October. 27th, 2008 Mother and Daughter By: Vivian Ta
Mother sat in the kitchen, stirring up my cup of cocoa.
I was napping on the living room couch, with my two legs propped up against the wooden coffee table. The room was dark, because my mother has not paid the electricity bill and it was bitterly cold.
I shivered in my nap, my breathing conjures mist in the air. With my stiff shoulders, I sit upright at the sound of my spoken name.
My mother calls out in her poor raspy voice:
"Come drink your cocoa, it's getting cold!"
I got up slowly, the floorboards creaking beneath my frozen toes. The room sways around me. I stopped to look into the dusty hall mirror, but in the dim candle light, I could only make out the shadow of a reflection.
Even without seeing, I knew that the girl staring back at me, would look bewildered with baggy eyes and pale grey skin. I was just a young girl, no different from the others, except for the telltale signs of malnutrition.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When I first saw my daughter stepping into the kitchen doorway, what I saw in my daughter's place, was a weak and shrunken girl, with barely enough energy to walk. With the emotions shown on my face, she had probably known what I was thinking.
It was an awfully cold and gray morning, when her father had come home drunk.
After tugging off his work boots, he had flung them at me, narrowly missing my head.
"Go and get me all the money you have!!! " He hollered at me with brute force.
I dropped the plates that I was holding in my two trembling hands. I felt tortured for a moment, standing there looking at my bloody toes. Then, in my paralized state, I saw the glint of metal gripped tightly in his right hand.
Unfrozen, I ran limping into the next room, the droplets of blood trailing behind me.
I waited for my fate, while sitting in the corner, cuddling my knees to my chest.
My breathing hard and my heart pounding, he came at me, holding a steel hammer high above his head. Trembling in terror, I studied his clumsy movements.
"No Father, don't hurt Mother!" "Please don't!" My daughter was standing before him.
"Take it Father, please take this from me!" I glanced up to see my daughter lifting a piggy bank to her Father.
"Please take it." Her voice was now barely a whisper.
At first, her father looked at her, confused and distraught. Then finally gathering his strength, he shouted at the both of us, and in a blinding flash, he struck my daughter. I screamed as loud as I could, while holding my daughter's still and unmoving body in my arms. My husband was about to thrust the hammer with all of his might, when the door burst open, and several uniformed policemen came in.
They arrested my husband, clicking the handcuffs into place.
He stared at me, unmoving, impaled and frightened. With his eyes locked on mine, they took my daughter and I, wrapped us in a blanket, and sent us to the nearest hospital. I was unable to think or to speak, for I was too grief stricken.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
But now, just by looking at my daughter across from the table, I could tell something was worrying her.
"Mother, is anything wrong?"
She glanced at me, and at my eyes, glassy from the tears cascading down my cheeks.
"It's all right, everything is okay now."
I reached my arms out to her, and silently, we spent the entire evening weeping together.