The first and last time my mother put her hands on me was at my 9th birthday party. I guess I couldn’t call it a party since the only people who were attending were my father’s friends. They put their muddy boots on mama’s good coffee table, the one she brings out when the guests come. I hated my father’s guests, they smelled rotten and would grab mama in weird places while she smiled the same way she always did. With her eyes unfocused as if she had fully relinquished control of her own body. She was always like that, empty I mean.
“Go fetch your papa a beer, child,” my father shouted from the living room.
It had to have been a trick question since my father never allowed me around his beer. Beer was my father’s most valuable possession, so valuable that he kept it in his private room at the very back of the house to keep it safe. He never allowed me in that room, only he and mama were allowed to enter there. This had to be a trick question, and judging from how stiff mama became in his arms I didn’t dare move a muscle.
“I know you can hear me, child. Don’t make me repeat myself, ” father said, squeezing the words through his clenched teeth. Still, I didn’t dare move. I could feel his stare on the side of my face, but my eyes never strayed from mama’s face. The room grew tense with every passing second, and mama’s dress started to tighten around her waist from how strong father’s grip had gotten.
“It’s okay, Safiyah,” she said with a smile that contrasted the warning in her eyes.
Father’s private room was the only room at the end of a dark hallway. He had smashed the lights in the hallway in a fit of rage one night when he caught me playing in it. Since then I have always feared that hallway and the secrets he was so desperate to hide.
I grabbed a candle, mustered as much bravery as I could, and walked towards the big red door. It was an old door, and the wood had started to chip off on some parts leaving behind slashes of yellow in the deep red. I pushed the door open and was assaulted by a heavy smell of alcohol. The room was nothing special in itself, it was just a dusty office. What caught my attention was the lone chair in the center facing a big object with a sheet thrown over it. Father’s beer was placed between the two, and all I had to do was grab the beer and walk out of the room.
I walked over to the case of beer and was about to head out the room when a glimmer of light at the bottom edge of the sheet stopped me in my tracks. It was hypnotic. Father always kept the house dark, even our light bulbs were dim. It was as if my feet were moving on their own, all I knew was that the desire to see what was underneath outweighed the warning at the back of my head. The sheet felt heavier than I thought in my hand, almost like a tarp but not as heavy. With a firm yank, the sheet came down and when the dust settled, I came face to face with a little girl.
Her hair was braided back into two pigtails with red balls dangling from the base of them. Her skin was dark, almost blue, with dull eyes that sank into her head the same way mama’s did. She was beautiful, but she didn’t look happy. She was lifeless, but she moved when I moved and she held a case of beer that looked like father’s. I reached my hand out to touch her the same time she did, I wondered if she wanted to feel me too. Suddenly, a hand came out from beside the girl and snatched her by her pigtail before I could warn her.
“You must’ve lost your damn mind!” Mama yelled. I found myself on my knees with mama’s hand around my hair. The case of beer had fallen from my arms and shattered around us. I tried to pry her hands from my hair, but she only gripped it tighter.
“Mama it hurts. Stop,” I cried out.
“It hurts? Does it hurt? What do you know about pain, child?” Mama said, pulling my hair after each question. She threw me on my butt and started to pace around the room pulling at the skin of her nails with her teeth.
“He’s going to kill us. We’re going to die,” she mumbled and paused to stare at the object where the girl had stood moments ago, only this time it was mama who stood in it. Mama reached for her hair and started to run her hands through her afro at the same time the mama in the object did. Next, she reached for her face with both hands and started inspecting her eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, and finally her chin. Mama in the object followed her actions the same way the girl had followed mine. Tears started running from mama’s eyes, it was the first time I ever saw her cry.
“Mama, why are there two of you?” I dared to ask.
My voice snapped my mother into action. She quickly grabbed the sheet and threw it over the object. She rubbed her eyes and finally turned to me. She fell to her knees and grabbed my face, “I need you to do something for me, baby, can you do that?” She asked softly. All I could do was stare back at her, she was scaring me.
“I need you to go downstairs and tell papa that I decided to get the beer instead,” she continued.
I shook my head “that’s not what happened mama.” She forced a smile on her face and attempted to fix the pigtail she had pulled me by.
“Tell him you heard a crash and that you were too scared to come look for yourself,” she continued.
“But that’s not what happened mama,” I replied as I reached for her hands. I couldn’t understand why she wanted me to lie about such a thing. She yanked her hand back as if my touch had burned her.
She turned her back to me and said “I will not ask again, Safiyah.” I didn’t move.
“Go!” She yelled.
My feet moved before my mind had a chance to protest. I ran down the hallway and into the sitting room, where father was holding uncle Bakari’s wife in his lap.
“Papa, mama told me she would get the beer herself, and then I heard a crash and I’m too scared to go check,” the words were out of my mouth faster than I could catch my breath.
Father shot up at the mention of the crash, shoving auntie Bakari to the ground in the process. With a beer in hand, father pushed past me and stomped down the hallway. The room grew quiet. As auntie picked herself up she looked to the hall behind me and shook her head.
“Oh, that woman has done it now,” she said, reaching for her beer.
