My Fragile Sister-in-Law Accused Me of Scheming, So I Actually Did

1: 1

My sister-in-law was the most fragile-hearted person alive.

After I got pregnant, my breathing got heavy, and one day I let out a tired sigh on the couch.

Instantly her fingers twisted together and the tears came.

Maria Sullivan, is there something about me you can't stand? Why are you sighing at me? Is my just being alive getting in your way?

Once, I casually took out the trash she'd left sitting by the bedroom door.

She climbed straight up onto the rooftop.

"You look down on me because I don't have a job, because I don't earn money, so you threw out my trash to make a point. If you want me gone, just say it!"

The whole family walked on eggshells to protect that fragile heart of hers, and forced me, a pregnant woman, to smile and grovel to her every single day.

Until the day my water broke, and I was crawling across the floor in agony, reaching for my phone to call for help.

She decided I was implying she hadn't mopped the floor clean enough, broke down, and smashed my phone.

"The first time in my life I try to learn how to mop, and you have to go and wet yourself on the floor just to humiliate me! You're trying to drive me to my death, aren't you!"

I hemorrhaged and died with my baby still inside me, and there she was, fainting into tears in front of the whole family.

"I was just too sensitive, too scared, I didn't mean it..."

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day she made her big scene up on the rooftop.

My mother-in-law was down on her knees beside her, frantic.

I didn't spare either of them a glance. I packed my bags and went straight back to my parents' place.

Whoever wants to suffer this can suffer it. I'm done playing along.

...

"Maria, where are you off to with a suitcase and a belly like that?"

A few of the older women I saw every day around the complex were sitting on the bench, and one of them asked as I came down.

I didn't slow down. I answered without thinking.

"My parents' place."

For a second the noisy air went quiet.

One of them, the one close with my mother-in-law, couldn't hold back. She got up and walked briskly over to me.

"Why would you go back to your parents' out of nowhere? Did you have some kind of fight at home?"

From the doorway of the building came a small, pitiful, wounded sob.

"Cheryl Chavez, there was no fight. It was just one-sided bullying."

Peggy Stephens had come down from upstairs at some point.

After all that dying-and-living up on the rooftop, she looked a wreck, her eyes ringed red like someone had beaten her down.

"I'm the one being bullied. My sister-in-law wants me gone."

Cheryl glanced at my face and quickly smoothed it over.

"Don't talk nonsense. You two get along so well, why would she want you gone?"

Peggy bit down on her lip at once, the picture of misery.

"My sister-in-law is terrifying. She plays the perfect game where you can't even accuse her of anything."

"She keeps the whole house running so perfectly on purpose, won't let me lift a finger, even rushes to throw out the trash by my door before I can, all so I'll feel ashamed, like I have no right to exist here."

As she spoke, the tears rolled down.

"I know I don't have a job, don't earn money, and I still eat and live here. I know I'm a burden. But I've been trying. The world is hard on women in the workplace, is that my fault too?"

The other women closed in around us.

Someone murmured, "It's not easy for the girl either. Her brother has a wife now, and she's stuck in the middle, an outsider on both sides."

The way the others looked at me changed.

That familiar suffocating weight filled my chest.

It had been exactly like this last time.

All Peggy had to do was well up, trot out her I've-done-my-best, I've-tried-so-hard routine, and everyone would fill in the rest of her grievance for her.

And me. When I said I hadn't bullied anyone, all they did was nod along, yes, yes, yes.

When I said she was just too fragile-hearted, they said she was still young, I should be patient with her.

When I said no matter what I did she took it as an attack, they said the girl was only sensitive.

And in the end I died with my baby, lying cold in the morgue, and they were still discussing whether I'd bullied her so hard, day in and day out, that I'd triggered her into breaking down and smashing my phone.

This time, I wasn't going to waste a single word.

"Do you mind not crowding me. Let me through."

Peggy's crying paused.

