Beautiful and talented painter, Selma Halpern + charismatic architect husband, Jamal Halpern + bubbly baby boy, Rae Halpern. The stars had finally aligned in Selma's favor.
But by the strike of midnight on a fateful day in April, it seemed like the...
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06
The smell of waffles and coffee led Selma into the dining room the next week. Rae was sitting on the dining table, in front of Jamal's plate, armed with a tiny spoon. His oatmeal was all over his bib and onesie, and don't get her started on his face. Her baby looked like he had grown a full beard made of oatmeal.
"Good morning, Jamal," she muttered as she reached for Rae. After successfully extracting the spoon from his tiny fist, Selma wiped his face clean and kissed his lips. "My world, how are you, baby?"
Rae muttered some incoherent things and placed his forehead on hers. Her heart fluttered.
Settling down across from her husband at the other end, she reached for the extra plate of waffles that must have been hers, and dug in, feeding Rae bits of her egg.
"Selma, what happened to your eyes?"
Her name coming from Jamal's mouth made her snap her head up, meeting his stormy eyes. "I... I um..." she trailed off, unable to come up with something tangible. She had noticed how blotchy her eyes were with dark bags while cleaning up in the bathroom. With her lack of sleep the past days — trying to figure out what she did wrong — the last week's events made those sleepless nights catch up with her. "Um, it's nothing."
It was something.
"It isn't nothing, your voice is hoarse as well."
Seeing no other escape, Selma took a deep breath and placed her fork down. "I... everything is just too much and for the past nights, I've been... um... crying myself to sleep."
Despite the distance between them, Selma heard the hitch in his breath. In a bid to cover it up, Jamal cleared his throat. "Yeah, but uh why?"
Selma let out a laugh with pain lining its edges. "I don't know, you tell me, Jamal. My husband doesn't talk to me anymore, he doesn't sleep on the same bed, he doesn't kiss me good morning or goodnight like he used to, he thinks I'm irresponsible... isn't that enough to cry myself to sleep? You tell me if it isn't. But I really shouldn't be telling you this, not like you care."
Jamal was quiet for awhile, looking her straight in the eyes, trying to communicate something. But Selma didn't speak feelings with a man who was closing up on her. It was hard to penetrate into his thoughts now, not with the hard walls he had been building around himself since the past month.
"You're right, Sel," Jamal finally spoke, "I don't care because none of it is my fault."
She knew he didn't, which was why she withheld the main reason behind her tired eyes and carried on with feeding her son instead.
