Star-crossed

“It is the only home of my choice.”

I lost my mother when I was thirteen. I remember her reading me bedtime stories way past my bedtime. Her low and mellifluous voicing lulling me into a sound sleep. The memory of her consoling me when I lost control of my bicycle and fell flat on my face.

“There, there my sweet Sylvia! It’s just a teeny tiny boo-boo scratch. Mommy will put ointment on it and it’ll vanish in a few days like it wasn’t even there.” She comforted me by taking me in her arms. When she took my face in her hands in attempt to kiss my pain away and we were at eyelevel, that’s when I spotted a cut on her upper lip.

“Mommy! Why do you have a boo-boo scratch on your lip? Did u fall off the bicycle too?” It was impossible to miss the tears that welled up in her eyes at that very moment. She averted her eyes and heaved a sigh of pain. But she composed herself covertly as soon as my father’s throaty voice reverberated through the four walls of the house. My innocent mind could not decipher the aching pain my mother held in her heart more than her body. But as I reached the age of adolescence, the cuts and scrapes on her body started to make sense. And then came the horrendous day that instigated my lifelong suffering and ill-fate. My mother left me as silently as she was silent about the offences she had encountered.

I started seeing my father as a brutish figure who had a stone where a heart should have been. He denied me the fatherly affection that I was due. His callous demeanor affrighted my fragile heart. I maintained my distance from him by confining myself within my room most of the time. It was only when I was dead sure about his absence that I came out of my room. 

It was 2pm in the afternoon. I sat cozy and snug in my bean-bag as per usual with a book in one hand and a bag of snacks in the other. A loud banging on the door arrested the breath from my lungs and compelled me to plunge deeper into the bean-bag. When my heart refused to tolerate the incessant banging on the door, I got up to unlock the door. The person on the other side of the door was the last person I expected to see there.

“I have some guests I want you to meet. Change into some presentable clothes and come downstairs. And don’t make me come up here again or else I’ll thrash you like I did your mother when she refused to behave.” And just like that, he went away as hastily as he came leaving me confused and astonished as if him coming to my room for the first time wasn’t a big enough shock. I let his words sink in for a while and came to a conclusion that maybe he’s finally realized his duties towards me as a father. But his words laced with a threat to beat me up if I didn’t comply to his orders impelled me to think otherwise.

After an incessant battle between my heart and brain, I finally decided to give in to the former that craved for fatherly affection. Little did I know, the decision made by this fickle pump would seal my fate for the worst. I sifted through the outfits in my Almirah with a foreign feeling settling in my heart. It was a feeling too alien for me to recognize it instantly. If I had to describe that feeling in a few words, I’d say it was equivalent to a wanderer lost in a desert seeking for any source of water to quench his thirst. But in my case, I was thirsty for love and adoration that I had been denied all my life.

I managed to select a sophisticated dress that I thought was best suited for the occasion. I trudged down the stairs with nervousness trapped in my throat like a fish bone you can neither spit nor swallow. As I stepped into the living room, my eyes caught a glimpse of a man sitting across my father. His face was marred with unbridled carnality. His husky timbre was laced with condescension. His knuckles were busted and it seemed as if he had thrashed someone repeatedly with those knuckles. The moment his eyes spotted me, he stopped mid-sentence and eyed me up and down like he had spotted his next prey.

“Ah! here comes your future bride.” My father’s words filled my ears. The words that knocked the life out of me and hindered me from taking another step. As my brain was processing what was just said, the next few words that spewed out of my father’s uncouth mouth unsettled me further. “And the nuptials will take place today.”

My mind was unable to process the whole scenario I was being forced into. The events that followed are a surreal blur to me. I was forced into vowing a lifetime of loyalty and love for a man I just met that very same day. A man who would have his way with me as he desires. A man who appeared as foreign to me as the love I never got. He took me to his house as his new bride and had his way with me as my brain had already predicted. He was even more of a maniac than my father ever was. I always wished for a life-partner who would uplift me and heal my wounded heart. But if I bore as much as an ounce of such a fate, I wouldn’t be stuck in such an icky situation in the first place. His calloused fingers repeatedly played at my heart-strings only to produce tuneless melodies. He broke me in a way that I was far too broken to be mended.

I stood in-front of the mirror and the reflection that stared back at me was too unfamiliar. I had suffered the same fate as my mother. I was the same star-crossed woman my mother was. I had been broken and bent into an un-recognizable shape. The men who were supposed to uplift me, had become my downfall. I was too numb to think of a way to escape this prison. Until one day, I decided to take my fate in my own hands.

For the first time in my life, I sought redemption instead of affection. All my pent-up anger and frustration was aimed at the two men who had made me the unbecoming woman I had become. I located a gun and loaded it with only two bullets. The pieces of metal that bore the name of the two men who were the architects of my torment. As they both sat oblivious of their impending death in the living room signing a million-dollar deal of partnership, the bullets sliced through their throats one by one. The sound of their howling groans when they stood on the brink of death serenaded like music to my ears.

I was put behind bars shortly after I confessed to my crime. It was only when I was being led to the prison when I was hit by an epiphany. I had been caged up by my docility. My subservience had rendered me incapable of choosing on my own. My choice to reciprocate violence with violence freed me from a miasma of guilt that surrounded every fiber of my being when I looked at myself in the mirror only to find a mere lump of flesh and bones staring back at me. It released me from me by binding me to the shackles of my own choosing. The prison-walls were engraved with words that speared a sense of satisfaction in me every time I looked at them:

“It is the only home of my choice.”