Laiba Naveed

The Nights That Went Unheard

To the one who forgot to love her

"It's been five years" She murmured as she traced the edges of the telephone with the tip of her fingers. A glass filled with water had been kept right beside it, yet she wouldn't detach her hand from that phone.

"Your daughter isn't going to call." A woman in a black suit with a bunch of files stood beside her with a straight face.

"She has sent these property papers for you. The house she bought in California is now named after you" The guy with black-rimmed glasses with the earpiece attached spoke with such authority.

She moved her hand from the telephone, picked the glass of water and brought it to her lips. Her hands shook as she drank the water hurridly. I wiped the tears, still remembering her words.

"....how those hands never shook. Every night coming back home I would silently pray for those hands to shake for once just for once and I would know she fears...."

Papers lying on the table in front of her she didn't dare to pick them up. Those hands were trembling scared to touch them as if she knew they might leave the papers stained in the blood of the past.

"Can I call her?" She asked, crossing her fingers hands lying on her lap as if she had given up yet she hadn't.

"I'm afraid to say ma'am, but she won't pick up" Looking at them with pleading eyes, yet she nodded. Licking her lips wet, she uncrossed her fingers and picked the papers. Grabbing the sleeves, of my sweater, pulling them a little closer to my fingers this room, had always been a little colder. The smell of the alcohol still lingered around, the ashtrays were never dumped as if the walls still remembered her cries and would never let mom forget about them.

"California? yeah." Taking a deep breath in she kept on turning the pages the same way she turned her life into a misery every night. Reading the statements, the terms & conditions her heart wept mourning for something so fragile, love.

"Do you still have a lighter?" The guy in the earpiece asked with a cigarette in between his lips. Her eyes flicked towards him, those eyes could not deny how those hands still stank of blood, how her untouched flesh made the blows harder.

"I thought so," He said.

"...Her eyes held rage. Such malevolence gleamed through that heart as if lying on the floor was just a girl with a dying heartbeat. I still remember that awful night when I was surrounded by metallics something unbreakable that broke my every bone and numbed the soul. The burn marks on my shoulders sunk deeper with every cigarette..."

The living room reeked of blood turning it even colder by night the clock had stopped at 12 for the last five years the floorboards creaked whenever she stepped a foot in that room. They had seen too much.

"...This night was the wine bottles. She would take a sip and another. I was seated on the floor close to her legs. Her words slurred as she spoke how I was a mistake that should have never been born. As the clock struck 12, the bottle came crashing down. I had to muffle my cries as the glass tore open my skin, and the wine touched the blood. The coldness, the wails could be felt in my shaking body, but how was she immune to her own daughter's silent cries?..."

They left with the files without her signature. Before leaving, they gave me a warm smile. I knew then she would be waiting for me at the corner of the road.

"Mom?"

"Yes, honey?" She said, wiping her tears away.

"How can you love me when you could never love her?"

~ From the one who was too little to understand back then