Ever since Kak Tijah announced her engagement with a boy who distributes printers few weeks ago, the news not only did not bring the family any merriment – worse still, it sent the entire family into tremendous amount of stress and chaos.
The engagement party was rather costly, as Iqah scribbled the sums on her notes, smearing blue ink over her crumpled draft paper. The wedding basket sitting on the desk next to her amounted to 70 dollars, which Abah paid. Unfortunately, Mak had to cover the rest of the engagement party cost, including wedding costume and makeup for Kak Tijah, and the materials needed for the preparation of the engagement feast. The little allowance Abah gave Mak every month was obviously not enough to cover all the expenditures.
Hence, Mak asked Abah to contribute more. But Abah refused to. He claimed that he already forked out a lot of money for this engagement, no way he’s giving Mak more.
And so they fought. They screamed at each other, their angry and hurtful words echoing around the small HDB apartment. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough as it already was, Abah’s second wife occasional slandering would make Mak’s life even more difficult and miserable. Truth be told, Mak had never had an easy life since Abah married his second wife. Things became even worse when she gave birth to Abah’s first son, Amir. They are his gems, enjoying all of Abah’s attention while Mak and Iqah got were household chores.
Memories of Mak’s sacrifices rushed back to Iqah. After all these years, Mak held on. She suffered silently for the sake of her children. She worked as hard as she can, so she can afford tuition for Iqah as she believed education is the only way that Iqah can ever have a better life as compare to hers. Mak wanted the wedding to be perfect, for her daughter only get married once.
A sudden bang of the door startled Iqah. She jolted up and realized Abah had pulled Mak into her room. She swallowed hard, trying to control her restlessness. Abah’s expression had an uncanny resemblance of the most ferocious and violent animal. Mak had tears smeared all over her face. Iqah didn’t notice the screaming ceased. But the next thing she saw was Abah reaching for the umbrella and starting to hit Mak.
“Don’t hit Mak!” Iqah shouted nervously. Her trembling voice superimposed with her mother’s whimpering noise. Abah’s hand paused in mid air, and turned to stare at Iqah in return.
“Now you…do you want me to hit you instead?”
Iqah looked at him fearfully and didn’t answer his question.
“Don’t you dare hit my daughter!” Mak retorted. And the screaming resumed. Iqah covered her ears with her palms, her had to run away from all these. She stormed out of her room and to the kitchen. She was desperate for an escape. But alas, was devastated to find that there was none.
After a pregnant pause, she heard droplets dripping down the floor. On her right hand was a knife; on her left was a deep cut brimming with fresh blood. Soon after, her family rushed into the kitchen to find out what happened. Then, her mind went blank.
Later when things resumed back to normal again, Mak asked Abah for forgiveness. For didn’t know how many times – the thing was, Iqah had lost count.
Happy Mother’s Day, Iqah hugged her mother.
One day, I will get you out of here, free from the grip of this monster. I promise.
it started out during the reading week a year ago. we were study buddies, and i was the concierge who gave him wakeup calls in the mornings so he could tune out of his screwed up sleeping cycle. Later came the bridge and big two sessions where we would play card games with Jann, Sean and Chubby in the nights. I recall our incessant bickering back in those days, which I now believe, was our way of showing our affection for each other.
in order to make myself sound less pathetic than I already did, allow me to say there were many unspoken signs from him too alright. Once he waited half an hour at Red Dot just to get me a cup of coffee. When he realized he forgot about my sugar, he walked all the way back just to get me some. Then there was the time where he came down to the study room to play Winning 11 just to accompany me, despite the fact that he just finished a paper. Not to mention the night when he walked all the way back to his room from my room to retrieve my laptop so that we could watch sex and the city together.
It’s been a year since that day we decided to give ‘us’ a shot. and i couldn’t imagine how life would be if we didn’t.
