Actually, the more you dwelt on it, the more you had the feeling you'd gotten things wrong. Perhaps today wasn't a special day at all. Perhaps today was simply yet another day, and the weird fuzziness in your brain was just a result of the squashings you'd endured since waking up. Perhaps you were just a little rattled, and if you took another minute to calm down, you'd remember that today was just an average day like any other. Sure, your version of a 'typical day' involved quite a bit more squishing and humiliating than an unaffected might endure, but perhaps today was really just another par-for-the-course day.
And then Inez walked back into the room, purse in hand, and gave you a strange look.
"Allegra. Why are you still standing there?" Inez huffed, your older cousin's patience-tolerance for you (which was always small to begin with given her penchant for mercilessly testing you) boiling at a high. "We're leaving in a minute."
You paled, hating the next words you knew would have to come out of your mouth. "Go...where, again?" You sheepishly asked.
Inez's countenance darkened, your cousin crossing her arms and striking a pose that sent shivers of intimidating through you. If it was any other circumstance and Inez was looking at you like this, you just knew she'd be on the cusp of upheaving your entire day by nabbing you for herself and subjecting you to hours of painful crushing endurance tests as punishment for not living up to her impossible standards. She'd done something similar a few weeks back when she'd given you the impossible task of fixing her breakfast on a day she was running late, and she'd been furious when she reached the kitchen and you hadn't even finished buttering-up a single slice of toast.
But as today was apparently something special, Inez instead just glowered at you, her aura emanating disappointment.
"To visit my mother, Allegra. How could you have forgotten that?" Inez explained succinctly.
Your eyes bulged wide. How had you forgotten that? Now that Inez had said it, the memories of your conversation with her from the other day came rushing back. She'd gotten a call from her mom begging her to come over and spend a day together, and when Inez had proposed a family day your aunt had leapt at the opportunity. And so it had gotten added to the schedule, the decision made (without any input from you, mind) that Inez, Carmine, Brinley, and yourself would be going over to your aunt's apartment and spending the day with her, doing whatever she desired as a fun way to pass the time.
Then a second thought hit you.
I probably blocked it from my brain because of how much I dread spending time around her. You internally bemoaned.
While you felt a shred of guilt for thinking this way about a family member, it was the honest-to-god truth. Your aunt ranked extremely low on your list of people you ever enjoyed being around. Spending time with her (or even just making the commitment to do so) was promising fate itself that you'd be teed-up for a day of misery...or even far longer than a day depending on the circumstances of where you ended up when night fell. You couldn't recall a single time you'd ever been around your aunt for longer than an hour without being crushed, smushed, or otherwise entrapped in a humiliating scenario.
You snapped out of your thoughts as your older cousin's fingers crunched you tightly, Inez groaning. Apparently, she'd taken your mental pause as a sign of your telltale decision paralysis (and it was, to an extent), and her tolerance for you was already over with (which was a bit foreboding given how early in the day it was). While you struggled in her grip to try and defend yourself, you were ultimately helpless as Inez stuffed you into her purse and zipped it up. Instantly, the darkness swallowed you up, and you ended up tripping and finding yourself buried under your older cousin's wallet, and half-crushed by a makeup compact.
Through the purse, you heard Inez chatting briefly with Carmine and Brinley as she explained where you were (which prompted a snarky laugh from Carmine and an innocently-insensitive giggle from your wife), and then the three giantesses headed out to Inez's car. Once inside, they buckled up and took off to your aunt's apartment, which was about a two-hour drive away from your place. And you were left to languish in Inez's purse the entire ride, listening to the muffled sounds of the radio and trying to block out the pain of Inez's purse items banging around and crushing you with each bumpy pothole your cousin hit. You tried to ignore your stomach growls too, as you still hadn't had any bite to eat.
No getting out of this now. You thought, morosely. Time to spend a day with Aunt Alejandra.
*****
Your mother, Elaine Estrada, had been born and raised in Mexico to a loving unaffected mother and an affected father. She'd been an angel, possessing almost unfathomably love, grace, kindness, and charity towards others. This did, on occasion, lead to others taking advantage of her generosity, her forgiving nature, and her naivety, but for the most part her positive traits benefitted her life immensely. And she showered everyone with love equally, and this quickly included her newborn baby sister, a fellow unaffected her parents named Alejandra. Elaine was six years older than Alejandra.
As the elder child, Elaine shouldered a lot of the burdens of the household, and these duties increased exponentially after her father (your grandfather) disappeared one day and never returned. Elaine had to bear a lot of responsibilities, alongside launching as many (inevitably fruitless) searches for her father as she could. While this was going on, her mother was preoccupied with both grief, and trying to raise Alejandra. Because of her own immense sadness, and her desire to shield her young daughter from that sort of pain, your grandmother did everything she could to make Alejandra's life as effortless, happy, and carefree as possible.
Her efforts bore fruit, though from Elaine's perspective, she couldn't help but see Alejandra not as a bundle of joy, but as a laidback, lackadaisical, lazy, wild and impulsive child. Incrementally at first, and then exponentially, Elaine's typical love and care turned sour when around her younger sister, who seemed to just coast through life with a devil-may-care attitude of letting the wind blow where it may and not paying heed to the consequences. Alejandra had an enthusiastic zeal for life, either spending her time partying and clubbing and drinking, flitting from one relationship to the next, or spending lavish amounts of money on cutting-edge paint supplies to pursue a love of art. Elaine's money, technically, as since Alejandra didn't have a job of her own she pooled from the family's communal funds to fuel her wild lifestyle.
Eventually, Alejandra's wild antics reached their inevitable breaking point as the guy she was seeing at the time (a tiny man) got her pregnant. As soon as it became clear Alejandra's child was to be an unaffected daughter, the tiny guy panicked and dumped Alejandra, running off and never being seen again. His absence, and the presence of an incoming child, sobered Alejandra up slightly, though not enough for Elaine's tastes. Alejandra still had a perpetual easy-going smile, still laughed her way through life, and still never seemed to take anything too seriously. Having a baby was a life-altering change, and yet Alejandra seemed as relaxed with her bohemian lifestyle as ever.
Elaine, angry at her sister but unable to ever bring herself to actually act out in anger, instead decided to try and show Alejandra up. She decided to embrace her younger sister's wild lifestyle and prove that she could live that way too. And perhaps, some small part of her was jealous of how easy Alejandra had it, or maybe a small part of her craved that freedom she couldn't quite have herself with all her own responsibilities. So, she too began partying, clubbing, and focusing on hobbies over anything else. And for a short little while, it was genuinely blissful, as was helping Alejandra bring baby Inez into the world.
And then, one night, Elaine got a little too wild (and a little too unlucky with preventative products), and found herself pregnant after a one-night stand. A baby was growing in her belly, quickly determined to be an affected girl. Elaine never saw the man again, not that she held it against him. It had never been intended to be much more than a one-night stand after a crazy party.
Knowing she was carrying an affected child inside her, Elaine made the difficult decision to leave her home country of Mexico behind and travel upwards to the United States, eventually settling in Maryland and getting a nice-paying job in accounting. The reason she left Mexico behind had everything to do with that country's reputation towards tinies.
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