She lifted her head, biting her lip hard beneath those red, wept-out eyes.

"Maria, do you really hate me that much?"

I said, "At least you know yourself."

She flinched like the words had cut deep, stepped back half a pace, her eyes full of hurt.

"But all I want is to stay in my own home. I used to live here too. Just because my brother got married, this isn't my home anymore? What did I even do wrong?"

Rage surged up through me, and my belly cramped along with it.

I let out a long breath. I couldn't be bothered to argue a single point with her.

"You did nothing wrong. You're right about everything."

"Move!"

Hearing that, the women crowding around me stepped in again to make peace.

Peggy rubbed her eyes and forced a smile onto her face.

"Cheryl, everyone, please stop."

"My sister-in-law is only making things hard for me on purpose. She won't really leave."

"Don't worry. I'll keep trying to win her over with love, until she likes being around me and stops wanting me gone."

I looked at her coldly.

"I don't need to be won over."

"And I will never like being around you."

With that, I grabbed my suitcase and walked.

2: 2

Behind me, my mother-in-law's voice rang out. "Sullivan, where do you think you're going?"

She'd seen me wheeling my suitcase, and she knew I really meant to leave.

Peggy stood rooted where she was, tears falling harder than before.

"If you leave, what happens to me? Everyone's going to think I drove you out. How am I supposed to live after that? I didn't do anything."

"If you really walk away, then I might as well just die."

Her crying softened the old women around her.

"Peggy's mom, say something to her, please."

"Maria's still pregnant. What would it look like, going back to her parents' like this?"

"Exactly. Family doesn't hold grudges overnight. Talk it out and it's done."

My mother-in-law took my hand.

Her strained voice was pitched just loud enough for every gawker around us to hear.

"Sullivan, this family isn't whole without either of you, you or Peggy."

"One is Brent's little sister, the other is his wife. If you really leave today, how do you think he's going to feel?"

"When he gets back from his trip and finds out you were forced back to your parents' house, how is he supposed to face that?"

Brent was my weak spot.

My mother-in-law knew it too well.

In my last life, Peggy had pushed me to the point of wanting to go home too, and every time I backed down over these same few sentences.

I'd tell myself Brent was away on the road for long stretches, that he couldn't even be there to look after me while I was pregnant, and that if I really went back to my parents, he'd be hurt inside even if he never said it.

So I swallowed everything, the whole pregnancy, just to spare him.

The day my water broke in that other life, Peggy snatched my phone away and wouldn't let me call our mother-in-law. She said it was the first time she'd ever mopped the floor and she wanted it to be a surprise.

She even locked the door from the inside, said she was afraid I'd go out and tattle.

I bore down against the contractions for two hours, my breathing heavy as if my chest were packed with sawdust, until my water broke and the pain drove me down onto the floor, crawling for my phone, begging for help.

And she stood there crying, saying it was the first time in her life she was learning to mop, and I just had to relieve myself on the floor to humiliate her, asking whether I was trying to hound her to death.

Later I lay flat on the floor, both hands clamped hard over my belly, gulping for air, the blood pouring out of me and not stopping, until I lost consciousness for good.

This life, I wasn't walking that road again.

I pulled my hand out of her grip.

"Mom, you know perfectly well what's really going on between me and Peggy."

"Don't use Brent to pressure me. From now on, no one can force me to swallow anything I don't want to."

The people around us traded glances.

Peggy stopped crying.

The way she looked at me was the way you'd look at a criminal who'd driven her to the edge.

She suddenly rushed right up to me.

"Why do you have to push things until they can't be fixed?"

Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried a lofty, accusing edge.

"If you'd just target me a little less, run a few less of your schemes right out in the open, we could get along in peace."

The whispers around us started up again.

I took a step back.

"Stay away from me. That green-tea act of yours makes me sick."

Peggy's eyes went wide, tears spilling over at once.

