My Husband's Legal Wife Is My Sister?! novel · Chapter 1 of 20
Chapter 1: The Crooked Stamp
The nurse held my marriage certificate up to the light from the window and wrinkled her nose.
"Ma'am, did you get married civilly or just in the church?"
"Civilly, four years ago," I said. "And in the church the same month."
"It's just that this stamp is crooked."
I leaned over the desk.
The stamp from the Civil Registry officer was tilted to the right, as if it had been stamped in a hurry.
"And the folio number doesn't come up in the system," she added, typing. "Look, I put the number in here and it gives me an error."
"It must have been entered wrong."
"Could be."
But the nurse wasn't looking me in the eye anymore.
I was ten weeks pregnant, with an ultrasound still pending and a bag of papers I'd put together the night before, happy, like you wrap a gift.
The marriage certificate, Moises's ID, my CURP.
I wanted to open my file for prenatal care.
Nothing else.
"Go to the Registry and ask for a certified copy," the nurse said, with a kindness that scared me. "It's probably a mistake. It happens all the time."
I left the hospital with my knees weak.
I grabbed a taxi and gave him the address of the Civil Registry, in downtown Guadalajara.
The whole way I kept telling myself it was a mistake.
That Moises would fix it.
Moises fixed everything.
He was the man of the Zepedas, the one who closed the deals at the tequila distillery and remembered my birthday even when he was in Los Angeles.
Four years of Sunday dinners.
Four years of going with his mother to mass, at the church in Tequila, and praying for a child.
The child had finally come.
And it had me in a taxi, clutching a paper with a crooked stamp.
There was a line at the Registry.
I stood in line.
When it was my turn, the clerk didn't even look at me.
"Marriage certificate. Names?"
"Moises Zepeda Ibarra and Citlali Camarena."
He typed.
He stopped.
He typed again.
"That folio number you've got?"
I handed him my paper.
He looked at it for a long moment, and set it down on the desk.
"Ma'am, that folio doesn't exist in our system. That certificate was not issued by this office."
"It must be a mistake."
"It's not a mistake. That certificate is fake."
I felt the floor of the Registry move beneath me.
"Fake?"
"Someone had it printed. You can tell from the paper."
"So, am I married, or not?"
The clerk hesitated.
"Let me check with the gentleman's name."
He typed again.
The screen lit up his glasses.
"Mr. Moises Zepeda Ibarra appears as married."
I breathed.
"Well, of course. To me."
"No, ma'am. He appears married as of four years and two months ago, in this office, to someone else."
He cleared his throat.
"To Xochitl Camarena Preciado."
The clerk's voice drifted away, as if he were speaking to me from inside a cave.
Xochitl.
My half-sister.
My father's legitimate daughter.
The bride who, on her wedding day, got on a plane and disappeared from everyone's life, leaving Moises standing at the altar.
The one who, according to Dona Anselma, had been the family's great disappointment.
The one who, according to everyone, he had gotten over with me.
"That can't be," I said.
"If you want, I can print you a certified copy of the real certificate."
"Real?"
"The one that is in the system."
I just stared at him.
Then I did the only thing I could think of.
"Print it," I said. "With the stamp, with the signature, with everything. And another copy of mine. I want you to write in the margin that it doesn't exist."
"I can't write..."
"Then have your boss write it."
He looked at me for the first time.
He had the face of someone who had already seen a lot of wives at that counter.
"One moment, ma'am."
It took him twenty minutes.
When I left the Registry, I had a legal-size envelope in my hand.
Inside was my life, certified.
Four years married to a man who, in the eyes of the law, belonged to my sister.
I sat down on a bench in the Registry garden, under the laurel trees.
The birds were singing.
Couples were walking in smiling, with balloons.
I dialed Moises's number with an ice-cold finger.
He answered on the third ring.
"My love, what happened? I'm in a meeting."
"Moises," I said, "I'm at the Civil Registry."
There was a short silence.
"What are you doing there?"
"They told me my certificate doesn't exist."
"Ay, Citlali."
He didn't say "that can't be."
He didn't say "I don't understand."
He said "ay, Citlali," the way you say it when a child breaks a glass.
"Did you know?" I asked.
"Listen to me. It's not what it looks like. There's an explanation, and it's simple. Come home and we'll talk about it calmly."
"Tell me now."
"Not over the phone."
"Moises."
And then, behind his voice, I heard another voice, a woman's, dry and low, that I recognized immediately.
Dona Anselma.
"Tell her not to go to the Registry anymore," she was saying. "Tell her to shut up, and to come to lunch on Sunday."
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