See Her

The quarry tile had then procured a patina in a tinge of brown, the tile merely about to be rendered in arrant cerise. Ms. or Mrs., the right way to employ the tannoy for her, or her name merely, was yet, not quite right as I had often thought of, failing and failing again and then again, seeing it much as an enigma to myself. A nimbus grey now smears the sky of my mind into a vapor trail of considerations, and I reconsider a couple of things, and then a lot, each one merely reminding me of how terrible a mistake it can be, it is, for me to tell you this story. How am I going to tell you this, this story of a skin strange, yet familiar over time? I can recount and do nothing other than that and of all I can think of, I can’t do anything about it, and thus, the narration. You see, I lost my fight to the wish to tell it for she won’t; I lost my fight to all that propensity of shouldering the weight of another one of her for she in ramshackle ruin, is so reluctant to yell. You see, I can ‘t help a scream. I am afraid I will be too loud, too loud this time.

“Now midst the clamor thy sound – this cacophony, that rabble, my tongue quietly coiled, yet rambles thy universe in world of mine. Eyes on eyes, I see, I see it. The sight, oh God!” - Me.

The strangeness in the air had been prevailing ever since Tally grew pregnant of her husband’s first baby. Mr. Ralin Ditty, her husband, had spectated the utmost of the sky, beheld cerulean, turquoise, and bottle green the evening she had divulged it to him, and verily was she smeared all over with his deeply crimson love, drapery of the kind she had admired since long and with all the baby kit on her feet, merely the Wendy house was Seenay House to become. However, as I told you earlier in the context, the air in the Ditties kept changing and leaving the ménage, Tally often remained perplexed, not knowing which gale would swipe her face that day, or on the day that was to come next. Only if she could count on any one of them, any one.

Mrs. Maukin Ditty, Tally’s mother in law, had walked straight into the living room, and having sought good comfort, sat down on the chaise longue, her legs strewn across the centre of the table in glass. The Ditties’ mansion was a house in the far patches of the village which, by virtue of its lies perhaps, had come to be named as Soulie Village. The mansion barely witnessed a set of telephone system, so much as it had not descried the face of cottage cheese, and tortilla which identified as the prevalent delicacies around the residence Tally came from, let alone wooden furniture, and a set of television. She had to carry them in marriage as gifts from her father, or merely dream about them all nightly. An edge like that to stand on, Tally had seldom made any room for an anticipation of all the things she was going to find, and not going to, not to mention the hard time she was going to have on the face of all that she had never been made to feel the need of, much less ask for the same. But that life was seldom a fairy tale on Earth, and more of one from hell, had somehow, always had her empathy. You see, she was provided for, and cosseted, but was never in the sandals of a princess, much to her own knowledge just as well; she was loved, and never thought of it as something she did not deserve. Overstepping the outskirts of her childhood home, the place the child in her had packed in her organs long back as a girl like she knew how nothing was ever going to be the same again, that she might have to keep a few things from the space around like she could tell of a search for a purpose that would make her roam in the realms of her own mind one day. Tally had looked around, and back. Her father, holding her dress’s end to save a tiny damage of the bridal chador from a nail at the door that had always led them all in, had thought if it was actually time. She had seemed to be so silly, and for sure, he could have been around. Little did she know that he could have been around. The mansion’s stance did not coincide with a demesne of cruel isolation from the rest of the village, much less of a mansion it made, more a house of hay to be truthful.

An escritoire in sylvan wood occupied the space at the right corner of the room. Mr. Ditty was there too, he hadn’t yet had his morning kip’s departure from his eyes that looked rather sozzled from the night before. As she had conceived in her anticipation more intensely than she had the fetus in her womb, or fetuses to be precise, Tally had again been unacquainted with what was going to follow; she however, did know what actually might. It is perplexity indeed, and so was it for Tally; she must want us to feel that. Mr. Ralin had not expressed any sign of affection towards her in a while which is not to say that they had not been through thick and thin together; they survived the tempests for on the loss of the first child, his hand barely left hers to imbibe all that her mannerisms might have evinced had he not striven studying them by touch then sight. Mr. Ralin and Tally’s marriage was not entirely based on love, but from all the time they had spent together, one could tell that there was an attempt, a try at finding the love that should have been there a little earlier.

