The Shape of Her Shadow

The first time her mother locked her in the bathroom, Tara was nine.

It wasn’t for long. “Just a few minutes,” her mother said afterward, voice tight, her hands trembling as though she were the one who had been trapped. But those minutes stretched deep inside Tara’s chest. She had sat on the cold tile, staring at the towel rack and breathing in the stink of bleach, her ears straining for her mother’s footsteps.

Later, when the door opened, her mother’s arms had wrapped her close. She smelled of cigarettes and lavender lotion, her chest warm against Tara’s cheek.

“See what you make me do when you don’t listen?” she whispered.

Tara nodded. She wanted the warmth to last longer than the fear.

By the time she was sixteen, Tara had learned to read the shifts in her mother’s face. A storm in the twitch of her jaw. A hurricane in her silence. The house itself seemed to lean with her moods. Creaking floors, slamming doors, whispers that weren’t whispers at all.

On good days, the house smelled like vanilla candles and the mouth-watering scent of frying onions, her mother humming along to the radio, laugh bright as the sun on a perfect summer day. On bad days, invisible smoke curled under Tara’s bedroom door, acrid and cloying, carrying the sharp bite of words her mother would hurl like knives.

“You think you’re better than me?”

“Don’t look at me with that smug little face.”

“You’ll leave me like everyone else does.”

Tara kept her voice quiet, careful. “I won’t. Of course I love you.”

Her mother’s eyes softened sometimes, almost enough to make Tara believe everything would be okay.

There were moments when it felt like maybe, maybe they could be normal. When they painted their nails the same deep red. When her mother braided her hair with a tenderness that made Tara’s chest feel like it might burst from happiness. When her mother called her “my girl” in a tone that felt real.

But those moments never lasted. Instead they curdled.

One afternoon, her mother handed her a plate of spaghetti, heavy with steam. Tara muttered a distracted “thanks,” her phone buzzing.

The plate shifted from her fingers to shattered against the wall.

Her mother stood over her, chest heaving, sauce spattered like blood on the wallpaper. “Don’t you dare ignore me in my own house.”

Tara froze. She wanted to say sorry, to explain how Evelyn had been texting her about the upcoming play they were auditioning for. Instead, she stared at the broken porcelain, the noodles sliding down the wall like worms, and thought: it never matters.

At school, Tara’s friends asked why she never invited them over. She shrugged. Said her mom was strict, didn’t like guests. The truth was harder to explain. How do you tell someone your mother’s love is a door that slams shut without warning? That sometimes you feel like two people are living within her, one who holds you close, the other one throws the plate.

At night, she lay awake listening to the house breathe. Her mother’s footsteps prowled the hall, uneven. Sometimes there was crying, muffled by walls adorned with her childhood art projects and school portraits. Sometimes laughter, high and desperate. Sometimes silence so deep it made Tara’s stomach clench.

She wanted to knock on her mother’s door, crawl into bed the way she used to when nightmares woke her. But she couldn't. Every time she reached for the handle, she remembered the bathroom door closing, the lock clicking, the bleach stinging her nose.

The battle of wills was never loud. It simmered. Subtle.

Her mother demanded to know where she was, who she texted, what she thought. “Don’t lie to me,” she said, even when Tara wasn’t lying. “Don’t keep secrets from me. I can’t stand secrets!”

But Tara needed secrets like air. She needed to feel something of her own, whether it was the music in her headphones, the sketchbook hidden under her mattress, or the smile of the boy who sat beside her in chemistry. None of it belonged to her mother. None of it could.

When her mother found the sketchbook, she flipped through the pages, eyes critical. “Why don’t you ever draw me?”

“I… I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

Her mother’s face cracked, grief flashing raw. Then it twisted. “You hate me. That’s what it is. You hate me.”

“No!” Tara reached out, but her mother had already stormed away, the sound of the door slamming vibrating through her bones.

Sometimes Tara wondered if her mother could see the monster in herself. If the broken things and locked doors haunted her the way they haunted Tara. There were nights when her mother sat on the porch smoking, staring into the darkness as if it whispered to her. It all clung to her hair, to her skin, layered over the lavender lotion like a mask.

Tara wanted to ask, What made you this way? Who hurt you first?

But she never did. And her mother never offered.

The night Tara decided to leave, the fight had been small.

A curfew missed by twenty minutes. A text unanswered. Her mother’s voice rising, breaking. Her hand lifted, then dropped, shaking.

“You’ll end up nothing,” her mother whispered. Her voice was raw, pleading under the venom. “You’ll end up just like me.”

Tara wanted to say, I don’t want to end up like you. I just want you to love me without breaking me into nothing. But the words stuck, heavy as stones in her throat.

So she packed quietly instead. A backpack. A sketchbook. Her headphones.

The house smelled of what-ifs and onions. The wallpaper still bore faint stains of spaghetti sauce. Her mother’s shadow stretched long down the hall.

Tara slipped out the door without a sound.

On the porch, she paused. The night air was cool, damp with the promise of rain. Behind her, the house loomed, every window a dark eye watching. She thought she heard her mother call her name, soft, almost tender. Or maybe it was only the wind.

Tara’s throat tightened. She wanted to turn back, to risk one more try, but she knew how it would end. She had been vulnerable too many times, and every time, it backfired.

She stepped into the night, leaving the shadow behind her.

Her mother would tell the story differently, if she told it at all. She would say she was protecting her daughter, keeping her safe, holding the pieces together with the only tools she had. That Tara rejected her love.

But she knew the truth.

Her mother wasn’t a monster. Not really.

But the shape of her shadow was.