The Bastard Child

I winced as her long slender fingers struck my face, tears streamed down my face and my legs wobbled under the weight of my sorrows.

"Can't you do anything right, you good for nothing piece of shit" she bellowed.

My sweaty hands shook and a shiver ran through my spine even at that hot summer afternoon. Her words struck me as lightening and my sobs became the only noise in the hallway apart from her distinct shouts.

From the corner of my eyes I could make out the amused expression on her son's faces. Jagged pieces of the broken porcelain vase still littered the pearl white marble floor.

"No food for you tonight, you bastard and I don't want to see your face. Take her to the attic."

With these words I was ushered into a small room located adjacent to the terrace, reeking of decay and the dwelling for filthy rats.

I curled into a ball in a corner overlooked by the window through which light penetrated from the full moon, my sole companion for the night. Sleep was sporadic and fitful, my eyes fluttered open from the nightmares more than once.

Dreams of having my skin scraped of by my mistress or again getting boiling water poured over my hands interrupted my sleep.

Sometimes my mother visited me and part of me cherished seeing her, she never spoke but her emerald almond shaped eyes always looked at me, her arms always held me even when the world broke out in the cries of bastard child. When the dream ended her absence left a throbbing ache in my chest.

Tonight in my dream, I was waiting for my father on the doorstep, just before the outbreak of dawn and the minutes turned into hours but he never came and the sun never rose.

I missed her and my father who came, on the third of every second month and with him tagged along his children, the lawful ones. I begged to him to take me back home and then his new family spoke to me of the squalor they are living in, of the lack of space in their homes for me.