My Mother's Boyfriend

Doomed

19 months later

Maya

Shell-shocked is what I feel when my mother’s name is dragged across the screen by the female news anchor- again. My father’s hazel eyes are filled with hatred as he stands near me, seething, as I sit up straight on the couch. My grandparents were on the flowered-patterned designed, double-couch with stricken expressions on their faces, holding on to their now-cold cups of ginger tea.

My eight-year-old brother is asleep upstairs. Thank goodness.

Unconsciously, I tug with the bottom tip of my long black-plaited hair. My brown eyes are wide as my blood runs cold. I regret being her daughter.

Why can’t they just leave my dead mother alone? Why ruin us because of her mistakes?

It’s barely nine in the morning and this is what they are reporting? I feel shame spread over me and I cannot meet my father’s eyes as they smear my mother’s name through the mud. Rage builds within me. Sure, we know they were having an affair- heck the world knows that the mafia man got an apartment for my mother and that he visited her daily- typical of the Michael brothers. They all rented out apartments for their ‘women of the moment’ to spend their quality time inside.

But they were just playthings to them. These women held no value to the men. The Michael brothers would eventually move on to someone else, leaving the discarded women to pick up the scattered pieces. It’s common knowledge to all in town.

Why women fell for them, knowing what they were capable of, is a mystery to me, even though my mother was one of those women.

“-how long the affair has been going on remains unknown. Attempts to reach out to the Michael family are still in vain.” A picture of my mother stepping into a vehicle with the mafia king flashes across the screen, then a sole picture of the black tux-wearing man alone, next.

De@d.

My mother has been dead only a month and they have been dragging her name across every news station like she was some type of money-grabbing whroe. My chest feels heavy, and it’s still burdened by the grief of her de@th.

There was no money. She was with him for love.

She was m#rdered inside that very apartment- strangulation. All fingers pointed to Don Alejandro- her alleged boyfriend that she left my father for. While her behaviour disgusted me, she is still my mother and I ache for her. I am so divided in my emotions.

“Shame, shame, shame,” my grandmother shouts at me as if it’s my fault and my father tries in vain to comfort her, but she throws her half-empty cup of tea at him, screaming out, “You chose that woman over Priya!” She continued spitting her venom in her native language.

Honestly, I don’t know where she gets the strength to nag like this. She’s old and fat- surely her heart should have given out a couple of times by now, but no. She’s fit as a fiddle.

Over the past months, since my father’s mother found out about their separation, my grandmother has been screaming insults about her former daughter-in-law. The only time she stopped was the week my mother was found dead. Before that, he had lied to them and said she had been working much further away and had taken an apartment as it was more convenient.

The family gathering- the funeral, and three days after, my grandmother was back at it again.

My father told me of the affair when my mother left, and I told her I hated her. I regret saying that so much. How could she choose to be with a man so much younger than her? That was so unlike her and her upbringing. That was something... ‘white people’ do, according to my grandparents.

But I knew the real reason. Love. My mother had forsaken us because she fell in love.

My mother was very cultured. Used to be anyway. It seemed her values went out the door when she met this mafia man.

My father used to say proudly that she was a modern traditional woman. Very wise and never wanders from her spiritual and household duties. Father used to be so proud and boastful, but it has dwindled in the past few years, and I have become too invested in my own life to pay attention to them.

Now it was too late. Mother is dead, and our father has become a hateful person. My grandparents were always critical of my mother because they did not approve of my father allowing her to ‘be out in the lustful world’.

“She would stray one day,” my grandfather used to say, but my father always ignored him.

Now I can see the regret on his face. I’ve been seeing it for over a year now. I just did not understand it until my grandparents began hurling their insults at me and my father about my mother, forcing me to comprehend the situation.

Almost two years ago, my parents split, and my mother moved in with her much younger boyfriend, but my father hid it from his parents and his children, saying she left for work since she was offered a better salary at a different location far away, which would prevent her from coming home for a few months. When we all eventually found out, his parents- his mother- to say lightly putting it- hell broke loose. It was a terrible time to be alive in the Patel house, especially when the other family members found out. The uncles and aunts and such. Our house never saw quiet as our extended family was always over and all bashed my mother and her parents for her ‘poor’ upbringing.

And somehow, me being her daughter, they all shared their spiteful words with me. Being female is such a curse in this family.

Leaving them, I head upstairs to my room, but I could hear the vengeful words from the people I used to love. “Take her away from that school, Russel, she would become like her mother,” I hear my grandmother’s nasty words before I shut my door.

