Part One
The loud talking seemed to spear through the small house, built with improvised materials that was left from the latest constructions. The lamp was failing, not because of its lifespan, but because the cables weren’t connected as they should.
The computer, on the other hand, was perfectly built. All the wires were in its place, the internet cables were shinning clean. The screen was constantly wiped with special products and the headphone were more expensive than my baby’s crib.
I felt weak, tired, dirty and stinky. The cesarean wasn’t hurting after four months, but I still was taking an uncountable amount of medicines. The most important ones were iron and vitamins to get me back on my feet after a nearly fatal birth.
My breasts were leaking milk, but my baby kept refusing them. She was burning up and I didn’t have any money to go to the drug store, so I had to go out of the bedroom with my screaming baby and interrupt my husband’s online game.
“Ella needs some Tylenol.” I said and since he didn’t take the headphones off, I insisted, a bit louder. It was the screaming that made him pull them down. “She has a fever.”
“I can go after the game.”
“Can’t you stop the game?”
“It’s a championship.”
He put the headphones on again and turned his full attention to the game. He laughed and celebrated each enemy he took down with his online friends in a clear contrast of my will to cry from worry and exhaustion.
Four hours later, he opened the bedroom’s door with the medicine. My baby was still screaming, but I had managed to feed her a little. He waited until I made sure she had swallowed every drop of the antipyretic and took her from me, making baby noises that made her giggle.
“You don’t want your mommy, right? You want daddy. That’s my little girl.”
I took the moment to hurry to the bathroom. A five minutes shower that didn’t even steam up the mirror.
The unavoidable reflection stared back at me as I brushed my teeth. I was so thin I would see my bones. My hair was falling from breastfeeding and from the ordeal I went through during birth. The dark circles under my eyes made me look like a fraction of who I once was. Now I was merely a ghost, hanging on to a life that didn’t belong to me anymore.
“Hey, come out already. The new round is starting.”
I opened the door and got my baby back. I found my wallet open at the kitchen table next to my bottle of vitamins.
He had used the money I had saved to put gas to buy the medicine and a couple of six packs.
I said nothing, but I returned to the bedroom and closed the door.
It couldn’t go on like that.
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