His palm connected soundly with my mother's cheek.
The sound resonated through the entire room. It wouldn't have made any difference if the slap met my face instead of hers because it already felt like it did.
For the second time that day, there was pin-drop silence.
A silence so deafening that I felt my ears would bleed out so profusely that I wouldn't be able to stop it.
That moment seemed to be a fever dream. There was no way my uncle could have slapped my mother.
However, the blossoming angry, red palm marks on the fair skin of her left cheek were proof enough that this was reality and not a dream borne out of a feverish mind.
As if the slap wasn't enough for him, he pushed her at her chest, driving her backward till she was knocked off-balance.
I snapped out of my shock-induced paralysis, reaching out sharply to catch her before she could fall heavily on the bed stand and probably hurt herself.