Tally, being the woman in the pair they made, surely thought about it more often than him, until hours imposed the vicissitudes for her to deal with that she had no option, but to ponder over some negotiations with him soon. But God could merely know what the matter might be that idle morning of August the twenty third. Speaking of Tally, she had been struggling with terrible itch down on her pelvis and the skin of her stomach, right above the area where she very well knew was her dear womb that she cosseted day and night; she had grown too cautious of her body for they were two she had to care for. “Why do you not wish to do it? What is the deal in it? It’ll be a span of two months only. Why, are you scared?... Tally, dear you must understand. We are trying to help you both.”, spoke Mrs. Ditty, chewing the beetle nut inside her thin mouth, whilst keeping another nut in between her teeth – she had collated them from the lawn outside the mansion while she was taking her matutinal saunter at five in the morning. Finding no speech but certain quietude from the edge of Tally, Mrs. Ditty had desired to continue her part of insistence, but was superseded by Mr. Ralin. He stood close to the oval flower vase on whose surface was a pattern of clover leaf, much as a festoon on the metal of the pot.

Tally had brought it out with herself from her bedroom the other night. She snuck out of the room when Ralin was asleep, and she was sure of that. She had wanted something that would remind her of her home to be there in the living room of the house, and rightly did she never for once was careless, or reckless in cosseting the jar. The porcelain was somehow summoning her greater attention that day. She knew that she should be the one standing close to it, but under the heavy weight of the air, her legs had commenced witnessing the inception of a petrified fear in her thighs, and it was creeping upwards her body like rising damp on a concrete wall that was losing its paint, standing above a marshy quagmire.

She was apprehensive of her womb as well. She was taking care of two in there, and she couldn’t help, but feel the need to iterate that to herself almost all the time and was convinced that her vase, her father’s gift at her marriage to Mr. Ralin, would stand at jeopardy that morning. She wished she could save both of them, the little ones inside her and the jug in whose every inch of the metal resided her father’s blessings for a happier life then he could have ever been able to make for her. No doubt she doubted that, and no wonder why she would. You will know it too in no time. “Ma, just…just wait a sec… Okay. I am done asking you the reason why because all you do is stand like a fortified statue. You don’t say anything every time the matter falls upon this issue. I don’t understand why we even have to make it an issue. Ah! I am not going to ask you anymore.

This is it. We are doing it. You haven’t spoken up hitherto on the topic, keeping so mum about it all like it’s for you to save without words. There’s no need for you to shut your mouth like this anymore. But if you so please to be this quiet, then be silent and accommodating as I had expected you to be on marrying you, and let me decide. I know what is best for us. Let me handle it on my own. I never wanted your company in figuring things out. So if I get to work this out, and you shout, my hands will reach for your neck I swear! Tally, I am asking you for the last time. I am also telling you that I won’t repeat it. Do you hear me?”, Mr. Ditty enquired, his arms crossed against the linen of his polo shirt which partially covered his chest. Finding no answer from her, he declared, “You will be travelling to the hospital with me tomorrow”. Tally stood in silence. No response from her end yet again aggravated the scene quite seriously.

That something was parlous in that room, and that it lingered round the scapular bones under her nightie in viscous pink were both inevitable. She was quiet, all quiet, but sensed the fear deep in her bones. She was no more far from the truth of the reality that was soon to be, and knew right then that merely saving the pot wasn’t enough, nor was she going to be able to save it. She had always intended to ascertain her guards in herself foremost, before letting anyone know that she needed aid. Sadly, she hadn’t found them as yet. So she preferred standing still for she had none else to turn to, not amongst the Ditties, not one stood in the space of that cubical room she could count on. “TALLY! I AM ASKING SOMETHING. Say something. Speak. Oh Holy Lord! What is it? Are you dead?”, Mr. Ralin barked, his hands coming loosely on his chest from the Gordian knot they had earlier tied dorsally. Tally ventured to form an utterance that time, and finally responded, “I am pregnant, and of your children…”. “Oh shut up! Don’t propound that wretched plurality now! I will be a father to only one child. Do you get that? I don’t want your children. I will have only one, and you must comply! Yes you are carrying my children.

