Davies
After Wilson beat my mother, he disappeared. The police were looking for him, but that hardly mattered at that moment.
When I woke up in the hospital, a day after the beating, everything in me ached. Every movement felt like a punishment, even breathing was unbearable. But nothing was more painful than the words I heard from the doctor:
"I'm very sorry."
My heart stopped. My mother... Oh God.
She endured so much. Days of being beaten, strangled, punched. She was so weak. According to Mr. Mitchell, she saw me being carried in his arms and thought Wilson had killed me. The neighbor shouted something like, "The boy is dead, call the police, he killed the boy!" and that destroyed her.
When Mr. Mitchell's wife tried to take her out of the house, my mother grabbed a knife from the kitchen sink. She said I lived in her heart. And that's exactly where she stuck the knife.
At the time, I was only eight years old, but I never forgot what I heard the following year. Charlie, a boy from school, mocked me. He said everyone knew my mother didn't die quickly. He laughed.
My whole body burned with hatred. I counted the seconds to break that trash's bones.
I also remember the day I got the news at the hospital. I didn't cry. I couldn't. If I cried, it would be like accepting that she was gone. There were no tears, just the unbearable feeling of emptiness.
At the hospital, I begged to see my mother. The doctor refused, saying I was just a child. I tried to argue, said I didn't have time to say goodbye. He looked at me with pity but stood by his decision.
At that time, the city hospital was small and under construction. There was no morgue. The dead were kept in a specific room, where there was only a cold chamber with three compartments, until the body was taken to the neighboring city.
I remembered what Mrs. Peterson's wife said when he died:
"He's in that cursed room. The damn nineteen! That's where everyone goes."
The damn nineteen.
I waited for Mr. Mitchell to fall asleep in the armchair in my room and, in silence, left. The hallway seemed endless, each step echoing in the absolute silence.
"Dead people don't make noise, Davies. It's just your noisy mind. Scaredy-cat, as always."
When I got to the door with the number nineteen, my breath caught. The doorknob was there, cold and still. My heart seemed to want to jump out of my mouth. But I opened the door.
A doctor was signing some papers on a clipboard, while a nurse pulled the sheet off the face of a lifeless body on a stretcher.
And there she was.
I could see the profile of her face, her mouth open in a frightening way.
Jesus Christ!
It felt like I was going to suffocate at any moment with that feeling that squeezed my chest.
I staggered away, and a nurse inside the room noticed me. But I didn't care. I backed up against the wall and let myself fall, curling up as if I could hide from that pain.
"Come back to me, Mom," I whispered. "Wake up, please... Don't leave me, please..."
My words came out broken, as if each syllable tore something inside me. A hand touched my shoulder, and in an instinct of despair, I struggled. The nurse tried to hold me, wrapping his arms around my waist, but I screamed. I screamed as loud as I could, until my voice disappeared into the void.
Still, I didn't cry.
I hit him, I hit myself, as if it could relieve the unbearable pain that consumed me. When I realized, there were two nurses holding me, while the doctor tried, in vain, to calm me down. They dragged me back to the room. I was out of my mind. I only realized what happened when I felt the sting of the needle in my arm. The medication came quickly, erasing my mind into a void that seemed safer than the damn room where she was.
At my mother's funeral, everyone watched me carefully, waiting for me to snap again. But my mind wasn't there. It wasn't among flowers and candles. It was at home, smelling the dinner she used to make, hearing the soft sound of her voice singing softly while she cooked.
Over time, things started to disappear. The bank put our house up for sale, as if it wanted to erase any trace of who she was. But none of that brought me back to reality. I was trapped in another place, in another time, where the pain was constant and her absence tore me apart more each day.
At night, in my room, I asked God if she was okay. It was a despair that invaded me without warning, and when sleep finally came, I believed it was He comforting me. My mother said that peace came from God, and that's why, every night I managed to fall asleep, I thanked Him, believing that He was with me.
I asked God to say "hello" to her for me. I had faith that He would deliver my message. My mother always taught me to believe, but now faith seemed to slip through my fingers, hard to hold on to.
Death is not cruel only to those who leave; it tears apart those who stay. Every day without her was a new way of dying inside. Her absence gnawed at my chest, and overcoming that seemed as distant as the sky.
I couldn't take it anymore. I still relived everything. Clearly. Every day. Even with Mr. Mitchell and his wife taking me in, nothing filled the void. They were kind, but they weren't her. They never would be.
And then, I promised myself that I would never be like my father. But promises made to oneself are fragile. I was a Lewis, and the Lewises hurt people.
"Poor women. You're just another Lewis born to destroy them." That's what Kimberley's mother told me years later. She was right. I was a wretch.
Oh my God... And I was only twelve years old.
At twelve years old, I already carried sorrows greater than I could bear. I was angry at my mother for never having had the courage to run away with me and, suddenly, finding the strength to leave alone. And I was angry at myself for being weak. For fainting at the worst moment. She thought I was dead because I was weak.
The sorrow was the size of the love I felt for her. And the weight of that crushed my body, heavier than a thousand tons, while the world moved on and I remained there, trapped, carrying a pain that seemed to have no end.

YOU ARE READING
The Turning Point
RomanceTragedy and loss have left Heloyse adrift, trapped in a void where pain is her only companion. Seeking an escape, she throws herself into the unknown-not to find herself, but to forget, even if only for a moment. Her journey leads her to vast, lonel...