I reached out and shoved her aside, then turned with my suitcase and walked off, ignoring the talk swelling behind me.

At the entrance to the complex, I flagged down a car and went straight home to my parents.

3: 3

Once I was home, I could finally breathe.

I didn't want to worry my parents, so I just told them the pregnancy had me emotional and homesick.

I thought I'd shaken off Peggy, at least for a while.

But that same afternoon, she came after me.

She stood at the foot of my parents' building with a bullhorn, shouting for everyone to hear.

"Sister-in-law, come home with me, please, I'm begging you. If you drive me out by running back to your parents like this, you'll really be the death of me."

"I just want to stay in my own home. Is that really so unforgivable?"

"It's been three seconds and you still haven't come down."

"I get it. You're using the silent treatment to force me out."

"Fine, if you've made up your mind, fine! Then I'll hold my breath right now and choke the life out of myself!"

With that, she took a deep breath and started holding it.

Ours is a subsidized-housing complex, so most of the relatives live in the same place.

Before I even heard the commotion and got downstairs, my Aunt Debra and the others had already gathered around Peggy.

Her whole face had gone red from holding her breath, tears sliding down her cheeks, looking pitiful, like someone who'd been badly bullied.

They rushed to talk her out of it.

"Sweetie, stop holding your breath, you can't actually die that way, you'll just make yourself sick."

Peggy couldn't hold it any longer and broke all at once.

She clutched her chest, gasping in big gulps, crying so hard she could barely breathe.

"You're lying! How could I not die from it? I almost... I almost just died."

"Don't try to stop me. Just being alive gets in my sister-in-law's way."

"That was only luck this time. Sooner or later I'll hold my breath till I'm gone."

Someone in the crowd sucked in a sharp breath.

Others watched her hurting herself like that and muttered under their breath.

"She may have gone about it wrong... but she does just want Maria to come home."

"No real malice in her. Family always has to work things out."

"Poor silly girl."

I came down right at that moment, and when my Aunt Debra saw me, she sighed.

"Maria, why don't you let it go?"

"She means no harm. She probably just slipped up somewhere and upset you. She's a young girl. As her sister-in-law, you should give her some room."

"She came all this way to find you. Both of you give a little, and just go home."

Here it was again.

She's young.

In my last life, it was those two weightless words that made me swallow my own broken teeth, again and again.

Peggy threw herself into Aunt Debra's arms, eyes red, gazing at her with gratitude.

"Auntie, thank you for taking my side. I only want this family to be better."

I turned to face Aunt Debra.

"I threw out the trash at her door, and she says I bullied her."

"I keep the house in perfect order and don't let her lift a finger, and she says I do it to shame her out of the house."

"Auntie, so who exactly can't tolerate whom?"

Aunt Debra faltered under my stare, her voice dropping.

"So are you going to live at your parents' forever and never go back?"

"Look at the state she's in. Do you really want to drive her to her death?"

Before I could say a word, Peggy suddenly dropped to her knees in front of me with a thud, pulled a filthy cloth bundle from her pocket, and opened it with trembling hands.

Inside was a stack of crumpled small bills.

"Sister-in-law, I know you look down on me for having no job and earning nothing."

"This is seventy dollars I saved up collecting bottles in secret. Take it. I'll try hard to find work and give back to the family, just please stop hating me."

She shuffled forward two steps on her knees, holding out that little bit of money to me in both hands.

The whole scene, topped off with the fat tears rolling down her face, played out like a full tragedy of the bullied.

The relatives swung to her side in an instant.

"Oh come on, Maria, it was just a few words back and forth, is it really worth all this?"

"You're the sister-in-law. What's wrong with giving a little to your husband's sister?"

"All right, let people off when you can. Look what you've driven her to."

I looked at Peggy kneeling on the ground, her face streaked with tears, and I was shaking with anger, tears welling in my eyes, but the chorus of blame pressed down on me until I couldn't get a single word out.