You’ve been too inexperienced to be correct about it, but I don’t doubt you this time Tally. I am the father, and on account of the Biological obligation leastways, I get to have a say in this, and I will have what I want.”, So Mr. Ralin uttered, his gaze fixed straight on her face. Breathing deeply once, he declared, “Tomorrow noon, I will reserve the maternity clinic at Pragnany Cares and in there, the unit of Medical Termination of Pregnancy. Be ready by eleven sharp at the latest. I don’t want any kind of delay in this work.” “Don’t you say that Ral! You are the father of both the babies.

They are ours, and a sign of our love, our life together. You ought to accept them both. It’s really hard for me to even envision that you can speak like that. What will be the fault of the other child whom you wish to lose? Do you have an answer for that?”, Tally composed, her right hand coming over her womb, her left curling around her torso from the right side. “Shut up! Didn’t you hear what I told you just now? Damn! Have you been inflicted with deafness as well?”, came Mr. Ralin’s reply straight away. “Only for all your spiteful words, and vituperation. Our babies must not hear them. Be mindful of your speech Ral! You can do this to the least for you are already falling out of your fatherhood.”, returned Tally, the fear of having said too much gripping her throat. “You ugly temptress, don’t you dare suggest anything to me! I will have only one child, not two. Have I made myself clear? We will seek the MTP – ”, Ralin was saying that Tally interrupted with deliberation that time. She knew she had to. She was not any longer a stranger to what was coming.

She had seen the repercussions of mere speaking, let alone a denial, one to many times; it was absolutely needless of a mention that she was tired of it all, and that she was so aware of the upshots of her venture, she didn’t wish to care any less than the much she did about being victimized of the routine of her penalty. Indeed, she had known that she would be unable to save the flowers, nor the pot which was the only entity that had helped her to not let the memories of her former self perish, and on the face of all the odds and negligence, keep trying to be strong. The self that was free, the self who was heard, the self that was loved, she was made to be all of them under the watch of those flowers with delicate whorls of petals; she could, in no way, fail in saving the other. “Stop naming it like that Ralin. You too know what it is, and yet you’re merely using the medical lingo to disguise the cruel face of it.

Don’t you hear what you’re saying? You are asking me to abort one of the two babies in my womb. I can’t. I won’t! I don’t want to. I have felt the kicks of both of their tiny feet on the skin inside. I am already a mother of them both, unlike you, who will be the father only after I deliver my children. Yes, deny your parental association with them. I don’t care. I will have both of them, and I won’t seek a ruthless way to saving one for the sake of the pleasure of a man who never conceived them at the first place. I did. I bore them within me; I bear them within me. I am the mother, and I can continue to be that without a man by my side. You don’t think twice before indulging yourself so much into the endeavor. Indeed, it’s easier for you to reject. You will always have your name in the echoes on the golden edge only; I, the mother, have to be there at every hour.

So I dare to withstand this storm. I won’t let you touch them. You don’t deserve to. Ralin, I have known them for eight months and twenty seven days now, and will always do more than you ever will. How do you expect me to not nurture affection for both the tiny souls? I love them, both of them! I am a mother to both the lives breathing inside me. You see, they have gathered form already within my body – ” “To do hell with your bullshit! Keep it for someone else. You will fall in line with the surgery tomorrow and that’s final. I won’t hear one word next to this.”, Ralin avowed, his gesticulation suggesting that he was preparing to leave the room, having said and done. “How will you know which one of them you will keep? How on Earth if not by medical determination of their sexualities?”, Tally said, her breath swelling up in her chest. Tally could then see it for it was, and what Mr. Ralin intended to do, what he had always intended to do.

