Our Struggle

B is for Broken

10 years ago

"You should have turned up!" My mother's high pitched voice screeched through the air, like nails on a chalk board.

In hindsight, I was never that close to my mother - we didn't have that mother-daughter relationship, which involved braids and story telling and soft kisses and homemade fairy cakes.

"She's your daughter, James." She cried, her tone croaking in exasperation, "your daughter," she reaffirmed - almost as if she was trying to convince herself that he was my father, and not one of her other drunken flings she had also had the night I was conceived.

A mask of amusement dawned upon my father's face - a sharp string of words were laced upon his tongue. "Daughter," he drawled slowly, "not a son," he corrected dangerously as he looked up from his contract, a mess of typed words in Calibri font.

Once upon a time, his emotionless words were like bullets through my heart. Each syllable was like acid on my skin. His words would play in my head like a broken record.

Over and over again.

Until one day, that record snapped.

I wasn't the little girl who cried over my father's (lack of) attention anymore.

Though, at the time, 13 year old me didn't realise that being a girl was such an abhorrent crime - one that warranted screams and punches.

I pulled my knees up to my chest as I sat on the leather couch, within my father's opulent office. The scene unfolded like a movie I had watched too many times: my mother squabbling over having to look after me. This time, she had missed a few 'meetings' with her 'friends'.

In other words, she couldn't get shit-faced with her disgusting clients.

A single tear slipped down my face, leaving a silvery trail on my cheek. My eyes frozen on the ground.

"No!" She shrieked, pointing a sharp talon like nail in my father's direction, "you can't play that card anymore." She screamed as a crashing sound resounded around the room. "Y-you promised me that you would help me. That you would be there to look after it." She snarled, her voice wavering as she walked up to my father, throwing his papers from his desk onto the floor.

An eerie silence settled as I felt a pair of eyes on me. I didn't dare look up. My legs had somehow stopped listening to my brain. I couldn't move, even if I wanted to.

"I want out." My mother admitted at last. Her words like crumpled leaves falling from a mould infested tree.

She tugged at her hair with a crazed look as my father glanced up at her from his sitting position - a bored look rested onto his face. My mother, meanwhile, darted across the room, grabbing my arm with her witch-like nails as she shook me roughly. "I knew I should have gone through with the abor-"

Every time I shut my eyes, I can still picture the life seeping from my mother's dark eyes, along with the river of blood after the bullet penetrated her skull.

I can't quite remember all the details: I stood over her for about fifteen minutes, my legs eventually giving way and I too fell to the floor. Strands of her blonde hair were dyed red, with her cherry lips slightly parted almost as if she had more to say.

It was an out of body experience. I didn't know how to feel then. I still don't know how to feel. That woman was still my mother. A shitty one, but nonetheless, still my mother.

It's not as if I never saw her again - she plagued my nightmares for several years after her death.

That was the day that the monster within my father had first shown its face to me.