Prejudice - by Hajara Muhammed-Sadiq

I could barely remember a time when it had been this quiet. There was no scratching or screeching on the walls, no screams coming from closed doors, no incoherent voices or conversations.Earlier today, when the last grain of sand had been placed on my mother's crooked grave, a thought crossed my mind. It was more of a fact to be exact. The fact that I would never see this woman again. Her funeral had been an obvious low turnout. I wasnt surprised. My mother had never been a people's person. As children, my sister and I had never interacted with neighbours or other children. My mother claimed to be a private person. And at the time, I believed her. She was the worst kind of mother. I hated her up till her dying breath. The call came in late last night. It was from family care. The caller was direct. She explained it in simple terms, "I'm sorry to disturb you this late", she said. "I'm afraid your mother passed away in her sleep. I'm sorry for your loss". She added. Her words were almost alien to me. I hate to say it but in that moment, I felt nothing but relief. This relief caused me to make the burial arrangements the very next day. Things had not always been like this. There was a time when I believed in hope, family and love. We were a quaint family of four. My parents, my sister and I. I called it the good old days when things were simple. Back then, my mother was a mother. She cared in that way mothers do that almost becomes incredibly annoying. She always called me her "little girl". She loved my sister and I equally, she would always say. But it didn't matter because we loved her just as much. I can honestly say that I experienced what a mother's love was up till the age of twelve. This was because her her warmth and love exuded from her practically all the time.    All of it became history, the moment a life changing event that none of us expected, happened. My father passed away. We had gone on a fishing trip for a week or so. My sister and I loved to visit the family cabin. Sometimes, I blame myself. If I hadn't insisted on going to the outdoors, perhaps my father would still be with us and perhaps I would still have a family. He died in the early hours of the morning. According to what we knew, the boat tipped over after he rowed it far off into the lake. My father had never been a great swimmer and so sometimes, I wonder why he chose to risk his life that day. Well, his life and my sister's. My sister had been his accomplice that faithful morning. They rode the boat together and when the boat tipped, they both went straight into the water. The tides had succeeded in throwing my sister to the shores in that moment. My sister lost consciousness for about an hour and when she came to, it was too late. My father had sunk deep into the lake. My mother and I had been asleep in the heat of the event. When we realised what had happened, the damage had been done. My father was dead. I would never see him again. Little did I know that would be the least of my worries. The first few weeks were hard. My mother was inconsolable. The fact that she nearly cried her eyes out would be an understatement. It had always been loud even though I knew she always tried to hide her grief. And then the nightmares followed. I remember her having to throw herself off her bed just to wake herself up. As days turned to weeks, my mother became a shadow of herself. Once she had been through with crying everyday. She fell into a deep clinical depression. She would lie in bed all day without eating or talking. My sister and I had to wash her up in bed because she was too heavy for us to lift. I counted the moments we had left to spend with her. If she gave up on us, the next best thing was foster care because I hadn't ever heard my parents speak of a relative. With time, it seemed as though she had gotten herself back again. She was up in the morning, making breakfast and getting us ready for school. She worked two jobs but still managed to be there for us. In that space of one year, I thought everything had gone back to what it was meant to be. Until it didn't. The first time I witnessed her hysteria was the day I realised that my mother's bounce back to life was simply pretence. It started with her talking to herself. I would hear her whispers through the door that covered her room. Sometimes, I thought she was on the phone but most of her conversations were too strange to be mere phone talk. One day, my mother sought to find our family album. We had each and every picture scattered all over the living room. At first I thought it was an organising mechanism. But I was wrong. My mother took each picture and cut out my sister's face in every one. When I walked up to her and asked what she had been doing, she merely said, "I'm protecting us, silly" and she continued until she successfully had piles of pictures of my sister's face ripped out. Afterwards she gathered the snippets, walked to the garden, splattered on some flammable oil and lit them on fire until there was nothing but ash. "She can no longer hurt us" she said over and over again. I once watched her bury the lifeless body of my pet dog, Roxy. Roxy was a sweet dog. My father had got her for my sister and I months before his passing. I like to think the dog was a parting gift from him. And so my sister and I loved Roxy as much as we could. Mother had always despised her. She objected when my father brought her home with the excuse that we wouldn't take care of it. The worst was when my father passed away, I remember countless times when she would lock Roxy out of the house for barking too loud. We had no dog house so Roxy would stay out in the cold for hours. One morning, my mother laid out a plate of dog food for Roxy. I watched her eat but soon enough she laid on the floor almost lifelessly. I like to think my mother grew tired of the lovely dog and decided to take matters into her own hands by strangling and burying her. I didn't watch. My sister did. Then she told me the details. Then followed her unusual obsession of keeping me and my sister apart. My mother had grown a mean and hostile attitude towards both of us. But my sister had it worse. She would criticize her, yell at her, push her around. One time my sister was made to strip off her clothes and stand outside in the rain. I would scream and protest but all my mother did was grab me and lock me inside.  I often heard her lock my sister up in her room and she would hit her so hard, I could hear her screams from the outside of the house. She would call her names like "devil's spawn", "murderer", "evil". At first I could not understand her reason for this. But later on, I realised that she blamed my sister for my father's death. Her claim was my sister had somehow let my father fall into the lake and drown. It seemed as though she lost a bit of her mind every second.

Other insights from Hajara Muhammed-Sadiq