This is a story she couldn't write. Not that she didn't want to because of course she did. She wanted everyone to know about what she had witnessed that ominous night. She wanted the paperboys shouting out the title that she hadn't yet thought of. She wanted priests preaching against everything that had happened that night. She wanted people to feel the torture that she had been unable to fight against. She wanted a mere acknowledgement that those events, by all definitions, were 'wrong'. It wasn't as if she didn't want to write about it herself. But desire doesn't lead to results often and the fact was more painful so as the process of it. You see, she didn't write about it because she didn't know how to.At the age of 35, she was tired. Illiterate and a bit too much dependent on him for the daily supply of bread and water. Too much of a parasite to know what was just and what was not. She was a pity. And, the worst part was that she knew it better than anybody else. Maybe too better for her own good. Bound by the social values of a patriarchal society, she thought she deserved it when her husband punched, slapped or kicked her. So much of ignorance and desperation resided in her that it would all burst out and the way she is right now, we can fairly say - it will be the day soon.
She, somehow, understood good from bad now. She has, now, attained salvation but maybe such divine intervention like anything else that brings about such much-needed change came a bit too late. She understood this too.
By definition, 'if you aren't against it, you're with it - you support it'. And, therefore, she feels guilty - of what? She won't say. But her watering eyes mean that perhaps she doesn't know either. I see her wrinkled face, her salvation of the new found visions on life and beneath those eyes; so-ever-beautiful and divine, there is a resolve - to do something. "What?" I don't know but I can swear on my stares (that probably made her uncomfortable) that she won't let 'that' happen to anyone else ever again. She was a mother. Some mother.
Her story starts with the tears her daughter had in her eyes as they were fixed at her. A 12 year old girl asking her mother for help. Not an 'interesting' initials for a story but this it how it was. Her body was shaking as she lay on the corner of the room watching in horror at her daughter. She had a baby next to her - her second daughter - 3 years old and one of the 4 surviving children among the 8 she had conceived. The older 2 were boys - her sons. They were there too - in the same room . So was the father - drunk as a pig along with his semi-naked brothers - 2 to be precise. So, in total, there were 9 people in that poorly lit room and only two were making noise - the baby was one of 'em - crying because of hunger or maybe she just felt like it. The other was the other daughter of the house because there were 5 people around her doing things to her that was so painful that several times, she fainted of exhaustion and then re-gained her consciousness when someone among those 5 gentlemen put something on top of her lips (which were bleeding too) and slapped her when she wouldn't open her mouth (because she had a habit of closing her mouth when she fainted - 'stubborn child' they said.)
Her mother looked at her from the corner of the room and what made her cry even louder were her own eyes that didn't reflect the poor illumination the room shared with everybody there - she had no tears in her eyes. Her daughter looked down as she lifted her head for a second until her elder brother pushed it down and proceeded to put something insider her mouth again. During that glimpse of a second or two - she saw her chest which was now blue and tender to even feel probably from all those hands (including the ones that held hers as she learned to walk) rubbing her chest and gnawing on it. What was more frightening to the little girl was the blood she was oozing out from the orifices she had between her legs - both of them. A few hours later, she died. But, that's not where the story ends - the story ends with the 'untimely demise' of her little sister.
You see, watching her daughter being raped by her sons and her husband and her brother in laws showed her what was just and what wasn't. With an event like this, she was 'awakened'. If this in itself isn't sick enough, let me tell you what she did next. She looked at her youngest child that was crying in her lap unaware of anything that happened this eventful night. She saw her daughter and thought of anything that would ensure a different future for that little girl than her sister was living a few moments ago. She thought thoroughly and when she couldn't find anything within her reach, she silenced that girl too - with her hands and for forever - silent and at rest.
She finally had tears in her eyes and a shallow smile in her face and a feeling of joy because she felt that she saved the girl by killing her herself. She, now, was angry, for the first time in her life - she was angry at someone other than herself.
Next morning when people called her 'murderer of 7 people, she said "One, I didn't kill. The other I saved by killing. The rest 5 I killed because none of them deserved to live."
And, even though there was a sorrow of losing her daughter and several other co-existing emotions, - for the first time in her life - She felt 'pride'.
