it.
February 15 - Smiled. Swallowed it. Slept badly.
Page after page. Months. Years.
At first, I thought it was ordinary. A man venting. A man tired.
Then the entries started repeating.
Not just in theme - in exact phrasing.
The same sentence, slightly altered, over and over:
Keeping the peace.
Keeping the peace.
Keeping the peace.
I turned more pages. My fingers were trembling now.
Then I found the part where his handwriting changed.
It wasn't neat anymore. It looked like someone writing while shaking.
They keep acting like it didn't happen.
They want me to forget.
They want me to carry it.
I reread that three times.
Because my brain didn't want to understand it too quickly.
Then:
If I speak, I break the family.
If I don't, I break myself.
And then the line that stopped my breathing:
The truth is not the danger. The silence is.
I stared at the page so long my eyes began to blur.
Because suddenly, everything rearranged itself.
My uncle wasn't documenting stress.
He was documenting a system.
A system where the same kind of man is produced, used, and quietly destroyed.
A system where "strong" means "able to endure damage without making noise."
A system where people are praised for suffering in silence.
And as I sat there, I remembered all the "strong" people in our family.
The aunt who smiled through abuse and called it marriage.
The cousin who disappeared into depression and was labeled lazy.
The uncle who drank himself quiet and became a "family disgrace."
The women who carried everything and were called "resilient" like it was a compliment, not a wound.
They weren't random tragedies.
They were outcomes.
They were proof.
My uncle's notebook wasn't just about him.
It was about the assembly line.
When I closed the notebook, my hands felt cold.
I left his room with it tucked under my shirt like contraband.
The living room was dim. The TV was still glowing in the corner, volume low now, like even the noise was tired.
My mother was there, half-asleep on the couch.
She looked up at me. Her eyes landed on my face. Then, for a brief second, on the notebook pressed to my body.
Something flashed across her expression.
Not curiosity.
Fear.
Real, immediate fear.
"What are you doing awake?" she asked softly.
Her voice was gentle. But there was a warning threaded through it.
I realized then that she already knew what I had found before I said a word.
Or maybe she didn't know about the notebook specifically.
Maybe she just knew that I had crossed into the room where truths lived.
I forced my voice to stay normal.
"I couldn't sleep."
She studied me for a moment.
Then she said the line that sealed the conclusion in my bones:
"Don't start digging, please."
Not What did you see?
Not Are you okay?
Not What's wrong?
Don't dig.
That's when the last piece clicked into place.
This wasn't grief.
This was containment.
This family didn't process pain.
It managed it.
It didn't heal.
It maintained.
And it maintained by sacrificing whoever asked the wrong questions.
I went back to the room where my cousins slept, lay down among them, and stared at the ceiling until it began to lighten with dawn.
The youngest cousin shifted beside me in her sleep and mumbled something soft. My oldest cousin snored lightly, exhausted from performing stability for everyone.
And all I could think was:
This is how it happens.
Not with one big evil act.
But with a thousand tiny agreements.
Tiny silences.
Tiny lies.
Tiny "let it go."
Tiny "don't dig."
Tiny "keep the peace."
Until one day, someone dies, and everyone acts surprised even though they're not.
And then the next person in line becomes "strong."
Becomes quiet.
Becomes obedient.
Becomes tired.
Becomes a grave the family never visits emotionally.
By morning, the house was awake again - pots clanging, voices rising, life resuming its fake confidence.
The day was normal again.
But I wasn't.
Because I had finally understood what the curse was.
It wasn't witches.
It wasn't demons.
It was inheritance.
And it had a script.
And I could already see my name written into it.
I thought of my youngest cousin's voice in the dark:
"I don't want to be strong like that."
And something in me hardened - not into anger, but into decision.
If the curse survived through cooperation,
then breaking it would require one thing this family hated more than grief:
Truth.
I slid the notebook deeper under my mattress and promised myself something I didn't yet know how to do:
This story ends with me.
Even if ending it makes me the villain.
Even if it breaks the family first.
Because the family had been breaking people for generations.
Quietly.
Politely.
With smiles.