It was in that brief moment of the hour that Tally saw through him, like she saw what he had in himself, and all that he was now chundering out his own system, gory selfishness. Oblivious to how she might change this time, Mr. Ralin barely cared to hear what she had to say. But there was it – she had no more to say, but to scream her heart out – that her song, that her voice of the soul. “You are a ghoulish monster to be able to think like that. I detest the verity that my children had to have a father like you. You don’t deserve them. Whom will you have Ralin, if I may ask? Whom?”, Tally said, snapping at him, her breath heavy with exhaustion. Mr. Ralin had been exceptionally good at being evasive to her wishes, so they transmuted to demands, but merely if he would listen – he would have her; he would have her. “Quiet down right now lest I lose my temper! It won’t be good, and you know it.”, Ralin retreated to his quondam rebuke, turning away from the door of the living room, but eyeing her all the while as he walked back. “You didn’t answer my question.

Answer me. Whom will you have Ral? The boy, won’t you? ANSWER ME!”, Tally shouted, her womb beginning to cause an ache under her pelvis making her right hand move quickly along the left end of her back. Mr. Ralin stood quietly where he had settled, his right foot kicking the doorstop mildly, echoing the answer to his wife’s question so loud. “You are a devious, cunning, and selfish evil! I am still struggling to believe that you, the father! ponder over these delicate bodies inside me as such. How grotesque! How pathetic! Ral! Why? Why can’t you love them both? I can’t figure out why you would want kids at the first place if you had such conditions. Love is not born out of your want; it is the soul that desires it, and found only if you’ve got the luck to have it. I gave you that, and you are asking me to divide it. I may cut myself into two, and never be able to find one out of my body for unlike you, they are both in me.

What about how much they must have known each other? What about their acquaintance, silly, stupid, barely comprehensible, but all the more meaningful than the meaning they will ever find in this father who doesn’t know how to love? How could you think of being a father if you couldn’t dare to love? You are looking for one part, and spitting on the other. That isn’t how you love; you don’t get to bargain, but accept it for both the affection that’s in it and the ugliness that must be. It’s just that we only name it in red, but the red can be bloody sometimes. It’s a delusion, nothing is hunky-dory, nothing ever was. I find it strange thinking why we look for comfort in love when we keep hurting again and again. You never can tell. You Ral, took it all for granted. That’s not what I resent, but that you took too much, and returning a morsel of it to me when I am starving! You knew that it wouldn’t be under the control of either one of us. Why, why would you still want to have them? Answer me!”, Tally screamed, sobs incessantly clouding up her voice, and the affliction freezing up her legs, exacerbating her stance.

Tally’s legs had swollen up greatly. She was aware that the jerks, let alone the mental agony, were not doing her good. She knew what it might lead to; she would be no child born yesterday if the repercussions started unfolding themselves. And she also knew how that might incur perilous damage, but she was so broken yet, keeping up with it all the whole time that she was willing to collapse. “You shut those lips right now before I come to stitch them up lady! Call it a warning, or whatever the heck you wish to call it as. I don’t give a damn. I am simply asking you for something, and expecting your obedience as my wife. I don’t want an argument. So give me what I want, or do you wish to prove how worthless you are in this, like your father who couldn’t send enough? Surely, you were to make up for all that we missed. Useless minions!”, So uttered Mr. Ralin, the last words almost a whisper. Tally now took hold of the window sill that ran on the horizontal pavement of the window that stood on her right.