“He might just kill her this time,” uncle Bakari said, pulling his wife on his lap.
A scream came from the hallway, followed by a crash. My feet moved before I realized what I was doing. The hallway felt like it was growing further from me with each step, and father’s yells were only growing louder. I had to get there, fast. When I got to the door, I reached for the handle and froze. The red door looked bigger than it had before. I ran all the way here, but what was I supposed to do now? Mama was right behind the door, and all I had to do was open it. But the door looked too heavy, and I wasn’t strong enough to push it.
The screaming went on for an eternity and my hand remained suspended above the handle. I wasn’t strong enough to take the next step and I wasn’t strong enough to pull back either. Eventually, the screaming stopped. The silence echoed down the hall and sent chills down my spine. Silence was bad. Were uncle’s predictions correct? At least with the screams, I knew she was still alive. My heart was beating through my ears so loud that I didn't hear father open the door.
He stood before me, larger than life, heaving. His nostrils flared as he glared down at me, his undershirt damp with sweat. His button-down was wrapped around his fist, and his other hand clutched the neck of a broken beer bottle. My eyes locked on the blood dripping from the bottle.
“Did you see?” Father asked.
His voice was muffled by my quickening heartbeat. My eyes refused to stray from the bottle.
“Did you see?” He yelled.
He grabbed my face and pulled it to his and repeated the same question. My father was always a scary man. His outbursts were nothing new, but his eyes were different that day. They were bloodshot and darted frantically across my face like they couldn’t decide which eye to focus on. I was too scared to reply. I had seen a lot that day but there wasn’t much I understood. There was no answer I could give him that wouldn’t anger him more. So I stayed silent. His hand tightened on my face, and I shut my eyes in preparation for what was to come. I wondered if mama was as scared as I was,
“She didn’t see, Josef. She didn’t see,” a soft voice came from behind my father’s back.
My eyes shot open to see mama leaning on father’s desk for support. Her arm was shaking, and her head never turned to look at me. I could still see the tears fall down her cheek though. Father hummed at my mother’s words and proceeded to push me out the doorway. I didn’t have the strength to fight back.
“Good. Clean the mess up and don’t be seen for the rest of the night.”
With the parting command, father shuts the door, but not before I saw the arm that mama was leaning on give out. He ushered me into the living room, where uncle Bakari handed him a beer. The conversation picked back up as if nothing had happened. They sang me a clumsy happy birthday over the cake mama had made and continued to drink themselves to sleep. She never came back to the room.
Father was the last to fall asleep. The beer bottle fell from his fingers and rolled to my feet, beer trickling from the mouth. Mother’s tears kept flashing through my head. She never cried. Father had beat her plenty but she always got back up and smiled for me. As forced as it was, her smile was always reassuring. I picked the bottle up and set it on the table by my father’s hand and made my way to their room.
Their room was across from mine, though theirs was the only one with a door. I knocked on the door and waited for my mother to give me permission to enter.
“Come in, Safiyah,” a whisper came from behind the door.
I hesitated for a moment and pushed the door open. The room was lit by a candle on the nightstand that was on its last breath. Mama was in the covers with her back to me. I shut the door behind me, walked to the top drawer of the nightstand and pulled out a new candle. I unwrapped it as quietly as I could to not disturb the silence in the room. I stole the flame from the lit candle, and for a moment the two candles illuminated half of mama’s face. Her right eye was swollen shut and her lip had a deep cut on it. It was a terrifying sight. I blew out the old candle and mama’s face disappeared behind the shadows.
“Grab the comb and come sit by the bed,” she said, her back still turned to me.
I did as she said and grabbed the comb and the grease and sat at the foot of the bed. The sheets rustled as mama moved to place her legs on either side of my shoulders. Slowly, she started to take down my braided pigtails. For a while, the knocking of the beads as she unwrapped them from my hair was the only sound in the room. I had so many questions I wanted to ask her, but my voice felt too loud for the room. She was the first to break the silence.
“I’m sorry.” She whispered as she got to the braid that she had grabbed me by earlier.
“It’s okay,” I whispered back.
Somehow, we had realized that volume wasn’t necessary at that moment, not that it ever was. This was a tradition for us. When father would drink himself to sleep, mother would bring me to this room and braid my hair. She would part my hair and whisper stories in my ear until I fell asleep. There wasn’t a lot that was gentle about our lives but in these rare moments, nothing felt softer. She would speak of a world where kids went to learn together and parents loved each other. A place where the light was a good thing and people didn’t have to be afraid all the time.
All I’ve ever known was this house. I knew that there was more out there but the only one who ever saw it was my father and his friends. Whenever he left the house, he would lock the door behind us, and when he returned he would sleep with the keys around his neck. I wonder if mama ever saw the outside or if she only heard it from somebody else’s imagination as well.
“Let me tell you a story about a man who hated beautiful things,” she whispered in my ear.
She grabbed the comb and started to part my hair, this time in four sections.
