Author’s Note
This piece is written in fragments because that is how the story exists in my mind—discontinuous, refracted, and inherited in pieces rather than paragraphs. The truth of a scapegoated daughter is never linear, and it almost never belongs solely to her. This is fiction in shape, memoir in spirit, and an attempt to give language to something that often lives beyond language. If you grew up inside a similar climate—silence, distortion, exile—I hope these fragments help you recognize your own outline, and perhaps soften it. —A.R.
Fragment 1. Origin Story
“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
— Psalm, 118:22
“Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.”
— Psalm, 27:10
“But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.”
— Psalm, 22:6
In the family ledger, every child was assigned a part.
Psychology 101 likes to sketch the predictable trio:
the eldest, the golden child;
the middle, the diplomat;
the youngest, the ornament.
But real families are never that tidy.
This one—five children, three girls born in the Sixties, two boys a decade later—bent the script into its own strange geometry.
The Second Girl belonged to the father.
The Third Girl chose the mother.
The boys didn’t have to choose; they were chosen.
And then there was her—
the one they wrote in the margins, circled in red,
and blamed when the ink bled.
No one chose their role. Not completely.
But hers was enforced with religious consistency.
A scapegoat isn’t born; she’s designated.
Fragment 2. Early Training
“There are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
When she was a girl, the house ran on the kind of silence that precedes storms.
Anger was the inheritance.
Fear was the language.
Her job, unspoken but understood, was to absorb the lightning so the others wouldn’t have to.
They hit her because she was there.
They blamed her because she survived.
Later, the story hardened into family mythology:
She was difficult. She provoked it. She deserved it.
A lie repeated becomes lineage.
Fragment 3. The Crime of Escape
“All right then, I’ll go to hell.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Freedom was her first betrayal.
When she grew old enough to leave, she ran—
not toward anything, just away from the house that kept reinventing new shapes of cruelty.
Years later, this would be the unforgivable offense:
not the thing she did, but the thing she stopped doing—
standing still while they broke her.
Fragment 4. The Sister’s Mission
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Her sister has a calling.
Not a vocation; those build something.
This one destroys.
Every day, she tends the fire that keeps resentment warm.
She delivers messages like arrows:
Did you hear what she said? Do you know what she did? Are you sure you can trust her?
Divide and conquer.
Division first, conquest eventually.
The sister does not rest.
Scapegoats, after all, must be kept in circulation.
Fragment 5. Exile as Atmosphere
“The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim.”
— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.”
— James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Her married life carried the residue.
Even in her new home, far from the house of storms, the pattern followed like a weather system.
People whispered about her with the same ready confidence as those who raised her.
Every rumor required no evidence.
Every slander was accepted as character.
She was talked about behind her back, and when those words reached daylight,
she was blamed again for their existence.
The logic was simple:
If she’s always accused, she must be guilty.
Guilt by endurance.
Fragment 6. Grief Without Permission
“Mendacity is a system that we live in.”
— Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
When her nineteen-year-old nephew died, she did what decent people do:
she reached out—gently, respectfully—offering condolences, food, presence.
But the family needed a direction for their pain.
And pain often looks for the same old lightning rod.
Grief turned toward her with practiced precision.
She was shunned, frozen out, treated like an intruder at her own blood’s funeral rites.
Strangers would have been welcomed with more grace.
Fragment 7. The Familiar Explanation
“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
— Anton Chekhov, Letter to A.S. Suvorin
People outside the family asked:
What did she do?
Because they needed the story to make sense.
Scapegoating never makes sense.
It makes order.
It assigns cause, even where there is none.
The family cannot imagine the world without someone to absorb the blame,
so they keep her in exile to maintain the balance of their chaos.
Fragment 8. The Blinding Gaslight
“I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
There are things you cannot explain.
Not inside the family—
because there is no awareness there, only the machinery of ego and the ancient reflex of the pain-body,
repeating itself like a fever dream that hardened into tradition.
And not outside the family—
because no one believes a story that doesn’t follow emotional arithmetic.
Two plus two must equal four, they insist.
Harm must have motive.
Rejection must have cause.
Cruelty must have a justification.
So when you tell them what happened,
they tilt their heads, searching for the missing variable—
something you must have done,
or failed to do,
or should have known,
anything that would make the numbers reconcile.
But in houses built on gaslight,
the equations never resolve.
The shadows outrun their sources.
The lies shine brighter than the truth.
And the lights—those blinding, searing lights—
are always pointed at the wrong person.
This is the real silence of the scapegoat:
not the lack of a voice,
but the absence of a language
that others are willing to understand.
Fragment 9. The Untold Part
“I am rooted, but I flow.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
— Diary entry for Saturday 5th September 1925 by Virginia Woolf.
She carries no hatred.
Only bewilderment, and a tired kind of dignity.
Every year, she grows quieter—not because she is defeated,
but because there is nowhere in that family where words land safely.
She lives in her own country now—
cleaner air, steadier ground—
but the exile is permanent,
not because she wants it,
but because there is no mercy on the other side.
Fragment 10. The Truth No One There Will Say
“People never notice anything.”
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
She wasn’t the weakest.
She was the strongest.
She was the one who knew the house was killing her and climbed out anyway.
A scapegoat is not the problem.
She is the proof that survival is possible.
And survival, to those who never escaped,
is an unforgivable act.