She wondered if she had ever dreamt of having her father give her away at the hands of someone who would return to him only invective. And in the spur of the ring of Mr. Ralin’s words in her head, she remembered her home. “Alright, here you go again, with all your crocodile tears! There you have it; I will let you have the truth. Yes, I admit it. I never wanted her. I wanted him! Yes, I wanted him. And I will contort your uterus to get her out of your body right now if you do not quietly consent for tomorrow. We will have him only, and it’s the end of the story whether you wish for it or not. You will only nurture him. Do you hear me? I want him and him only!”, came Ralin’s reprimand, his muscles building up in his arms’ upper halves. “Mom, why don’t you say something? This is wrong, and you know it just as well as I do. You can’t let him do this, can you? Mom, how are you so quiet? Why don’t you speak? Say something!”, Tally exclaimed, enquiring on Mrs. Ditty’s silence midst the bedlam. Mrs. Ditty who had witnessed the exchange of the mayhem of aggressive slants passively all that time in the living room, then sat on the chaise longue, her arms crossed upfront her chest. She seemed like she could have something to say, yet not a word came out of mouth when Ralin, leaving his position from the edge of the door, rushed too quickly as to have the doorstop uproot the nail of his thumb, rendering it all in thick blood instantly whilst his steps quickened towards Tally and there his hands echoed a slap.

A slap, and then another. Amidst the cascade of the two hits, she merely cried thinking of her father, and the day he had held her hand for the last. Tally was giddy now. The contractions were beginning mildly, midst the cacophony, midst the chaos. She silently made a prayer that she didn’t have her children in the middle of that mess. She prepared herself in her head, thinking that she would be so ready to pretend that she had always been deeply loved once she would get to hold both of her babies in a careful clasp of her arms; she would feign so her children would have a smile at the first sight of their mother’s face. She would do that – she knew she could, and she would do that. “What can I say? You both know better. You are in a marital knot. I have got nothing to do there. But I must tell you dear, having two kids will be hard on the family. A girl will grow to be such a bane. Furthermore, she will have to be married off later anyway. What prospect do you see in delivering a girl child daughter?”, so Mrs. Ditty reiterated the shibboleth which was just enough to incite the worst in Tally whilst she unlocked her arms, placing her palms on the cushion of the couch. Thus, out of the paroxysm of the duty she exquisitely felt was hers already, Tally sensed the beats of her heart hard against her chest. She had to come to the rescue of her own babies, even when she was rendered astonished by what Mrs. Ditty had just said. Shouting with all that was left in her, both of her hands holding her womb tightly, she was heard saying “You monsters! You butchers! How can you envision of killing a child not even born yet? I won’t let you. You ought to pay penance for this! I. Won’t. See. This. Happening. To. Me. At. Any. Cost! I will be a mother of two. Let that be the song in air tonight! They will both be my children, and I will hear two voices call me “Ma”. My arms will have two to embrace. They are twins to be; they are meant to stay together. I won’t let you touch them you devils on Earth! You flesh hunters! You will both rot in this house. I will have both my babies and will take them out of this hell of sinful slants! They mustn’t grow up in here, and more because neither one of you deserves to see them. They should never meet you, such devious beings! They will find better love. They will. Both will.” before the skin of the palms of Ralin met the skin of her face again, at the corners of her lips, as if damaging her smile evermore; the nooks of her mouth, her incisors clinked against the brim of the vase where the white of her teeth met with the white of the china clay’s paint; and her eyes, both under and atop the long black lashes, were rendered with chasms that bore the brims as gory lips of the eyes’ own as to scream out loud for Ralin had kissed her there so many times, and merely desired to kiss her there again, once more just as he had always sought so much with his same demand on repeat. Everything came undone, exactly as she had foreseen it all. Surely, she didn’t bear one intention to cede with the bludgeon, but to sleep with her tiny souls who breathed in and out inside her, she would give up the world. She conceded with the cosh on her legs whose blows went up her thighs just as the rising damp all over again, then his fists on her nape and chest, quelling every desire in her to breathe for just one more time. Was it for the first time? No, so as I can tell you. Not at all. Tally had seen it one to many times. Never in any one of my certain spectacles that I can ever be sure of, I wasn’t there to witness any of this – this the part of the story which disturbs the equilibrium of the seabed of all my intentions to tell it. Indeed, the mouth still deserving to talk so much, is but saying one word. She is not bereft of speech, but knows not how to tell it; I, the one who so unjustly gets to weave the thread on the stitches of her skin, wish to know how scared she is, thinking and over-thinking that she may not have one pair of ears to hear her out for only and only what she has to say – and hence, an iteration of the raison d’être of this entirety of narration that was never meant to be mine, never foremost.

