"Some pain has no relief,it can
only be sealed
You can grasp the wound to feel
the scar unhealed."
-------Munia Khan.
*********
Galaxy
The nightfall had descended awfully quick.I loathed this time as I gazed past the trees to the busy streets...anytime he would be back home.Really I felt like crying.Even in school when I got scolded by the teachers for my tardiness,never once had I cried.
As I dreaded of his arrival, I trembled and caressed the bruises slowly humming my Mom's lullaby. When I had been a kid,she used to narrate me different stories each night and in the end she would chime the lullaby enchantingly....those had been our favourite nights with Dad joining us later as they together kissed me good night.
Ahhh..,how I miss those days...
"Mom,why did you leave me behind? Couldn't you take me with?",I sobbed.
Breaking the moment of remorse,the door bell shrilled...he had arrived. Hesitantly I trudged my way to the door and with a creak it opened.
Right outside,he stood with crimson eyes glaring at me murderously. This was nothing new,for the past two years it had become a ritual,him arriving drunken,then striking me endless with his whip and then cuffing me all night.....sometimes even trying to force himself on me...Mommy where are you???
Everytime I would weep,with the tears smearing the pillow like the unshedded blood....silently would I question-why me????
And once gathering up courage I had asked Dad (of course when he was sober enough), "Dad,why did you change?Why do you do those nasty things?"
Conventionally, on hearing the questions once,he slapped me right across the face and shushed me. He growled and stomped his feet as he took hold of the whip...and I just froze ....for I feared the whip the most and that day I ended up being tattered....
Each day was vile,with me wishing for an escape,sometimes may be in form of death but I would rein my emotions every time in the hope that he would one day be my real Dad again. Hence I would patiently for the silver lining....all along staring at the starry sky when he would abuse me and numb me to the core.....
Yet on an auspicious day,I broke free.Dad was passed out on the couch after he came back from his so called prestigious duty of an District Attorney.Huuhhh.....so ironical it seems now,a cop who vows to safeguards and protect the others is actually harming his own ten year old daughter....why,because he is broken and traumatized from his wife's untimely demise....
Many more months later.
The day is still lodged so distinctly within my mind,that I do have nightmares of them.
I had sneakily treaded down the stairs, to find my biological father sprawled unconscious over the tangerine couch.My heart had been thumping with adrenaline coursing promptly .....an escape was all it screeched and I made ran for it but not before I bashed his head with a vase.Striking him felt good but why ?Wasn't it bad to treat one like this?That too my Dad?.....No,he wasn't my father anymore.
I had rushed out of our house.Never had I ever felt so light,a taste of liberty atlast.I ran till I was out of our community,and may be out of the town.I don't remember much of it, of how I made it that far and so on....I was simply in an auto-pilot mode.
I had slept on the porches,drank water from fountain and had sauntered off the alleys like zombies.....yet in the face of all these complications I rejoiced only to be free,never once pondering what next....
Still in the midst of all,I was certain regarding one thing-I am not Sarah.I am anything but Sarah.My new life would begin with a new name,a new identity.....humorous isn't it for a ten year old but no,not for me.....because I had endured things beyond my petty age.