Family Fuckery

What arose out of a stolen heirloom ring in 2004, will be laid to rest in 2025, burying the hatchet in our family home.

As the three lawyers donned their black robes in what has to be one of the tiniest courtrooms in the world, I sat by our lawyer in my white pantsuit and baby blue blazer. Apropos for the baby of the three sides in this family dispute. I chose white deliberately, like it was a showdown of sorts and I was the good guy - cause I am. Turns out, I could have worn anything, because I was the only one of my father’s dear family who actually deigned to make an appearance at the court date. Just that morning my cousin Chico had arranged local representation at the final hour. My cousin who I grew up with the first 8 years of my life, who I thought I had genuinely reconnected with in 2021 - who I kept in the loop on our every update; who had promised to share the lawyer fees with my family - had of late, not bothered to update us on any of his comings and goings with relation to the “family home”. As my mother stated to me in a recent phone call - his mother is rolling in her grave.

Now you may be thinking this is some grand manse that all of us have been fighting over for years - believe you me it is not. It is a ramshackle turn-of-the-century modest home in a nowhere half-abandoned town about 30-40 minutes outside Lisbon. But with the laudatory terms used to speak of this town my entire childhood, from all these relatives, you would think it was the Jewel of the Nile. I think for a while in Portuguese history, it was. The royal family used to travel up the Tagus river and stay here in Alhos Vedros, on occasion. In 1415 when the Black Plague raged through Lisbon, taking Queen Phillipa of Lancaster’s life, King Don João I recovered here, in Alhos Vedros, where he continued to reign from afar. And when my parents met here in the fascist 1960s, both working in the offices of a Swedish textile giant that employed half the town, it must have been bustling with life. In my own lifetime, coming back about every 3-5 years as a child, it has certainly been much livelier than it is today.

For a child of Portuguese Catholic immigrants, I have an extremely small family. And they all pretty much suck it - whether it’s apathy or outright malice, my father’s closest family aren’t worth the paper I wipe my ass with. In fact, I just picked up some new scented three-ply toilet paper yesterday that is, in fact, probably worth more. Toilet metaphors aside, these are a people who lied to my father’s face for decades, took our money every year for the upkeep of said house and to support my spinster Aunt (we’ll get to her in a bit) who lived there. When she died and it came down to splitting the house up, then, we were no longer full family members. Family 3 (we’ll call them) got Spinster Aunt’s quarter instead of it being split three ways which had always verbally been the plan, and we were reminded that my grandfather, my father’s father, wasn’t an equal brother at all. My grandfather’s father had died and then my great grandmother shacked up with another man, bearing him three children, and he later became her second husband. According to Portuguese law - it all came down to who died first you see, because my great grandmother died before her last husband, the family inheritance was further split - what we learned less than two months ago, was that instead of 33% that would have been our rightful due (and the wishes of the deceased second great-grandfather by the way) we were only entitled to a measly 9.4%.

It was never about the money - not for me and not for my father - who is literally, out of any of the current living inheritors, the only one actually born and raised in this house. Raised by his own mother and said Spinster Aunt - who when she died gained the moniker - The Aunt who Betrayed Us All - I can only imagine the degree of betrayal he felt being passed over by the woman who helped raise him, in favour of her younger niece and nephew and youngest brother - their father. The Aunt Who Betrayed Us All ironically wore black for the rest of her life after my grandfather, her eldest brother, died. A custom usually reserved only for one’s husband - such fealty was apparently all for show. While Family 3 conspired behind the scenes for her to sign over her portion, not to mention her entire savings, to them only - my mother (not even actual family) continued to be the only family member who would take her from the care home she lived in in her final years to her beloved house for visits. It was my mother who cleaned the house time and again. My mother will also regale you with all the free labour she provided Family 3 over the years with little to no recompense or thanks. Entirely kitting out two enormous Vancouver homes head to toe in the latest home decor. At the time she did so gladly, com gosto, as she thought they would do for us one day.

