A magician, a singer and a future world leader and her bully walk into a talent show.

People had told Mariam that motherhood would soften her. Over the ninth months of pregnancy, all she'd been shown were images of soft-faced, smiling mothers cradling babies. Or movies about kindly mothers carefully dispensing wishy-washy wisdom onto children.

What a load of bullshit. Motherhood hardened. Dealing with the screaming of a tiny bundle of monstrous rage and disgustingness didn't transform ogres into princesses. No quite the opposite, actually. Mariam had become even more of a tiger, a vicious, snarling beast hell-bent on protecting her baby.

Even if that baby was making it ridiculously hard at the moment.

"Okay, why are you crying?" Mariam asked, her knees seriously aching from how long she's been trying to comfort Janat.

"T-they're all going to laugh at me." Janat hiccuped, scrubbing futilely at her leaking eyes. "I don't want to do this anymore."

"Janat..." Mariam paused, taking a deep breath to collect herself.

Mariam's own mother would have hit her on the head, yelled at her to grow up and pushed her onto the stage. And if she'd spied even a hint of stage fright, Mariam would never hear the end of it.

"Westerners raise pussies." Is what her mother would have spat, furious and derisive. "You think I raised you to prove everybody right about women's weakness?"

Mariam looked at the balled up piece of paper in her daughter's hand. Amma's way would only backfire here, she needed Janat to get over this properly, not bury it deep.

"Janat, Janat, look at me, beta," Oh God, maybe she should've found a pillow to kneel on, this was agony. "Why do you care if they laugh? Maybe they find the poem funny."

"No, they're laughing at me." Janat mumbled tearfully, and Mariam resisted the urge to scoff.

"Why would they laugh at you? You're so smart and pretty, and you're so good at so many things. No, be quiet, I'm talking right now." Mariam raised a hand. "So what if they laugh? Let them, people will always laugh at people they want to be."

Janat glared at her now. "Mama, you're so wrong. They don't laugh at anyone they want to be. Like-like, Selena Gomez. They don't laugh at her!"

Who the hell was Selena Gomez? Mariam rolled her eyes, "Jaan, that's becuase you make it easy. You think Salma-"

"Selena-" Janat corrected.

Mariam narrowed her eyes. So no lack of confidence when talking back to her mother, huh. "Selena Gomez, you think she would just allow people to laugh at her? No! You make it easy, you cry, you show them that they are getting to you."

Janat watched her dolefully and Mariam continued, unable to stop the Motherly Rant building up in her.

"You think this is the last time people will laugh at you? You're brown, a girl, you'll probably be really short like me, you're a Muslim. So you have to learn how to take that laughter, and keep doing good things while dealing with it." Mariam gripped Janat's shoulders now, more in an effort to take some weight off her knees than anything emotional.

"So you decide now, are you going to be a weakling that just takes their laughter, are you a joke? Is your mother's accent and your life funny or embarrassing?"

"No," Janat answered quickly, and Mariam was pleased to see that at least the tears had dried up.

"Good. Why are you getting bullied by that stupid Naina girl? Her family is embarrassed of themselves all the time. You're not like her, you are smart, do not be affected by that idiot. She'll accomplish nothing, except for being a Brown person pretending to be white."

"Mama, that's mean." Janat whined, but Mariam shook her head.

"I don't care, go out there, read that poem, and either laugh with them when they laugh at you, or become someone that they'll be too scared to laugh at. Your choice." Mariam pressed a kiss to her daughter's cheek.

Then she carefully climbed off her throbbing knees, cursing her own stupidity.

She hobbled back down to the crowd, and sat down next to her husband. "What's happening?"

Her husband snickered, "Some little boy was doing magic tricks, it was the cutest thing. He dropped all his cards. Now, that girl is singing."

Mariam winced as the girl's voice failed to hit a high note and just fell flat.

"Oh look, I think our little Binoo is up now."

Mariam straightened herself and waved when Janat stepped onto the stage.

Janat looked a little pale, washed out by the giant light shining down on the stage.

"Shabash binoo!" Her husband was shouting suddenly, and Mariam whacked his arm.

"Asim?!" She scolded, but Janat grinned.

Then started reading the poem.

Mariam knew this was a weird thing for a talent show. No magic tricks, or weird ways to jump rope. Just her daughter's promising, beautiful voice reciting poetry.

Now, this was talent.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the two obnoxious girls, Kelsey and Naina that bullied her daughter, squirming in their seats and giggling.

To her immense satisfaction, Janat didn't look at them once, just read the poem boldly, and correctly.

Asim was recording the whole thing next to her, grinning like his daughter was giving a speech as president, instead of first-grader reciting poetry.

Hopefully, one day, after a lot of debate practices and university, her daughter might just be the president.

Janat bowed on stage, grinning and flushing pink as people applauded. Then she ran down, clumsily towards Mariam and Asim.

Asim scooped her up and tickled her, while Mariam watched, smiling.

"Where'd you learn how to read like that, huh?"

"Mama and I practised."

"Lies!" Asim whispered as he tickled her again, "No child of mine knows how to read."

"A-bbu, stop!" Janat squealed, whacking his hand.

Her daughter just had to be willing to set aside her crutches and stop giving a shit about what people thought about her.

Stupid Kelsey went onto the stage and already Mariam shot her with a death glare. It was mean to do that to a kid, especially one who was about to humiliate herself by dancing, but she was a tiger.

And mothers would do anything to protect their kids.