Parental Leave

Mother stares at me hard. I avoid her gaze. “Why are you sitting there like you’re stupid?” she demands. I shrug. They’re leaving us. I don’t care anymore. Just go, I silently tell them. Go, rejuvenate. Please don’t fight anymore. Every day you fight. It’s driving me crazy. But I cannot tell them these words. That would bruise their parental pride and I would once again be the child who can’t love them enough, can’t care for them enough.

She sits at the table and laments. Father wanted me to marry a rich man. Instead, I married your father, a poor farmer’s son. Father said it wasn’t too late. The contract’s not binding yet, Daughter. Leave him. Tell them you don’t want to marry him. I am powerful, rich. You only have to say no. But I didn’t. For reasons that are now clear to me, I couldn’t have. Your father and I were meant to meet one last time. To be husband and wife one last time. To atone for our sins in our past life. I must accept what I have been given and try to repent. She tells Father, in our next life, may we never meet again. I don’t want to meet you again. May this be our last life together.

I used to cry when Mother and Father fought. When the tears stopped, I never questioned why. I’m all cried out. My first recollection begins with an argument in our kitchen. My sisters and I were in the living room next door, watching television. My legs hanging down from the side of the sofa. Older Sister’s laying on her stomach on the shiny wooden floor, chin cupped her hands. Her curly hair hides her watching TV from the corner of the eye. Younger Sister walks in circles, talking to herself. Occasionally she stops near my head to pull strings of my hair. My arm moves to hit her hand. Stop it! I demand.

There’s a shuffle and the door to the kitchen opens wide. Mother is shouting at Father. I don’t remember what. Alarmed, we rush and stand in the hallway, eyes-wide. Mother? Father? Older Sister calls out. Go back to the living room! Mother shouts. Her right hand grips the big knife they use to butcher the pig, whose skin pulsates with warmth and life in the final hour of its death. Little Sister runs to Father and her skinny arms wrap around one of his leg. Her nose buried in the back of his knee. He bends down to unwrap her and tells her to go with Older Sister. She shakes her head and starts to cry. She knows something is wrong.

Mother must have told Father to leave because our little feet carried us, running, to the front door. Without grabbing his coat, and despite the slight chill in the December air, Father walks towards us. Three little girls with their backs pressed against the door. Don’t leave Daddy. They cry and their arms stretched over the door, in vain hopes that Father wouldn’t leave. Mother follows into the hallway, her butcher knife still in hand. She points at the door. Her hair has become loose and flows like Medusa’s snakes. She tells him to come back when he’s become a man. A real man, she digs the knife slightly deeper into his manhood. I don’t know if Father left that time. Perhaps he did, never one to like confrontations.

Whew! I tell Bibo, the youngest sister, and Baby, the younger brother. Mom and Dad are finally gone. They boarded the plane this morning and it was all quiet. Too quiet. Baby cried into his pillow when Mother and Father left. I’m a big boy, he proudly states. And his hand quickly wipes away the tears forming in his eyes. Mother calls from my cousin’s cell phone. Call us right back! she says. Mom, I saw you only 2 days ago. We’re fine and as long as we know you both arrived safe and sound, that’s all that matters. I can hear her complain to my cousin that we don’t want to talk to them. I chuckle and hang up. I look around me and tell Bibo and Baby to start cleaning.