“He was an ugly man. Though nobody had ever called him so, he always knew. He hated how ugly he was that he decided to destroy all the pretty things in the world so that he could be the only one left. Then, he believed, he would have to be beautiful. Safiyah, the world is too beautiful for one man to destroy. He knew this, and that is what made him more angry.” She paused to tap my shoulder. A signal for me to raise the grease container higher so she could reach it.
“One day, he found a beautiful young girl outside a tavern. She had gone out to dance with her friends for her 16th birthday. The night had gotten to her and she had stepped out to get some fresh air. She asked the ugly man for a cigarette, and made the mistake of making him laugh.” She released a pained breath and reached for the hair ties. The first braid was finished.
“Laughing is a beautiful thing, Safiyah, and the thought that something so beautiful came out of him angered the man. However, what angered him more was how much he liked it. He took the girl to his house and locked her in. Like a candle stealing fire from the sun, he wanted to keep the piece of that beauty to himself. But he knew that the only way that he was going to keep that fire was if he made sure that it never knew how bright it truly was. So he removed every mirror from the house and locked every door-”
“What is a mirror?” I interrupted. This was a new word for me. Mama had never taught it to me. Her hand paused halfway through the second braid.
“It is that thing that you saw in your father’s study,” she replied.
“That door?”
“It’s not a door. It's a thing that shows you what you look like,” she said after a long pause.
“So that little girl…”
“That was you.”
Her words sent chills down my body. I had never thought about how I would look. I knew that mama and father looked like something, but it had never crossed my mind that I had a look too. My mother didn’t let me linger in my thoughts too long before she continued her story. The second braid was finished, and she started on the third one.
“The girl fought at first, but his ugly outshone her beauty and eventually her fire died down to a single flame. Eventually, she gave him a child, a bright baby girl with the same face as her. Knowing that two flames were too much for him to contain he started to try to tame her before she could spark. He forbade the mother from ever telling the girl what she was.” She paused to tap me on the shoulder to bring the grease up higher. She scooped a little on her pointer finger and finished off the third braid. She snapped a hairband at the base of it and started the final one. I stiffened a yawn.
“One night, the girl found a mirror and was reminded of what she truly was. Of what her true purpose was. You can’t contain a flame that knows it can become fire, Safiyah. It took 9 years for the girl to realize that, but once she did no amount of ugly could snuff her out,” she trailed off. Sleep had started to find its way to my eyes, but I was determined to hear the end.
“What did she do?” I asked.
“She did what fire does best. She burned it all to the ground,” mama replied.
“What about the daughter?”
“She went out into the world and lived free.”
“That’s a nice story, mama. I want,” a yawn interrupted my sentence. “I want to see the world too.”
“You will,” she said, finishing off the final braid. Sleep finally won and I drifted off to sleep.
When I woke, I was in the living room wrapped in mama’s scarf. She was walking around the room pouring father’s good liquor over the carpet and the areas of the couch where nobody was laying.
“Mama?”
She spun around and put her finger to her mouth in a shushing motion. She smiled at me. The first smile that ever reached her eyes and dumped the last of the drink on father's lap. She grabbed the keys from around his neck and paused to stare at him for a moment. After a while, she came to me and grabbed my hand. She began to lead me to the door, but my legs were locked in place. Father said to never go to that door. Bad things happen when I go near that door.
“He can’t hurt us anymore, Safiyah. I’ll protect you,” Mama said with the same smile on her face. Slowly she began to lead me to the door. She put the keys in the door and hesitated for a moment. I could see then how much her hand was shaking. Eventually, she turned the keys and opened the door.
The air was hot and heavy. It stuck to my face like the smoke that came from boiling water. There were trees everywhere, big and brown like mama had described in her stories. The moon was strangely shaped like nail clippings, mama used to say it was a circle. She didn’t give me time to take everything in. She turned to lock the door behind us and started walking into the trees fast.
“Where are we going, Mama?” I asked as I tripped over the little trees on the ground.
“To freedom, Safiyah,” she replied. We walked for a few more minutes and mother stopped and turned to me. She lowered to her knees so our eyes were leveled.
“I love you Safiyah, I need you to know that.” Her eyes were watering and I reached out to wipe the stray tears.
“I love you too,” I replied.
“Good, mama will be right back, baby. I need you to wait here, and when you hear a loud song I need you to walk to it,” she said.
“A loud song?”
“It’s not a good song, but you will know it when you hear it. Promise me, Safiyah. You have to go towards the song.” Her voice had deepened the way it would whenever I did something bad. All I could do was nod.
With a parting smile, mama took off back to the house. I waited for a few minutes before I started to follow her, what if father woke up? I had to go help, and this time I won’t freeze. I took two steps before a loud noise shocked me still. Smoke started to rise from the direction of the house.
“Mama!”
I took off back to the house with everything in me. By the time I reached the house, flames had swallowed it whole. Screams could be heard from the inside but nobody was coming out.
“Mama!” I yelled.
Tears streaming down my face, I tried to get to the door, but the flames were too hot. All I could do was yell until my throat turned to sandpaper. Eventually, the screams quieted and all that was left was the crackling of the burning wood.
“Mama,” I whispered.
As the house collapsed in on itself, a sharp song pierced through the night and blue and red light emerged from the tree line. She was right, it was an awful song.