We Don't Talk About Carol

by Kristen L. Berry

what happens in this house stays in this house. The statement had sounded somewhat sinister when I was a kid, but as an adult, I could understand the benign intentions behind it. It was about protecting your family’s reputation. It was about preserving your pride, even in the face of an embarrassing or shameful incident. It was about protecting yourself from dwelling on events that caused you pain. It was about appearing strong, and not allowing anyone to learn your weak spots. I knew this mentality had been passed down by my parents’ own parents, who’d likely learned it from their parents, and so on. And it made sense—when you are of a race of people that has been systematically disenfranchised by the country your ancestors had been brought to against their will, and hundreds of years later you are still struggling to free yourself from the shackles that limit your access

your family’s hard-won good name might be all you have.

Yet while our motto may have limited my family’s vulnerability to the outside world, it also prevented us from b...