JIHAD

FIRST | UMMI

Her smile makes my skin crawl. It's plastered across the face she pokes into my room, coats her cracked voice when she demands, "May I come in?"

The thought of her in my room makes my stomach churn with disgust and a fear as rational as it is sick and visceral. Still, I answer, my tone meek as it must be when I address her, "Yes, Ma."

The florescent light in the hall pours in with her, illuminates the room and the barely dressed people I've sketched across my lecture notes, briefly. It rolls back out when the door clicks shut. The room returns to its semi-dark state.

Ummi doesn't flick on the lights. The most terrifying punishments are, after all, meted out in the dark. Her black Boubou swishes around her ankles as she glides towards my bed, perches on it, heaves a drawn out sigh.

I hunch my shoulders, hang my head low. Hands clasped upon my jean-clad thighs. Eyes rove everywhere except up.

"How was school today?" She delivers this calmly. As though she genuinely wants to know. As though the plot for the most horrifying punishment known to man isn't playing out in her head.

But I'm no fool. She didn't bring me up as one. If she wants to engage in small talk before she gets down to business, I'll engage. But she won't trick me into believing all is well, only to jump at me when I least expect it. I won't give her the sick satisfaction of catching me off guard. "It was fine. Alhamdulillah. Thank you, Ma." It's the standard response, said low yet loud enough for her to hear me over the whirr of the ceiling fan.

"About yesterday..." The bed squeaks.

Yesterday. I've been lugging them about since yesterday. The tiny hard knots of dread curdled in my belly. Now, they fuse to become one flinty ball, one giant flinty ball of thick, heavy dread, as I imagine what she'll say next. And it's a struggle to hold my heart still, keep it from leaping out my mouth.

The bed squeaks again. It makes me frown. "I...I talked to someone."

My heart stills. My blood freezes.

"A therapist."

My heart kick-starts. My blood boils, surges.

The chair I'm sat on scrapes as I spring out of it, over my study table, and land on her. She falls to the tiled floor with a thump and I jump on her. Slash at her. Scratch at her. Shriek into her ugly face. Tell her it's all her fault. If she hasn't been the worst possible mother an animal could have, much less a human being, she wouldn't have caught me pants down, pleasuring myself to the grunts and moans, and in the presence, of the man doing the same on my phone.

I'm about to gouge her eyes out with my nails when a raspy voice stops me.

"Jihad, are you listening?"

I blink.

Ummi has leant forward, I see when I risk a peek. Her furrowed brows may be from concern or annoyance. I don't look long enough to know which. "You heard what I said?"

"Yes, Ma. I heard." If a note of anger manages to inject itself into this, I'm beyond caring.

"Okay. Alright." She draws another long sigh. "I... Do you want to... What happened, Jihad?" She sounds uncharacteristically low and broken. Hurt. It is possible though, that my ears, having been spanked, slapped, tweaked and screamed into again and again over the years, may now be malfunctioning.

Nineteen years of living with her has taught me to respond when she asks questions. Out-of-the-blues conks, punches, strikes, also taught me some of her questions are better left unanswered. Trick questions, I've come to know those as. I've never come to recognise them.