I am doomed.

My father would stop my studies. I know it. They would get to him. Then they would arrange a marriage to some- Sunil-type boy to get married. With bald patches and a soft belly. I hated them all. I hated this life without my mother in it. But most of all...I hated her for what she did to our family.

Alejandro- I only learnt his name because of the news, had even been so brave as to show up at my mother’s traditional funeral, but only for the burning ceremony. My father saw him, but he did nothing, and my grandparents were too busy fake crying to pay attention to who was there and who wasn’t.

And he left within fifteen minutes of her pyre being lit.

My brother comes into my room holding out his phone. Taking it, I see it’s my other grandmother- the one I loved. My mother’s mother. Since they could not afford to stay long because they were not well off and my father and his parents refused them to even stay a night under his roof, they had no other alternative but to fly back home, to another region.

The few days they had been here were spent at another family member’s house. They did not want to overstay their welcome and so my other grandparents left the country, last night.

“Nani!”(grandmother- on mother's side) I cry out when I see her wrinkled face, and she happily coos back, “My baby,” in her native language because she dislikes speaking English.

She says they have now awoken from their after-flight sleep and are waiting for her cousin to pick them up from the airport. She must share the news with everyone there.

It’s like that with that culture. Big on family. She has to go to her mother’s house to meet up with maybe a hundred relatives and give them the details surrounding her daughter’s de@th. My father did not allow us to go back with them as my grandmother had requested. I think he thinks they would never send us back to live with him.

And as much as I love them, I do not like where they live- how they live. Too many people reside in one house and have no privacy at all. Talking, talking, talking. Uncles, aunts, cousins, and even the in-laws all live under one roof and although the place is huge still... there's too much noise. I much prefer it here where the noise is traffic, your neighbour mowing their lawn or a party here and there with banging music- you know... normal noise.

And quiet when you are inside your home.

I understood why my mother wanted out of there. I understood why she married my father at such a young age as well just to escape that provincial life- though she claimed she fell in love with my dad the very first time she saw him.

Not slipping my fears about being forced to soon drop out of university, or my increasing fear that I think my marriage will be arranged soon, I tell my grandmother we miss her. I had taken two weeks’ leave from my school, for my mother’s funeral but it’s been almost a month since and my father is showing no signs of allowing me to go back. I don’t know what to say to my friends when they call, so I no longer pick up.

Chatting a few minutes more, my grandfather comes to the end of the video chat and waves sadly at us. A typical man who does not like to speak about his emotions, but I can feel his grief. His pain. His humiliation. This hurt that he did not openly express. They don’t intentionally show it, but I can sense it because I feel the same way. We are losing each other. The cost of going to and from India is too much for casual visits, and so we will have to rely on technology to stay in touch with their only daughter gone from this earth, and no telling what venom my father would spurt about them...my father has not yet said a bad thing about them, but I can tell they think he would or has already because of what my mother did.

They, too, bear the shame.

See, like me, they acknowledge the wrong she did and love her the same. They blame themselves somewhat, thinking they faulted their daughter somewhere in her upbringing, for her doing the dirty shame she did.

I despised her somewhat, but love? No, I lost that for her. Sure, I feel affection for her, but it’s more of an acknowledgement that she birthed me.

A long bang is heard downstairs, startling me, and my father’s muffled but loud voice follows next, “What gives you the right?”

Eyes wide, I hurriedly said goodbye as they had already said goodbye and our grandmother was blowing us a kiss. Quickly hanging up, I warn Anthony to stay in my room and I rush out thinking the worst is about to happen or already has.

For I do not know what my family is capable of these days.

Not knowing what I would find, I rushed downstairs shouting, “Aajee?”(father's mother) because my grandmother is always the cause of trouble in our home, not my grandfather so much. “Aajaa?” (father's father) I call again by the time I have reached the foot of the stairs with no answer.

The place is too silent- my heart races. Something is wrong, I can feel it in the air.

Now running because I’m all out of steps to leap over, I grab the ledge of the open doorway to aid my turning as I rush into the wide living room, to the TV room, my bare feet silent on the floor. Empty.

Right- the front door is the one that slammed!

Not even taking a second to pause I sped on, using another open arch to aid me again as I burst into the hall, heading to the front door.

What the heckity heck?

Forget slammed, it was split open!

Coming to an abrupt halt when I see the sunlight coming in from a creak in the open doorway, my jaw slackens. The heavy wooden door, while it remained closed, stood ajar and the lock was broken.