Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rosario Marín was the forty-first treasurer of the United States and the highest-ranking Latina to serve in President George W. Bush's administration. She currently lives in California with her family.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Leading Between Two Worlds

Atria

Lean in close, I need to share a secret with you. To fully understand it,

I'll need to take you back to 1963, to the root of the darkness: a place

where one of the most painful experiences in my life once festered. I was a

bubbling five-year-old in Mexico City and, like many children, I was afraid

of the dark. Nightfall unfurled itself like a vast canvas on which I painted

my troubling thoughts. I'd nudge awake my younger sister Margarita, already

soundly sleeping next to me, and ask her to accompany me to the bathroom.

I'd pray and pray for the fears to go away, but they remained my constant

companions. I didn't fear some unidentifiable bogeyman lurking in the

shadows; no, he was a lot more real than that. While I struggled to fall

asleep, the source of my fears was most likely roaming the streets. Night

after night, I'd consume the darkness of my secret like a vial of poison,

waking up with an acrid taste still stinging my tongue. The morning sunlight

would play on my face -- signaling the start of another school day -- and

the sweet smell of my mother's cooking would waft through our small house.

The spell would be suspended until the following night when the vicious

cycle began again like a deeply scratched record that only I could hear.

My grandmother was eighty-seven years old when she passed away in 1996; she

would never know the secret that swelled inside me, her beloved nieta. At

the time, I believed the revelation would have been too heavy for her to

bear -- crushing not only her, but also my entire family. It was a cross

that, unfortunately, didn't become lighter with the years. I dragged it

around so that no one else would have to. Now I know that some crosses were

never meant to be carried alone, especially not through darkness. It would

be eighteen years before I would gather enough courage to share the secret

for the first time, tearing through the dark canvas of the night to set

down my cross. It was only then that the healing would begin.

Casting Off the Cross

His beautiful mustache twitched to life as articulate words flowed from his

mouth. To my nineteen-year-old heart, this was not only love at first sight,

but I was certain I'd marry this man. Alex didn't know it at the time, but

he had captured my heart during the closing ceremony of Encuentros

(Encounters), a religious retreat.

Flash forward four years: it's a week before our wedding, a time when I

should've been a carefree twenty-three-year-old about to marry her first

love. The darkness that had plagued me since I was a child began to come to

life in my dreams. I'd wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat,

feeling as though someone was suffocating me with a pillow. These weren't

prewedding jitters, I couldn't be surer of anything. My body was telling me

it could no longer carry on with the weight that had grown on me like a

tumor. If I was going to live the rest of my life with Alex, I'd have to

find the words to share my darkest secret. He was the first person I'd tell

and no amount of rehearsing could've helped. I was plagued with doubts about

how he would handle the news. I worried about how I'd change in his eyes. I

knew I could lose him.

It ended up coming out in one long monologue, punctuated by guttural sobs. I

took a deep breath and...

"I was five years old. I had already learned my letters and numbers, so my

mother was able to get me into the first grade by telling the school that my

birth certificate had been lost. It seemed to do the trick. At our school,

first graders were released an hour earlier than other students. My mother

didn't want me to cross the busy main boulevard to reach our house, so I

waited for her at my grandmother's place near the school. One day my

grandmother's brother -- a slovenly, perpetually unshaved man in his late

forties -- came out of the cramped room that connected to the house and told

me that my grandmother wouldn't be home for some time. I didn't know much

about him other than he'd always leave early in the morning and return late

at night. Anyway, he told me to come and sit on his lap, but I said no, that

I'd just wait for my mother. He insisted, grabbing me by the shoulder. Then,

then..."

Alex held me close, sensing how difficult this was for me. He waited calmly

for me to continue.

"Then, he started to touch me down there and all I could do was shout no,

no. I cried and cried. It didn't make a difference to him. Sometimes at

night, I could still feel his breath on my ear, whispering that this was

our secret. I was confused, but each time I resisted more. He then tried to

lure me with chocolates or a few cents. I told him that I didn't want them.

It didn't matter; his hands would creep down again. One time I went to the

bathroom and through a small crack in the window, I could see his feet

pacing, waiting. I began to fabricate any excuse possible for my mother to

pick me up at school. Then I started to stay at my aunt's house that was

even closer to the school. I felt like this was somehow my fault. I was

deeply ashamed."

I looked up from my knotted hands into Alex's eyes and prepared myself for

the worst. Although it was probably only a few seconds of silence, it felt

like an eternity. My mind raced with the concerns that had weighed on me

since our engagement: What if I wasn't a virgin and he didn't want to marry

me? What if he'd look down on me? What if he was angry that I hadn't told

him sooner? What if he did marry me out of pity, then divorce me? Oh my God!

"You have the right to leave me, I might not be a virgin," I said, breaking

the silence, while attempting to steady my breathing. Tears continued to

drench my cheeks.

With gentleness and caring true to his nature, Alex wiped my warm tears

away, reassuring me that none of this had been my fault. He was sorry that

I had lived with this burden for so long. He held me close, telling me that

he loved me for who I was; something horrible that had happened to me when I

was a mere child could not change that.

I realized then that I would forever be in love with this gentle soul. I

felt an indescribable, almost physical lightness after sharing my secret for

the first time. It was one of the most painful, but ultimately cathartic

experiences of my life. It had taken years to gather the inner strength to

shed light on what I had believed would remain a repressed and inarticulate

darkness until the day I died.

A week later, on September 19, 1981, we were married in Saint Matthias

Catholic Church (our local church) in Huntington Park, California. It was a

beautiful ceremony that I will forever remember. I never felt more certain

about anything in my life as I did on that day. Nothing else seemed to

matter. I imagined creating a family with Alex. Although he was only

twenty-four at the time, I knew he'd be a wonderful father. The future it

turns out would be full of surprises -- some of them wonderful and others

devastating. At that moment, however, surrounded by the most important

people in my life and linked arm-in-arm with this wonderful man, I couldn't

imagine being any happier.

That night and for many...