My mother had come down from upstairs at some point, and she snapped, "Nothing you people love more than a good show, is that it?!"

Then she took my hand and led me toward home.

We'd gone a couple of steps before she spoke again.

"Stop kneeling, what does that even look like. Anything to say, say it inside!"

Peggy braced a hand on her knee and got up, wearing the look of someone who'd just been scolded, and trailed close behind us every step of the way.

But where no one could see, the corner of her mouth curled, and a strange smile flickered in her eyes.

4: 4

At the door of my family's building she stopped short.

Then, in a tone of surrender, "I've thought it through. If you won't come back with me, then never mind."

My mother sighed. "Good that you've come around. Whatever the problem is, it can wait until Maria's had the baby."

Peggy standing there so calm, no shouting, no scene, left me faintly uneasy.

Just as I expected. The moment she left my family's building, she opened a livestream on her phone and climbed back up to the top of the eighteenth floor.

She stood swaying at the railing, silent, tears running down.

The stream's title read

My Sister-in-Law Was Right. A fragile heart like mine is only a burden. I won't trouble anyone in the next life.

A title like that pulled in a crowd in seconds.

On the stream, she apologized to me in front of everyone.

"I'm sorry, Sister-in-law. When I couldn't get through the door, I shouldn't have suspected you wanted me gone. I understand now, you were only worried the old code wasn't safe."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have imagined you poisoned my little hamster to make an example of me. It must have been that pregnancy made you afraid of small animals."

"I know you wouldn't let me use the washing machine only because I'm weak, and you wanted me to move more."

"I believe you really did go back to your mother's just because you missed home. You never meant to force me out."

As she spoke, the tears kept falling on their own.

"I miss my brother so much. He used to hate to see me hurt over anything, he always thought about how I felt, but now..."

Halfway through, she seemed to catch herself, as if she'd said the wrong thing.

She rushed to correct it. "Don't take it the wrong way, Sister-in-law. I'm not saying you stole my brother. I just... I miss the way things were."

"I've said so much without meaning to. Sister-in-law says I overthink everything. Maybe she's right. I'm just so scared... I'm sorry for wasting everyone's time."

Every apology was an accusation. Every tear was a weapon.

The comments section boiled like water on a hard flame.

"You can tell from the way she describes it how cruel this sister-in-law is!"

"I get her pain. After my brother got married there was no place for me at home either. His wife had it in for me everywhere. Now I hardly dare go home at all."

"Driven all the way up to the rooftop, imagine how much she's had to swallow."

"People like this should be exposed early. Somebody dox her and let the internet have her!"

"Don't do anything you can't undo, honey. Hold on. I'll dox her and get you your revenge!"

I listened to her accusations pulled out of context, and I read every line of abuse aimed at me below.

A cramp twisted through my belly. My breath jammed in my chest.

In my last life, they'd hounded me online just like this too.

Because I'd made a dish at dinner that Peggy didn't like, she'd posted a long tearful thread about it.

I explained I hadn't done it to spite her, that I simply didn't know she hated that dish.

I explained I'd never barred her from the washing machine, only asked her not to throw her shoes in it.

I explained that after I changed the code, I'd messaged her to tell her.

I explained everything.

No one believed me.

All they remembered was Peggy's soft, tear-filled eyes. They believed only what they wanted to believe.

I drew a deep breath and headed for the roof.

The pack of relatives trailed after me, all talking over each other, telling me to hurry up and coax the girl down.

Saying a life was at stake, that if I owed an apology I'd better make it fast.

Saying heaven was watching what people did, that I'd better rein myself in from now on.

I walked toward Peggy with no expression on my face.

Just as she choked out the word Sister-in-law, I raised my hand and knocked the phone clean out of hers.

Then I grabbed her collar and slammed the upper half of her body hard against the railing.

"If you're going to jump, jump. If you won't, I'll help you along!"