For my part, the trouble started with the Matriarch of Family 3 claiming my grandmother’s silver amethyst ring as her own when she saw it on my hand one day in the summer of 2004. I was completing an internship at the National Archeology Museum in Lisbon, as part of my Museum Studies Masters, and had been in Alhos Vedros since May commuting everyday into Lisbon. My parents had bought a newly constructed apartment in the village after selling their Mount Pleasant home 20 years too early (If you know, you know) and I was staying there, instead of “the family home”. After sobbing and pleading for her to understand how much that ring meant to me: my grandmother wasn’t alive to defend herself; maybe it was hers and was taken by mistake; it really meant a lot to me, her niece; did she really need it now? It was never to be returned.

Again, like the house, nothing of real monetary value - just a cruel joke she seemed bent on playing out. More than one member of every side of the family was present that day in the house - and not one of them stood up for me - the youngest person in the room. Not one person said a word. Her husband, The Aunt Who Betrayed Us All, Chico’s father, the would-be pedophile, and my closest friend in the family - my cousin Annabella. That last one hurt most of all. I remember saying straight to her face as she continued doing the dishes at the sink - “Do you not have an opinion here about what your Mother claims?” She didn’t want to get involved - or some such bullshit. She continued not to get involved after I sent her a lengthy email about what had happened and my feelings around everything and how hurt I was by her, specifically. She never replied and has ignored my existence ever since.

My parents were livid when they learned of what had transpired there that night and wanted me to cut them off completely. But I, never having had any close cousins as a kid, did not want to lose what little family I had. So I came to terms with it and continued to visit with them and even said my goodbye’s to the Aunt who stole my ring before she flew back to Canada. From the moment they all left Portugal that summer, somehow in their minds, we had become the bad guys - we had betrayed them. I haven’t spoken to anyone in Family 3 since that summer until a week before I came to Portugal this month. Joe, Annabella’s older brother who I never had any kind of relationship with outside of family gatherings, phoned my parents to talk about THE HOUSE. He was rambling and nonsensical and drunk. Cool vibe, bro. I wasn’t having any small talk and asked him pointedly several times what he wanted. After rambling about the past - like they all do - he hung up on me. I guess we’ll never know what he wanted to say, cause we all know it certainly wasn’t to see how we were all doing.

Family 3 have come and gone over the years, enjoying the family home as if it was only theirs to enjoy. Changing the original locks so no one else could access it and even doing renovations on it some time ago - which was illegal as they did not have all inheritors permission to do so. I grew weary of hearing the same old story whenever Family 3 might come up in conversation, so because my father could literally not stomach anything to do with them or the house, I forced this sale - buy us out or we all sell. Simple, you would think. This whole process began five years ago, just before COVID, in February 2020. It has been delayed for many reasons, the chief one among them - Family 3 dragging their hooves hoping we would give up the ghost of Number 13 Largo da Igreja.

But on that somewhat sunny, blustery Monday morning earlier this month, inside that Moita courtroom, it all came to a very anticlimactic close. No one to stare down across the bench except the two female lawyers representing Chico and Family 3. I agreed to the fair exacting buyout from Chico for our 9.4%. A sum based on an appraisal we paid for. If he hadn’t wanted to buy us out - the house would have gone to auction and who knows how that would have turned out - probably in our favour. As I was the only one present and able to live bid. But I was tired. As tired of caring as I was tired of pretending not to care. Apparently they are going to happily share the property? We’ll see how that turns out. I am happy to wash my hands of them all, once and for all.

I used to want my grandmother to be more like the Aunt Who Betrayed Us All - more affectionate, more traditionally old lady Portuguese. I can still smell the sweet sweat of my aunt’s large hanging bosom when she would envelope me in the tightest of hugs as a child. But my grandmother did not suffer fools, and that she had reason to believe them all to be that, I now know to be true. Any reconciliation we had acquiesed to had been at our own peril. You see, I had not known Family 3 until I was about 9 years old - because of some feud to do with my grandmother and them… I was so excited to finally have an older female cousin to commiserate with and look up to when that reconciliation came. This was part of the reason that even though I was the one betrayed back in 2004, I was willing to sweep it all under the carpet for the greater good of family relations. A lot of good being the bigger person did me.

As a Taurus - you never forget. As Maria João, I will never forgive. May all that you have stolen and all that you have lied about come back threefold to you Family 3. So mote it be.