Blow after blow
Daniel Zetina
She started hitting me in the middle of the room because something went wrong in the kitchen. It was a coincidence: my mother was storming out when I crossed her path. Her food was bad and often the dishes or the stove made her angry. Why didn’t she hit them? Since she didn’t have a plan, she hit me with the ladle that she was holding in her right hand. It was a reflex act. The blows fell on my head without rhyme or reason. With her left fist, she hit me on the shoulder, neck, and arm. Confused, I backed away. At some point she traded the ladle for an aluminium ruler that someone had forgotten in the TV cabinet. She was hitting me on the forearms as she pleased and where she could.
Suddenly, something thundered in the kitchen behind her. Perhaps my sister María dropped a dish (big mistake), or the pressure cooker exploded (which nobody knew how to use), or a pipe. I never discovered what happened. I only saw her reaction. She stopped beating me, turned around, and stormed back into the kitchen. On her way, she threw the ruler under the stairs.
She tore at María for long minutes, between insults and spitting she must have hit her with a frying pan, saucepan, or chopping board. She broke several ceramic cups somewhere on her body. I froze. Maria’s screams woke me up. I moved through the dining room. I didn’t dare to go into the kitchen. I didn’t want to see the beating. No one can get used to that kind of violence, it’s something unnatural.
On the dining room table, among the remains of food and unlabelled jars of spices, there was an onion knife, the largest in the house. I grabbed it with both hands. Then I automatically went to the kitchen. On the floor, my mother was hitting Maria hard with a rolling pin. She aimed the blows, especially at her breasts. Maria had already silenced her screams. She let herself be beaten again, like always. There was no help. Without tears in her eyes and with a red face, she was receiving the punishment for a mistake she had not made. Although she was pressing her arms against her body, the rolling pin reached her breasts. A deflected blow caught her mouth and her lips bloomed. Tomorrow at school they will look weirdly at her again.
I advanced towards them, without thinking. Maria didn’t seem to see me. She was absorbed. The blade of the knife neared inches from the monster. All I had to do was take a step and plunge the metal into its back. Despite my ten years and my malnutrition, I felt the courage and strength to do it. Rage gave me the additional courage to finally fulfill my most cherished fantasy.
She had to die. It had to be that way. Maria would support me in case the police apprehended us. I would tell them that a thief had broken in, that our mother had defended us, and that they killed her in front of us. Or that my father killed her, after coming home from work intoxicated. They wouldn’t mistrust two dirty, weakling children. In the worst case, I would go to jail and Maria would be saved. If I kept silent, I would win her freedom. She could also accuse me of everything, with good reason, so there would be no stains on her conscience. Anyway, I would get out soon. I had seen on the news the case of a boy who was only given three years in the correctional facility for having murdered a classmate who was bothering him. Three years would be a sufficient time to forget the face of my dead mother. Besides, I was not a murderer, but a puny child.
I was about to exact my revenge when the same panic of final minutes, the usual terror, paralysed me once more. The adrenaline in my body was not enough to complete the furtive act that fate had given me. I thought that if I killed her, Mom would beat me for the rest of my life, and that thought clouded my mind. Every time she disciplined us, I was afraid that it would never end.
I had too much experience as a guinea pig for her more refined experiments in cruelty. It was more than irrational. “Cruelty, cruelty”, I have been repeating in my mind since I had learned the term. I never could and never will be able to guess what she was taking revenge on, what she was trying to make us pay for with her loving punishments.
I retreated with the knife at the forehead. I was lifting it above my head. I returned back to the room. “It’s the end,” I thought.
“It’s the end,” I said quietly.
With trembling hands, already sweating all over my body, I lowered the weapon and reversed its edge. I poised it at my chest, at the height of the sternum. Then I took it down to the pit of my stomach. I didn’t even think to find the right place for the heart. “It’s my end.” Tears and sweat dripped onto the bruises on my arms and onto the green linoleum floor. The world went silent around me. “It’s our end.” Not even the strident noise of the avenue entered my ears. “The end”. The metal began to enter my body, just a small tip, when suddenly:
“What the hell are you doing? Give me that fucking knife, you idiot!”
I didn’t give it to her, she grabbed it from me. She started beating me again, I didn´t know with what, but she never stopped, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never , never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never , never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never , never, never, never, never, never, never, never,
Daniel Zetina (México)- Writer, editor, workshop facilitator. He has published 26 books in various genres. He has had scholarships and won prizes. His column Un escritor en problemas has been published on Fridays in La Unión de Morelos since 2019.
Literaven.com 