Why, why does she not speak? I want to hear her yell! I want to know her story; why must she be this quiet? Look at her! Her black hair, and the coiffure in ramshackle fettle, strands coming undone behind her ears torn to bleed. See her! I want to see her! Why does she hide? Must I see her. Must we see her. Where my place then? Where my residence? I – In her, and from her born, felt the rivulets of cerise brooks making my infantile skin send ripples on the surface with my flesh raised and then quelled, all too instantly, and again and again and again, and then in her the sleep in my eyes, lying somewhere better than that place to feel the disturbance caused by Ralin’s blows in the wavelets of the water that had surrounded me; within her my place. The story always demanded to be told, if merely some listener here, or listener there.

Her legs pulled outright by his hands then, they felt soft on her skin. She would have desired her own end had she known at the slightest how she had died for him to touch her, touch her with love, touch her to love, and touch her body where he ought to before the newness of it was gone. To her elation, he did, he did touch her, and caressing her ankles, and then running the fingers of both of his palms up her thighs, his hands had slipped on to the corpus where her hands held stuck even tighter to the part of her figure she had started finding herself as the most beautiful woman for, the part of her body which always reminded her that she was not just a lady, not anymore almost – some part she should have been respected for, for whom she carried in there. He did, he did touch her by the waist, noticing not one inch of every bit of that length that her waistline had garnered all for the first time in her life, let alone his intrigue to know who had caused it. And so moved his hands, up and down the waist from the right and the left, gradually sliding up to her nape, then, ears, and then the face. Ah! She had wanted that, all the time ever since she saw something move in her womb in one complete round, how she had desired he would touch her right there and feel one kick, just one kick of the children, not knowing whose it was – she had been so desperate for him to touch her then and feel the shudder on the skin of his palms that she was merely left to beg him to do so. All the sole visits to the maternity clinics, the hours of physical workouts at the abode of would-be-parents – meet Mom, say hello Dad!, the nights with merely the wish being the food in her entire system that her husband would come to kiss her good night just for once, for the sake of who waited to see him, even if with sheer insincerity – all for two but nominal merely, only in the name of it, for the sake of it all, all the time – all the damn time! Tally had had enough of everything on her own, yet the desire of being touched had somehow persevered through the storm – she would despise herself beyond all limits of her ability to hate if only she were to know how he was finally touching her. With his hands on her mouth then, as she had wanted so badly, he was kissing the heck out of her! She could no longer hold her part of her body that had made her love herself – Ralin pulled out her hands edgeways on each side, and wrenched her wrists to finally make her squirm in furious pain. Turning rightward, turning leftward, Ralin made a curlicue Tally would have admired in execution on Ralin’s part to find her hand then to break it. Tally had sensed the omen long back in time, understood the meaning really well, and read the signs besides, but never did she for once ponder over how much it would take from her before she wouldn’t be able to aid the deep urge to relinquish, and would give in to the pain, letting go of all that she had fought over. It was however, not any image in her mind, this mayhem, this torment which was much more than physical, and emotional. She was broken in a way she had never been built, yet Ralin continued to make her fall, forming pieces she had never thought, nor could she, that she had ever been made of. It was so strange to admit that she was actually surpassing, outplaying herself in breaking down. The subliminal scenario following her marriage was no fairy tale, but it was no fairy tale from the darker realms of hell either. The vicissitudes were too sad for her to admit for look at how things altered with time; she could hardly believe Ralin was the man she had consented to marry, all to keep herself in father’s heart. She now wished upon finding her father again, say hello and hear him say it back, and then be back again for the cycle, however complicated, was for her to bear, for the mess they had made together; because unlike Ralin, she was not a coward to turn away from the upshots of her terrible endeavor with marriage itself so much as to then have only doubts and doubts for the meaning of the institution. She wished she knew how to leave – oh! How she wished, but there she was, time and time again, letting all the shame get to her for he would be watching her every move, and say nothing at all; she didn’t know how to simply walk out with him facing the door and not even wanting to stop her. She was alive. She could sense his hands on her waist and his loin atop her womb. God merely knew how she had desired to be loved for the sight of it could terrify a young heart capable of feeling anything forever. “Yes, slap her right on the face son. How dare she call me a devil! She merits the penalty. Slap her! Slap her right there, and I must tell you to drag her down the floor of the room so she is out of my sight. This ugly temptress!”, blurted Mrs. Ditty from the ottoman she had shifted her seat to.

