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𓃮 Inayah's pov 𓃮
Flashback scene
Mama says I'm not allowed in her cupboard, she tells me it's where she keeps old, boring things like receipts and buttons and grown-up papers. Yeah boring.
But today she's outside on the phone, and I just want to see.
I stand on my tippy toes giggling as I pull the door open. It creaks and makes a sound that makes my ears hurt. Everything smells like dust and a little like her perfume, The one that makes me sneeze.
I don't like it.
Inside, there's a pile of sweaters and a shoebox with a cracked lid. I open the box, expecting something boring like she said but there's a photo under some papers.
It's a little bent, and the corners are soft like they've been held a lot. Yellow and old.
It's Mama.
I smile looking at her, she looks younger in the picture. Her hair is shorter, and she's wearing a pink dress I've never seen before. She looks beautiful, I know my mama is the most beautiful mama in the whole wide world.
She's smiling, not her small, the kind of smile she usually has, tired and weak.
This one is big, bright like when I drew her a heart with crayons last year, I wrote a big "S" in it, just like her name Sadhana, I guess she liked it when I wrote her name's letter because she hugged me real tight.
I still remember that day.
She's holding a little baby in the photo. A boy? He's small, maybe like my age or bigger. He has round cheeks and big eyes, and he's holding her hand so tight. There's a man standing next to them, but someone scratched his face out with a pen. The black ink makes his head look scary, like a ghost with no face, there's also a big sign behind them.
I don't look at his face anymore, rather I stare at the picture for a long time, suddenly I hear the front door close.
"Mama?" I call, but she's already coming up the stairs.
I run to her with the photo in my hand. "Mama, who's this?" I ask smiling.
She freezes, her smile disappears like it was never there.
"Where did you get that?" she asks, fast and loud.
"I found it in the box," I say. "Is that me? It kind of looks like me, right?" I ask still confused, is it me? Or somebody else?
Her eyes go wide and shiny as she grabs the photo from my hand so fast that it bends even more.
"No," she says, her voice is sharp. "That's not you. And you shouldn't be going through my things."
