A Fascinating Language

O N E

My father was amazing, sometimes I felt like that he was the only person I'd ever need. He served as a marine for most of his life, always keen on teaching me how to defend myself but he also taught me the little things that can make you a good and honest person.

As for my mother, on the other hand, it felt like she was there and not there at the same time.

I knew she preferred my brother, I heard her talking about it. She spoke of things that weren't meant to be heard by me. But I did, and it crushed me. Yet I continued to convince myself and hope that a part of her loved me.

Regardless, in every quarrel at home,
I thought I had to take my father's side no matter what. Sometimes I did it because his opinion was more logical but there were times I only took his side to even out.

"It's you and me against the world. Right Ella?" He would often say to me.
And I would say, "Till my last breath."

When I was 16, my brother graduated from university and left home without informing. It didn't bother me, he was the only person in my life to treat me like I meant nothing. Like I was an object with no feelings or emotions.

I never understood why he did that. But the day he stepped out of the house, I told myself that this was it, I was free from his presence, our relation, his memory. Even though he still appears in my dreams sometimes, I intend to ignore it as a nuisance because that's what he is to me, a memory buried somewhere in my mind that I pretended isn't there at all. Although I wondered why my father expressed grief over this event, and not my mother.

After a few years, when I was a freshman, he came back but only to tell my mother he had gotten a great position at a company in New York,  and that he was willing to take her along, free her from my father. I was on the other side of the door when I heard everything.

I couldn't believe that it took me so long to put the pieces together. Why my mother wasn't bothered when Oliver left, how they used to have lengthy conversations in hushed tones and it was one of those many conversation that I overheard, it was my mother telling my brother that she relied on him to take her away from my father so that she could start living peacefully.

It was just me and my father for awhile and it left me wondering what could my father have possibly done to make my mother feel in such a way that she wanted to run away? What bothered me even more was that she didn't even care about me because, I quote her words, 'She's going to get married one day and have a house of her own and a family of her own, she'll be fine.'

To say it broke me is an understatement. I stopped enjoying the things I once liked to do, everything began to seem unrealistic, I stopped talking.

                             _____________

25th March 2013

I was in my bedroom writing an essay when I heard shouts. Panicked and frightened, I walked towards my bedroom door in slow steps. As soon as I opened the door, I heard a gunshot. I felt the blood drain from my face and ran downstairs. There I saw, a person I once called my brother, lying on the wooden floor...  lifeless.

I regretted looking the other way because I saw my father pointing the gun at my mother. I froze, I couldn't move or produce a sound. My eyes were getting blurry from tears, and my head was starting to spin.

"I knew he wasn't mine! I knew it but I still raised him as if he were my own. But you stabbed me in the back again and again."

"Listen. Just listen to me. You've gone mad and you don't know what you're doing. Put the gun down... now Adam."

"I'm done listening and trying to understand you Johannah because I know everything now. What you've been planning all this time. Your son told me everything!"