The Gum under the table

Chapter 1
My mother sat in her room crying, she shouted’ “I hate you.” These feelings of anger and animosity rose after she and my dad argued. My father would lock us up and threaten to kill us if we cried. I saw the shadows of their bodies through the crack of the door, my father raised his hands and when it came down my mother feel to the ground.
Shouting and crying where familiar voices that echoed through our home when they argued. This mood was a domino effect, my brothers would hurdle up and cry and beg my father to stop beating our mother. My brothers stood their in tears mumbling, “leave my mother alone,” while my father beat her merciless. My brothers will comfort me with encouraging words, “everything will be okay,” then they would say a pray.

She would then go to her room threatening to leave my dad. He would walk away and blamed her for his actions.
Like rats when no one is home or in sight they come out in the open, we came out from the room one by one in slow motion, with each foot precisely stepping in a pattern. My mother when she heard us coming she would try very hard to compose herself and ask us if we okay. We could see her blue black eyes and her bruised hands. I immediately started crying, I felt sorry for her. My brothers showed no emotions, they just stood silently.

One evening I saw him pulled a gun to kill her. He dragged her in the back of the house. My aunt immediately called the police. They came and took my mother away.

My mother finally got the courage to leave my father. The same way she started living with my father is the same way she left. She left her home in her early teen as a result of frustration. Her mother constantly abused her, until one day she said no more and gathered her things and ran way straight to my father’s home.
That day she told my dad my grandmother was sick and she sent for her, my father agreed that she go to attend to her. She looked at me admirably and said she loved me and she will come back for me. She hugged each of us and said she loved us. We watched her walked out the gate with our dad and waved the last time. We traced her shadow until we could not see it no more. Not knowing that that was her steps to free herself, she never looked back even though we shouted, “bye mom.” She probably thought she might have gotten could cold feet and turned back or she would turn into a pillar of salt like Ellielar when she left the city of Gormora.

I was still small when she left. My father took responsibility of being both mother and father. I am the only girl of three. He would comb my hair from time to time when the neighbor could not.

I remembered going to school with my hair in two plaits that stock in the air like cow horns. The other kids would laugh at me but I boasted I was proud, because no one else’s father comb their hair.
Growing up in broken is not so under rated as people say. Everybody have problems, the difference is, it is at different level and the way we learn to deal with it. There are two things one can do with a problem, 1 they react to it or 2 acts on it. Fortunately for us my father did not react to it by drinking out his lungs and abused us. Instead he acted on it and loved us.

One day he carried us shopping and I tried on a dress, he told me I looked beautiful and I was his princes. Things were really happy for us. Little then he knew he was my king and my family was our kingdom.

Our kingdom was disturbed one day. I remembered vividly when she walked through that door. I was so happy to see my mother but my father was not, so she left. I rushed to my room forth with and stood in front of the mirror and began to examine my features and I could see her face on mines. I saw the same smile. Then I thought if I kept smiling I will always be with my mother.