Nothing | Flash Fiction
“Your father’s spirit has left him.”
She lay on her narrow bed made from bamboo sticks and stared unseeing at the open window. She knew he was dead. She had stood over him while he took his last breath. The first years of her life were of misery, but there had been hope shortly after her eleventh year rite. When cutting off the pointed flesh from her most private part, they had assured her it wouldn’t happen again. It only stopped for a while and she was happy. But he began sneaking into her tiny room, just like before. Then came the suitors. They began to queue up because she had become a girl so sweet her own father couldn’t resist her.
She got up. She had grown tall and slender, and at seventeen, managed to look like a child and an adult at the same time. Outside, people sat in silence round the compound.
“Come.”
She followed the voice to the back of the house. They stood and stared at each other for a long time.
“I know what you did.”
Silence.
“I won’t tell a soul. I want you to know that.”
At that moment, she saw so much love in the eyes of the woman she’d called mother for years. She also saw torment. Pain well hidden as she watched her suffer for so long and couldn’t do a thing. She let her have glimpse of everything - fear, happiness, relief.
“I love you, Mother,” she mumbled as she went into her open arms and began to sob.
Tell me your thoughts.
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