Short Story | Amazing You

By Eddlynn Jennifer Mangaoang

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Trigger Warning! <Domestic Violence>

    It was very sudden. I found myself sprawled down the pristine tiled floor of our small kitchen sobbing and choking in my own snot while I watched my father pace in our connected dining and living area. He was angry. He was hurt from the inattention and isolation we put him through, because why not, why shouldn't we make him feel the hurt he started to sow even before I was born prematurely in a hospital a couple of miles away from home that was not a home surrounded by vultures ready to tear at you when you decided to show weakness. 

    

    I bent down and propped my hands on the floor when my breathing became shallow and I felt a burning liquid regurgitated from my full stomach to my esophagus and out of my gasping mouth. My breakfast found its way into the mopped floor. Horrified, I cupped my mouth to stop the flow but there was no ending it as the vile vomit slid down the corners of my mouth and run over my neck and inside the collar of my brown Las Vegas shirt.

    "Sophia!" My Maman rushed beside me and held me close to her warm bosom tucking my head underneath her chin. "Oh, Sophie, mon chéri, maman is here. Maman is here."

    Maman pulled her shirt and exposed one white drooping breast to ipe my face off tears and puke, wet, right hand pat and caressed my disheveled hair while she whispered a soothing sweet-nothings in my ear reassuring me of her presence like she always did when I was five and my tricycle leaned sideways and dragged me along with it and I ended up with a scraped knee and elbow.

    "La! La!" My father yelled, his index finger pointed at my Maman. I saw him approached us and he yanked my maman away from me. "You spoil her! You always spoil this brat. She don't learn. She don't!

    "She don't go finish college. She don't come home early. NOw she have boyfriend and waste her time and money with paint and draw... and what UGLY PAINTINGS! Not even give her money for eat! For eat!" He continued. "She don't respect me! She ignores me when I talk to her! She glares at me and don't listen to me!"

    I cried harder. He vandalized my workspace. He came into my room and hauled my homemade easel to the back porch and struck it with a baseball bat like it was a piece of firewood for his next cooked meal. Then he lugged all my canvases, both unused and painted, and set fire on them making a pyre out of years of my work. I tried to stop him, but he was angry and big and much stronger than me. I couldn't do anything but sat down on the floor like a melting candle. 

    Maman entered the kitchen door from the garage ad saw her daughter puking the breakfast she made for her this morning. Maman heard his angry tirades and came to console me. After father yanked her and she got her bearings again, I saw Maman push father with all the strength she must have been hiding in her petite five-three body. Father flew backward and had to grip the dining chair. It crashed onto him when he fell on his bottom, his eyes wide, mouth dropped, as he looked at my Maman in shock.

    Maman's face twisted angrily and her eyes burned with malice. It was her turn to point at him with a ladle she must have snatched from the kitchen sink. Maman said in a calm, tight, and full-of-spite voice, "You quit your job three years ago. You come home always drunk. You spend time in front of the T.V. when you wake up and sleep through running T.V. during the night. I earn us money. My daughter and I do the household chores. My daughter sells her paintings online for additional income. You don't give shit in this house and we let you! We. Let. You! You do anything you like without hearing from us and now you felt we're ignoring you and get angry because of it?

    "We ARE ignoring YOU!" Maman continued, her voice rising in anger. She paced in front of his shell-shocked self. "Out! Out! Get your things and GET OUT! I file divorce. I file divorce!"