My Battle, Our Victory

My father never lived with us. But he never truly left either. He came and went like dry wind through a cracked window—sudden, quiet, and unwanted. Most days, he showed up in the afternoons, stayed just for a night, and disappeared before the sun rose again. We knew where he came from. He had another family. Another house. Another life. My mother didn’t speak about it. Not to him Not to me. She tried to act like it didn’t break her, but I saw the cracks. She spoke with calmness, but her silence carried screams. When he married the other woman, my mother didn’t even know. He never told her. She found out through the f*******: account of one of his relatives. I remember how her hands shook holding the phone. How she sat there on the bed, not moving. And then, slowly, the tears came. I wiped them. Every drop. And then I cried too. I told her, “I’m with you, Ama. Don’t cry. You have me.” That night, our tears became one. And something inside me changed. People said, "Your father is no longer trustworthy." They weren’t wrong. But what hurt more was what came after: "Be strong—for your mother." And I tried. I hated him. Not just for breaking my mother. But because I never really knew what a father's love felt like. Other kids would run into their father's arms at school, sit with them at festivals, laugh with them while sharing secrets. I watched from the sidelines — a silent guest in a world I could never enter. I didn’t have a father. I had a stranger who appeared once in a while with money in hand and silence in his mouth. We never shared a heart-to-heart. Our conversations were like those between distant relatives — polite, cold, and forgettable. Still, my mother took him in when he came. Cooked for him. Spoke like nothing was broken. But I knew. She wasn’t okay. She was surviving. And so was I— Siyao From then on, she started to trust no one but me. She stopped believing in the world and started believing in her daughter. It was a quiet kind of bond—painful, sacred, unspoken. People whispered cruel things to her, told her to leave him, told her she was a fool. But she stayed silent. She only looked at me. And I looked back with fire in my eyes. I worked harder than anyone. I studied while she cried, while she cooked, while she prayed. And in 10th grade, I got an A+ on my board exams. That day, she cried again — but for the first time, it wasn’t from pain. It was joy. It was hope. In that moment, I felt it — I wasn’t just her daughter anymore. I was her strength. The only one she could believe in. The warrior she never asked for, but the one she needed.