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Cruel mothers are still mothers. They make us wars. They make us revolution. They teach us the truth early. Mothers are humans. Who sometimes give birth to their pain. Instead of children.
nayyirah waheed
Mother is still very beautiful. She had all this elegance to her—the way her posture effortlessly straightens her back and elongates her neck and the way her sun-coloured hair sits perfectly along the outlines of her countenance. Her timeless beauty is truly captivating, and it's hard to believe that she has aged at all.
But she doesn't look at you. Why would she? You're just the trash she discarded: a pig for slaughter and a nuisance to behold.
She stares out the sole window in her barren room, eyes all cloudy as if she's lost in some distant memory. Mother reminds you a little of yourself, in a way. All isolated in this... room, this hospital—as if she gained her freedom just for it to be seized once more.
There is a heavy lump in your throat. Your knuckles now paled as you tightly clutch the crutch that holds you upright. You wish Levi were here with you to hold your trembling hands and calm your growing anxiety. But this is something you have to face alone, and although he had insisted on coming with you, you had requested that he wait for you outside the building.
You take a deep breath. And suddenly, all your fear is gone. "Mother," you whisper.
She turns. Dread crawls up your neck and makes you quiver.
Now that you can see her face clearly, you study her up close. Her eyes are a muddied tar, so human and devilish yet so sad. A few wrinkles had grown around her eyes and lips, but they did not dare rupture her beauty.
"Daughter," she utters, lips twisted into a devilish smile. "Clove, my dear. How I have missed you."
You resist the urge to cower from her greeting. "Mother," you repeat, your voice blending restraint and underlying bitterness. "It's... been a while."
"You have grown," she states, peering at you from tip to toe. "...and crippled."
"Yes, I have," you reply evenly, refusing to let her barbed words unravel your poise. "It is just an injury. It should heal with time."
"Injuries that heal aren't injuries at all. True injuries are the ones to the core, the ones that stubbornly prevail."
"I've had my fair share of those as well," you reply, lips contorted into a cheap smile. "All thanks to you."
Mother's lips twitch with amusement at your demeanour. "You... what happened to your face?" She asks, her nose all scrunched with disgust.
Your unoccupied hand trails the scar that lingers on your face, the one that renders you half-blind. "It's one of those. The one that stubbornly prevails."
She visibly frowns. "Such a shame. Your eyes were much like your father's. But now his beauty is all gone, and all that's left behind is an unsightly countenance."
Ugly duckling you were indeed, but mothers and daughters exist as pathetic mirrors of each other. You are all she couldn't be and she is all you could be.
You take a sharp breath. Mother will not unnerve you; she can't. "Why... why were we there? In that house for all those years?"
Her hair gently drifts, her weary yet bewitching face highlighted by the setting sun. There is silence again, and Mother seems to forget all the words in the world, and her eyes flame with rage when she looks at you, at your crippled leg and at your marred face.
"Because of you," she finally snarls. "Uri put us there because of you! Your father didn't want anyone to know about you, especially his brother. He ordered me to take you away, to hide you in that godforsaken place!"
Her hands crawl to her hair, and she tugs on it wildly, aggressively—like all her sanity has been lost and only her rotten shell is left. "You, you, you, you! It was always you! You were the reason I lost everything. My freedom, my status, everything! All because of a child I never wanted!"
She frantically searches around her bed and grabs everything she can reach: a pillow, a tray, a teacup. She throws them all at you.
"You ruined everything!" she shrieks, her voice cracking with emotion. "I should have left you to die! You're nothing but a curse, a blight on my life!"
Mother's words come out in a venomous hiss, each syllable dripping with contempt and bitterness. As she hurls objects at you, her once graceful movements turn erratic and desperate, like a trapped animal lashing out in its final moments. "Even after they took you away and promisedmy freedom—they labelled me crazy and put me here!"
The teacup shatters against the wall beside you, sending ceramic shards flying. You flinch but don't move, rooted in place and stunned, your mind blank as you comprehend her allegations.
All you ever wanted to be with her and all she wanted was to be without you.
Mother's tirade continues, punctuated by her jagged breaths and occasional coughs. Her face contorts with fury and pain, eyes bulging with a manic vigour that sends chills down your spine.
"Some nerve you have coming to me after all these years!" she spits, her voice hoarse and strained. "I hope you die a dreadful death—no one will even remember you!"
Her coughing fits worsen, each one wracking her body with violent spasms. A dark, viscous substance stains her lips and trickles down her chin.
"I didn't ask to be born!" You finally reason, your voice cracking at the last syllable. "I-I didn't ask for any of this..."
"Leave," she croaks, her voice barely audible amidst the coughing.
But as Mother's coughing fits intensify, as the blood stains her once flawless lips, a new wave of emotion washes over you—pity. Pity for this woman who had once held such beauty and grace, now reduced to a shell of her former self, ruined by malice and spite.
You move closer, instinctively reaching out a hand to comfort and touchher just once. You want to feel a Mother's touch. But she shrinks away, her eyes filled with contempt.
"Just leave me to die alone," Mother's body convulses one final time, a violent coughing fit that leaves her gasping for air.
And then, with a last, ragged breath, she falls silent.
"Mother?"
You cry out for her until your throat is raw and parched, your voice reduced to a feeble whisper, and all you taste is the bitterness of the blood she once regretted giving you.
But she is as lifeless as her love for you.
Maybe your rot had reached her, wilted her life away just like the verbenas.
Her wounds and shame are handed down to you, and her sorrow has become yours. It's as if you were still in her womb, the placenta connecting mother and daughter by body and heart.
