Chapter 4

“My mum cried her heart out. I can imagine the pain of losing something dear and important after it just came.

Something that would have been her source of joy.

She ran back to the hospital to check herself, but the doctors said there was nothing wrong with her except that she must have ingested something that seemed dangerous to the baby. When she requested to know what the unknown element was, the matter seemed to be hushed. My mother returned to the house, a woman full of sorrow and anger at the world for their betrayal and mockery.

Some months later, my mother took in again. This time she was careful and hid it from everyone, even my father, for 4 months. Then she told my father about it. My father, having grown up in that family, knew what kind of evil existed there, so they promised themselves to keep it a secret.

My mother had to travel out of the country so that they wouldn’t really know her whereabouts in her sixth month. Eight months later, suddenly, there was an issue with her travel papers, which made her come back, but my dad never allowed her to come back to my hometown. He sent her to the city to stay with a friend of his.

A month later, she gave birth to a beautiful angel, my elder sister. The happiness that I saw reflecting on my mother’s face in the pictures of my sister’s birth celebration was really indescribable. I have a picture I preserved. In it, there was so much tenderness and love in her eyes as she looked at my sister, who was wrapped in a blanket.

My sister was as bright as the sun. She got the fair complexion of my mother straight up. Members of the church all wanted to carry her. During her birth and dedication, none of the villagers knew except my grandparents, who were strictly warned not to breathe a word about it to anyone.

The entrance of my sister into the family came with a lot of goodness. My father got a promotion and a raise in his office, bought a car, rented a nice apartment, became popular and well-known; a lot, I dare to say, happened.

Despite all this, my grandmother would always remind my mother that she had to produce a male child as quickly as she could. Could you imagine that? A woman who just fully recovered after five months of delivery is being reminded that they still need a male child.

Well, that’s life.

My mother took that to heart, and slowly her attitude to things began to change a bit. She wasn’t the happy bride that much anymore.

Then along the line, my father’s mind slowly started to turn toward evil. Someone was beginning to poison his mind. My father, who rarely eats outside, began to go to restaurants, and when he was asked for an explanation, he simply said he just found out that always coming home every lunchtime was a bit stressful for him.

This bad influence continued until, finally, he really started acting like a monster. A man who never missed his dinner in the house began to miss both lunch and dinner and came back late at night even though his office work was usually rounded up before seven o’clock, but his entry into the house started becoming nine o’clock.

Then, CCTV cameras in human forms began their work, monitoring every move of the family and bringing the report to my mother through her friend. At first, my mother thought it to be another way these people had brought to fool her; little did she know they had already fooled her husband. They had already told her husband that he was making a big mistake in trusting the woman he had married.

They had set up my mother with one of her school friends, who was crushing on her back then. They had given snapshots of their meeting to my father, showing him how happy his wife was in the photos. They had started an in-house war with the man who, in the past, had completely trusted his wife.

The damage they had caused started slowly and slowly grew from a burning candle to a burning bush, then metamorphosed into a fiery furnace. My father, being a quiet child from birth, wasn’t one to communicate his displeasure at someone’s wrong or weakness, and this began to build a fortress of doubt and anger within him. He was a man who believed in action more than words, which is why I normally advise men to be able to communicate to others their feelings at times, or am I not correct?”

“No. On the contrary, you are very much correct. Sometimes it’s best to break down and cry out the anger, sadness, and over-burdened heart. Piling it up in one’s heart is actually dangerous. Relieving one’s self of certain pain through communication with others, be it your spouse, friends, or peers, does not make you less of a man. It only makes it easier for people to see your human side and find out that you can be of help.”

“Thanks. My father didn’t do that. I guess we learn from our parents’ mistakes. He just locked up the pain he felt. Before the heavy observation could take place, alcohol came to play. He didn’t actually go all out and swallow bottles upon bottles of it, but the man that never, for any reason, neared alcohol, started to buy and bring home alcohol. That was the point that my mother knew there was trouble, but who was she to turn to and tell of this impending danger lurking around her home?

So she decided to brave it and look after her home herself. With the little knowledge she thought she knew about families and how to hold them together, she started her journey to make my father turn a new leaf.”