Real Wo/Man

Part one: Her silence

her silence

That huff of wet soil and a heavy stench of manure. The beautiful moist scent that washes away the heat with its cool breeze, the gathering clouds - dark and heavy carrying a promise. People loved it. It meant the rain was coming, which meant there would be crops to harvest when the time to harvest comes.

Whereas I felt the most caged like a bird with clipped wings.

It felt better when there were hailstones because they did a good job of distracting me. They hit the roof of our house in a hypnotic manner. Each stone had its own beat, its own unique touch to the roof, with different intensities, and grabbing its own attention. I could imagine every punch he threw at my mother, ploughing onto her body in the same fashion as hailstones on the roof. Pounding heavy but light enough to not pierce through the asbestos and onto my face.

His fists were heavy, driven with such wrath, punching onto my mother's body, bruising and making his mark while light enough to not go through her bones and into her insides.

My face spasmed with pain as if stretched, constipated by tears that also fell from my searing eyes to the floor just like rain outside. I heaved and sobbed, snivelled and mumbled a prayer. My lungs were in my throat. My heart was beating at a pace of a snail because the louder it beat the harder it would be to hear the one sound that would make or break my life. The sound in which I'd know he had finally won. It would tear through the sky like a gunshot in a church. Thunder like the thunderstorm outside, break walls and crack earth the way it did when Jesus' cried on the cross.

I read the bible.

The sound I anticipated was the one that would come after she'd finally stopped screaming. The moment black clouds would then fall off the skies, break down my safety, the asbestos and the ceilings and bury me under it. Where the sun would never shine, where the rain would burn like acid and where the light of my life would vanish.

Her silence.

It teased me. At times I stifled a cry when it lasted longer than 30 seconds, but a tear of relief would then fall as I heard her scream yet again. It was incredible what the thirty seconds of her silence did to me, how haste loneliness and emptiness rushed to vacate her space in my heart. It was as if it loomed in the air also anticipating the very same sound I feared. I wished the floor would turn into mud and swallow me inside, but it held me. I felt it rumble underneath my body as his large feet thudded in the other room. He was kicking her. I was sure of it. He'd booted her so many times I knew how hard each kick was compared to the other.

Her scream tore past the surface of the roof and into the skies, bringing me back to the room. I imagined God was up there sitting on a large golden throne wearing beautiful luminous white robes with doves flying above his head, his angels furled around him all listening to the world and ready to come to save us. But at times like these, I was dubious. If God was really up there and could hear us, was he listening to my mother's cry? Was it the reason why the sky was raining heavy hailstones?

I always assumed when it's raining it meant Jesus was crying. Isn't that what the bible says happened? Jesus wept on the cross. He said, 'Father why have you forsaken me' and then there was rain. Mom said it was a sign that God was listening to his pain. I wondered if it was raining because Jesus was crying for my mother. Perhaps God could hear her crying and screaming her lungs out as he beat her repeatedly while he shouted profanities at her. God was listening and he was also waiting for that moment, wasn't he? The moment in which her voice would be gone, her eyes closed, her body cold. The moment in which the skies would stop crying and there would be drought.

A few minutes before the rain started, he grabbed a sledgehammer from his tools on the left corner of the spare room. He ran out and the next thing I heard was mom's screeching scream, begging for her life and apologising for buying me new trainers for my birthday. I wished I'd died because then my mother wouldn't have to steal money to buy me shoes. If he killed my mother with that sledgehammer because of me I didn't know how I would live with myself.

Then the house settled in silence.

All I could hear was the rain. He'd done it. I knew he'd done it. I closed my eyes and let my tears drench the floor as the silence and the pain saturated me. You anticipate something so much you forget how it might feel when it finally happens. As an eleven-year-old, I didn't know what complete and utter loneliness felt like until that moment.

And it hurt. My heart had shattered like a glass, so painful I couldn't even make a sound, I just laid there and wept. Silently.

The front door winched open and banged closed, and I contemplated standing up and going to see my mother, but I was too scared and too frail. I didn't know what I'd be walking into or if this silence really meant what I thought it meant but if it did, then I'd want to be the first to see her. The first to give her a kiss before they took her away. I'd want to lay with her until her blood was completely cold. I'd want to whisper just how much I loved her in her ears before her spirits flew to heaven.

I passed the black and white tiled kitchen, passed the corridor and took a left into the dining room facing towards the door to her bedroom. I stood there staring at the open door. A sob hiccupped in my throat and my stomach churned but I held the cry in. If she was alive, I didn't want her to see me cry. I was her strength. I was to remain strong, for her.

"Father, why have you forsaken me" I muttered the words under my breath as I took the first step towards the door. Each step I took was attentive and careful. It was getting harder and harder, heavier and heavier almost as if I had to drag my feet to take the next step. Once I reached the door, I pushed it slowly and let it swing open revealing her spacious bedroom. I opened my eyes and there she was lying at the edge of the bed like a piece of dead meat. Her arm was hanging at the foot of the bed and her legs hanging on the other side of the bed.

She was so still, not even the movement of her chest to give me a sign of life.

Dead.

"Mama" I called, low but high enough for her to hear me and there was no response.

"Mom?" I sobbed as my reality came crashing onto my feet. She was still not moving.

I took a step forward with the intention to shake her then she pulled her arm under her body and reached out to me. My knees became weak and I fell onto the floor and cried.