“What did your mother say to you?” My father asked me.
“When?” I said.
“When she whispered into your ear, when she was pretending to kiss you. I saw her speaking to you and watching to see if I was looking. Was it a secret? He said after a long pause.
“I hope that it was; for if it was, it was a secret that she needed to tell you, her body language told me so; the way she leaned into you without wanting to be close, it was an effort to simply communicate, to share a story to transfer a truth that for a long time, had belonged to you.
What was it?” He looked at me; while I said nothing.
“You know, there are no secrets anymore. I never wanted secrets in the first place; but as you also know, they came and stayed and grew.” He reached out and touched my shoulder and held me as though he was afraid I might fall.
I turned knowing my face was distorted.
“I’ve been taught by the two of you that whispering simply makes the truths between us feel less like salt on a wound; it is better than screaming and turning words into broken pieces of glass meant to tear the flesh of the other, without realizing that when they come out of our mouths, it tears and permanently destroys our soul.”
When I finished, my body demanded that I fill my lungs for all of the oxygen had been exhausted.
“Mother was trying to save someone pain and I am not sure that it was me, and certainly not you.”
“Then, do you care to tell me what she said?” He asked me with fading voice and I looked at him for a moment, for it took time to understand what he had just said.
“She told me that she had not been alive for the past twenty years,” I told him.
“Twenty years? Well, that makes it about the time you were born. Having you had not been her idea. In those days, I spoke about a family in the context of children, not that I wanted children right away, more like a fate that was inevitable; while to her, the matrimony was a socially manageable process for the sex and companionship; it appeased a number of other social pressures; she never saw herself as an incubator. Breeding kills the soul she always said.”
“Do you think, that’s what she had in mind, when she whispered to me?” I asked.
“Who knows; but I am sure it was”.
Short Stories
Comments are closed.
1 Likes
1200 Views
Share:
I feel a sad vibe flowing through this short story. A mother who discloses that she has not lived since her child was born and the impression that perhaps her life was decided for her. I like how you describe the way words, “tears the flesh of the other” and “permanently destroys our soul.” Good job!