What happened next happened fast, and I will tell it plainly and briefly, because it does not deserve to be dwelt on, and because the important part is not the violence but what the violence finally made undeniable.

My father lost control.

He reached out and seized my mother by the wrist and tried to force her hand down toward the ink pad, telling her to stop playing the martyr and press her thumb to the paper.

Mariana cried out.

I crossed the kitchen and got my hands on my father’s shoulders and hauled him back and off her — “Get your hands off her!” — and he shouted at me to stay out of it, and I told him I would not.

Across the room, Uncle Ernesto had already taken out his phone and begun, steadily, to record.