Memories Picture Album

Berta walks silently around her quiet apartment. With empty eyes she heads to Flora’s bedroom, her daughter, who disappeared five years ago and opens its door.  The abandoned bed is covered with a green quilt. In the wall a pink elephant slides down on a colored rainbow toboggan. The room smells like talcum powder and lavender.
On leaving, she gently pulls the door and heads to the bathroom where she flushes the toilet with no need. In the kitchen, she opens the refrigerator and closes without taking anything.  She turns the TV on and the screen shows a couple arguing. Berta sits heavily on the couch and grasps an old photo album under the living room table.
Leafing through it, with no regard on the toned pictures she knew by heart, Berta sees Flora, her daughter.
She straightens her back, frowns and opens her eyes wide, not understanding what was happening. Flora was in her grandmother’s lap with the same tiara and the pink pajama with green patterns she was wearing the night she disappeared.  On her grandmother’s right side there were two girls, on the left, a boy.  Flora scratches her nose, sniffs, and blinks several times.  Feeling sick, she gets up slowly and directs to the kitchen. Her hands tremble; she grabs a glass, fills it with water from the tap and turns it. The liquid trickles from her mouth.  She goes back to the living room and watches the picture carefully one more time.
Without taking her attention away from the image of her daughter she dials the number of her parents’ phone.
- Mom, Can I go to your house?
- Of course you can, dear. What’s the matter? Is everything all right?
Berta drops the phone on the table and leaves in a hurry with the photo album under her arm.
When she arrives there, she goes straight to the bedroom where  her grandmother sleeps without saying hello to anyone.
- Berta, come on, what happened? Please, let your grandma rest. What is so serious it cannot wait till tomorrow?  Her footsteps are followed by her worried mother. 
- Grandma, grandma, who is this little girl here? -  Berta enters the bedroom without knocking at the door and turns on the lights. The octogenarian gets up blinking her eyes without understanding what is going on, sits on the bed, always protected by her daughter, puts on her glasses and fixes her gaze on the place where her granddaughter’s finger indicates.
-  What girl?- The old lady blinks -  This is  your mother.
- No, granny. Not this. I am talking about this one in your lap. – Berta pulls the photo album fast to indicate the image that cannot get out of her head.
- There is no one on my lap. – The elderly woman winks again and settles her glasses better.  – Your aunt is the small one. See, she is the one here beside me. – Her age spot finger points to the only girl in the picture who was not her own mother.

Berta snatches the photo album from her grandmother’s hands, shakes the fists and realizes there is not a child in her grandmother’s lap. She squeezes the lips together, feels the pious eyes on her and leaves the house faster than she had entered.
Upon returning home, Berta collapses on the sofa releasing her cry.  Tears start coming gently but soon all her body shakes.
She lied on the side and hit her head slightly on the backrest of the couch. In one leap, Berta picks the photo album again and turns the first pages with urgency; carefully she observes the same picture and searches for tiny details of the girl on her grandparents’ lap. A girl with dark hair, big eyes… There is no doubt.
With a fast breath she progresses to the next page. She sees Flora’s picture with her grandmother, her uncle and aunt. Now they are on the floor with flyaway hair in front of bamboo trees curved by the strong wind beside a big black dog. The following page shows Flora mounted on a zebu calf with her mother holding it and her aunt with the right hand in her back, in the background a simple colonial Portuguese style house .
Berta’s  hand trembles in a way she can hardly leaf the next page.  A picture, in particular, calls her attention. Flora, in her wedding party, seems to be no more than 23 years old, wearing a draped dress all embroidered with white beads, contemplating herself in the oval mirror.  Her countenance does not show joy or sorrow.  One of the bridesmaids ‘face, a small girl, at the bottom of the mirror is very well defined.
The girl’s rancorous look directly faces Berta who faints after recognizing herself.