NIGHTS OF LENGTH

…

She silently made peace with the fact that it was going to be a long night, yet again. Mother was talking again, on top of her voice about a recent mistreatment. One that had occurred about two mornings ago. Father was outside. He would stay there, pretending to enjoy the cool evening breeze, while he avoided Mother and waited for her to fall asleep, or so she and her siblings had come to agree. It was a routine.

Mother’s nagging, or bitter complaints came in varying pitches. With a voice that held men and angels in awe whenever she sang, she talked herself hoarse. “And you will complain that i talk too much”, she heard her say. And having heard similar complaints, she knew what would follow next, “Why won’t I talk?” in a pitch that no doubt kept the neighbours attentive.

For the umpteenth time, she tried to think of one moment Mother had ever said anything complimentary about Father. And for the umpteenth time, none came to mind. All the flaws, especially character-wise were brought to mind, like a servant so eager to please. Of course they would, in her short eighteen years of life, she had heard them a time too many. She asked the ceiling, “Why then did they get married?”

She rehearsed in her head what she would tell Mother, if she ever got the chance. Mother and Father, really. For even though Father was passive, he needed to know. They had both ruined the children they so badly wanted to turn out right. Father’s passivity and Mother’s negative bustle had contributed greatly to her distaste on the idea of marriage. The lines of how she wished she never came home because they made home feel like a landmine littered with booby traps, sounded like candy melting in her mouth.

In her imagination, it would occur on a night when Father decided to forsake the evening breeze and give Mother an answer. Then she would sway in while they argued on top of their voices like the last time, years ago. She would say she had something to say, but they would be to engrossed in their argument. Then she would scream and shut them up. It would feel right, for that short period of time. And without pausing for a break, she would go for the kill.

She would explain how all the problems were both their faults. Beginning with Father, for his part was the shortest, and ending with Mother whom she would really dwell on. She would use the analogy that had burnt in her head for nights now; about petrol and fire, how each was good and useful on its own but destructive when put together. She knew that if she started saying these, she would definitely cry. She was the emotional type after all. But still, she would get through because that was a one time opportunity she could not afford to miss.

The hard truth was that their family was suspended by the dregs and would never be whole again. All because of the vices of marriages, bitterness and an inability to truly forgive. Mother had gone quiet, and soon the whole house would too. As the darkness took her, she wondered, if ever she got that opportunity to talk to Father and Mother, she might include that she was seriously considering never marrying and they had themselves to thank for that decision.