Being all the more a loyal son to his mother, it was not more than just a cinch for Ralin to continue to lam Tally on the forehead and collar bone. So there went in numbers of one, two, and three – A slap! Then another – Slap! And Slap! Ralin had undone the Gordian knot of her maternity gown in the meantime, and it was more than sweat that dowsed the caudal part of Tally’s body. She saw the skin of her thighs smeared in layers of crimson red. The line of her pelvis no longer had the care of her hands. Had she lost it, to her wonder, the fight to have the next life in marriage? It would be a colossal defeat to confront too early in time, and she would never wish to see herself again. Surely everyone dislikes to be defeated for the indomitable picture of one’s teenage self perhaps, remains yet to die in one; Tally could not accept to be vanquished by the man she thought loved her as his wife. How was she to succumb with her teenage indomitable self breaking part by part? Where the meaning then, where the stance she was still refusing to stop looking for where she must stand as his wife still? She did not know either, but that she did not want to bother to find out was plain as a pikestaff. She was too tired then, she couldn’t help any part of it – the fatigue was setting fire on all her veins. With all the impressions scribbled on her face in prints of red which would have coincided perfectly under the size of Ralin’s fingers, her visage made an Art of quiet outrage. What face, ah! what face of a queen manqué! The affliction was too bitter to bear. When merely three days away from delivering the new lives on mother Earth, she might try to smile in the aftermath of the rabble, the hurricane too haphazard in shape, spreading out too much everywhere. But the struggle seemed inevitably perpetual. The cacophony, all the noises inside her head are not for me to quote; Tally would have not heeded to them herself, then and ever after. You see, a face no longer unfamiliar, hands soft and careful on hers, and eyes willing to see her – her desire then. Collating all her strength for the last time, she whispered close to the ears of her husband as his weight pressed her a little deeper on the marmoreal mosaic of the floor, spilling so much of her all around in the house – “You monster. I have two living souls in me. I am expecting; I will have them in three damn days! How dare you push, impose your grisly weight on this weight of the Holy Blessing I have been bestowed with? You treacherous creature! Who created you? My God can never have a hand at this. Never you ruffian! You won’t …What is their fault? What is the fault in all this? I merely wish you would love them Ral. Is it too much? How much is it? Tell me, I will help you out. You can count on me. I came to you leaving everything behind because I wanted to love you better, and you’re telling me that you’ve given up. Don’t. Think not of who they will be, but why you can’t love.

How come Ral, how come you can’t love? What went wrong and where? Won’t you tell me? You are pushing too much on me. So you wish to kill them right now, right here, lest you kill me foremost. It should be poison in my blood that I can yet not refuse to accept that I loved you, and that was real you know.” As interruption had been for her to engulf in every way ever since she was no more a girl, no more a woman with independent youth, but the latter for a man in his cruel captivity, she had the same taste of the meal – a ghoulish gruel she wouldn’t chunder anything out of her stomach to, all over again – there it was, merely another instance of an interruption. Bam! Bam! AND BAM! And blue, violet, and green were the shades on the floral floor on whose tile the carving bore the petals of some white Jasmine. It wasn’t the mosaic that had become so, but the petals in them – imbricate and valvate in some, each one a red cerise of a rose from a garden wherein flowers danced in a livid rhythm to a heavenly melody, as Tally’s eyes beheld underneath her own reflection on the floor that morning, and she hummed the last lullaby to one. The tears echoed the harmony, two eyes singing the song of three souls. A melody heard but by one only in a room of three and it was too loud.