The silence of the house throbs in my ears.
There is food before me; a small bowl of rice, a pink slice of raw fish. A cup of slowly cooling tea. I do not remember putting any of it there.
Surely there is something that should be making noise. The air conditioner, maybe. But it is a cool fall day and the air conditioner is off.
My spine is straight. My hands are folded in my lap. I stare straight ahead. There is nothing in front of my eyes but the blank smoothness of the wall. I do not mind.
There is nothing to hear. There is nothing to see. The smell of the tea has long faded. My hands feel nothing of importance.
The food is gone now. A few grains of rice remain in the bowl. The fish has left a faint smear on its plate. The dregs of the tea remain in the cup. I do not remember eating.
She will be seventeen in three months.
The knowledge hits me like a physical blow, sending cold spasms of pain down my spine and to my unfeeling hands. Seventeen. I can taste the number- more than the number, the age- in the back of my throat, burning unnaturally there, demanding my attention. Seventeen. Only yesterday she was ten, seven, five, two, born, heavy in my womb. Seventeen in a day.
And part of me knows: Seventeen in seventeen years, while you looked away and prayed to god she wouldn't be there when you turned around and finally got your wish.
I do not care.
But if I do not care, why do I remember that, in three months' time, she will be seventeen? Why do I dance around her name and the nature of her existence? Why does the oppressive, hateful silence beat in soundless disdain behind my eyes and say that you, you, you are the lowest being in this world, you are an unnatural thing, you have no right to exist, mother who cannot love her child.
I am in bed, with no memory of having left the table. It never used to be this way.
I was beautiful; a beautiful woman who could not suffer. I was charming and intelligent and I could obtain whatever I desired, and I desired much and obtained much. I was what women envied and men pursued and both wanted with all the fire their shallow hearts could muster and that was what my life was and I knew I could never fall.
He was beautiful, too. A short lean man with long black hair and eyes that were wide and filled with love of life and love of me. He was charming and intelligent and he could obtain whatever he desired, and he desired me and obtained me. Together we were perfect, in all meaningful senses of the word. I was proud to carry his child.
It was my life. This is how it goes: I am born to parents to love me and encourage me. I become strong and powerful and drunk on my own youth. I find a perfect man, and we are partners, each fit for the other. I grow older and wiser, and so does he. We have two children, a boy and a girl. They are a handful, but warm and alive and ours. They grow up and find partners of their own and visit us in our small house once a week and tell us we need to get out more. We have grandchildren, who are warm and alive and not really ours. We die quietly in our bed together and a funeral is held, with friends and family weeping softly and remembering who we were.
It's a good story, even though it's been told over and over again, by hundreds of women over hundreds of years. It's comforting. It has maybe a grain of truth. It should be everybody's life. It is nobody's.
Nobody's because parents are sometimes bad. Because youth is not strength. Because the perfect man does not exist. Because age is not wisdom. Because children can hate their parents and when they turn seventeen they might be nowhere to be found, dead or just gone, it makes no difference.
I have slipped into sleep, but there is no rest for the monster.
She was supposed to be my last connection to him! There should have been something of him in her eyes, her smile, the bones of her cheek! That is how the story goes: even when the husband is lost, he leaves his spirit behind in the child. It is sad, but the lost wife finds solace in her dear baby girl, so much like her father. Even when the story breaks down it remains whole.
And I realized: there is no story. There is only a baby, disgustingly helpless and without a trace of my man's melodious voice in her harsh screams for milk and contact and whatever else it is infants want.
There was more to him than a voice and a face, though. I remember. He was brilliant. He was clever and witty and whatever he did was perfect. So maybe she could become him there, and I could meet with him once more before I died.
I sit in a hard wooden chair. There is a book resting obediently on my lap. I stare at the page blankly. There is nothing there but words. I do not read them. I do not remember waking and coming to this chair.
So I pushed. Be clever. Be independent. Be industrious. Be the perfect daughter he deserves to have. I pushed too hard. She broke. And now she is almost seventeen and I am suffocating in a silence that will not go away.
The silence makes me want to scream and scream until my throat tears and I cough up blood just to break it. But I will not do that.
That would be catharsis I have not yet earned.