115 Mother (2/2)

”THEN WHAT!?” I shouted. ”Will you burn their faces? Will you cut their arms? Will you stick their legs together? WHAT!?”

”They will be put under mother's protection.” she said.

While we were talking, the woman was not interrupting us. I was wondering if she was 'gone', or was merely giving me some time to understand everything.

”Why do you call her mother?” I asked Melis.

”She is my mother.” she said.

”She... was your mother...” I said. ”I see...”

”Is.” Melis said. ”She IS my mother.”

”Oh...”

”Well, she may not be my biological mother, but she was the woman who was meant to be my mother.” she continued.

”I'm... not sure I understand.” I said.

”My... My biological mother... She was terrible.” Melis sat down, putting her back against the wall, and kept talking. ”She never cared about me. When I was little, she would often give me housework to do. Cleaning the floors, dishes, making the beds... But because I was too young, I could never do anything nearly as good as her; and... And she would use these as an excuse to yell at me, and sometimes... she would beat me.”

She started crying. She was trying to hide it, but I could see the tears flowing down her face.

”Please tell more.” I said.

”And my father... I don't know which one was worse. He would outright ignore what my mother was doing to me. He was constantly drunk. He would completely ignore me unless I was standing in his way or playing with his stuff.”

”I had no idea-”

”But that's not it.” she said. ”Same things have happened to my little sister as well. I tried to protect her, but I was incapable of doing so.”

”How did you meet your... 'Mother'?” I asked.

”One winter night, I woke up in the middle of the night. I went to my little sister and woke her up too. We've had that moment planned for weeks.”

”Let me guess... you ran away from your house?”

”Yes. At least this was what I had in mind... Anyway, the apartment's door was locked, so we had to think of something else. We went to the kitchen, and to the balcony. Our apartment was high enough for an uncontrolled fall to be fatal. So, we wanted to use an old curtain to drop down slowly to the ground.”

”How did it go?”

”I had made sure that the fabric was strong enough to carry both of our weight, so everything was ready. We just had to tie the top part of the curtain to something sturdy, so it wouldn't come out. I chose to tie it to a metal gas pipe at the bottom of the heater in the kitchen. I couldn't trust the plastic water pipes.”

”And you went down?”

”Everything was fine. I was going down. But when I was about to drop down, the lights of the kitchen turned on. My so-called mother and father had woken up.”

”What did they do?”

”My sister panicked and jumped down from the balcony, holding the curtain. The curtain, or rather, the thin metal pipe couldn't carry both of us at the same time. We both fell down, along with the curtain. Luckily, I was already low enough to survive the fall with minor injuries.”

”Your sister?”

”...she...” Melis gulped. ”She wasn't that lucky.”

I wanted to say lots of things, but I couldn't. I didn't want her to recall her emotions. So, I simply wanted to continue the story. ”What happened afterwards?”

”A small explosion started a fire in the kitchen. Probably something ignited the leaking gas. My mother and father burned alive.”

There was unbelievable tragedy in this girl's short life.

”The fire woke the whole neighborhood up. My mother found me when I was running away from the apartment. She took me to a small hospital nearby, then to her own home. I have been living there since...”