I looked at the picture that hung on the wall, covered by cobwebs. It is of a middle-aged woman, pleasant faced and plump. Not fat, plump. The kind you would hug over and over again. I've hugged her repeatedly, thought of her as my teddy bear, then hated having hugged her and sometimes regretted not having hugged her enough.
She is my mother. I look nothing like her, except for the nose and the dimple on the right cheek we share nothing. She was beautiful. You would hear yourself say MashaAllah to yourself each time you see her smile or hear her talk or sing in that heart-melting voice of hers. Praising the Creator for adding more beauty in our house in the form of our mother. And because of all this and more we believed our father too was madly in love with her. And she in love with him. For he too was a specimen of beauty and perfection, with his well built physique and deep blue eyes. We all knew that our aunts envied mother, look at their balding husbands with a paunch and look at our father, still young at sturdy even at 45.
To the outside world we were the perfect family. Happy parents, happy children. It was that way for us, till one day mother disappeared. All that remained of her at our home was that picture on the wall of our room, and few old clothes, and books she read a long long time ago. Also a handwritten note addressed to us, her daughters which an older aunt of ours had taken and gotten rid of.
We heard people talk ill of her, the same tongues who praised and thanked her, now didn't want to miss a single chance to slander. "You could identify such women right away. They're unbelievably beautiful, full of life and lust, they don't give up on their hunger and thirst too easily, marrying them off won't help. Having children don't save them either. Poor him, what did he do to deserve a slut like her. We should get him married soon." I bit my lips, my hands till it bled to stop me from crying, whereas my older sisters cried to their hearts' content. The aunts consoled them but they said they were more worried for me, seems I've become a stone, the tragedy has affected me so badly that I can't even cry. My eyes shone with anger each time they offered their sympathies, it was them I had a problem with.
And I knew the relatives will convince father to remarry. "He needs a wife. A good, loyal, virtuous wife to cope with this stress and sadness" they said. I ran around our room, like a caged wild animal, yelling. My sisters seem to agree with father's remarriage. "Cope with shame. Not sadness. The girls need a mother too. Hell, we don't. Screw them." I screamed. I stopped when I heard somebody violently knocking at the door.
"Clean-up" was what my father's sister called it. What she meant was free the house and us of whatever remained of mother in here and inside us. I threw a tantrum when she collected our albums in a pile, poured kerosene and set fire, our parents' wedding album was the last to burn. I felt my insides burn, the taste of charcoal in my mouth, smoke filling my airways, I choked. I wanted to pull my aunt's hair and kick her legs. But what I did was wondrous. With each photo that turned ashes she sang how my mother was a woman full of filth inside out, abandoning her children to be in the arms of another man. She cursed her, swore and I took a step or two closer. True that I wanted to pull her hair but my hands were closed. I punched her in the face. Twice. I had bloody knuckles that I refused to wash till my father threatened me to.
Since then, nobody tried to remove anything from anywhere. And each time they saw me fist my right hand they shielded their noses with both palms and kept a safe distance. They still stuck to blaming mother for the incident, the tragedy made me a violent person. A motherless monster. Many aunts volunteered to tame me, teach me how to behave. Father had other plans.
