I don't understand by Enma (read aloud books TXT) 📖

I don’t understand

I stared at the ground. What is this stuff? It was smeared all over my legs. I was utterly terrified when sunlight shone on it sickly to reveal the intense red colouration. It was blood. And the worst part is—it’s mine. I saw him walking away with the ‘weapon’ he had used to inflict the wounds. His hands now loosening its grip on the wooden ruler that he had beat me with. (It looked so harmless when I was drawing margins with it) I sat on the ground in the pool of blood. I don’t know what it was I did that made him so mad. It’s hard to believe there was so much blood a tiny body could bleed. I feel...numb.
I can’t seem to remember how long I’ve been sitting on the cold white tiles now tainted with red until I passed out. Then, I had dreams of it happening over and over again. The pictures that were on constant play in my head were more frightening than when he was hurting me. I felt afraid.
In my heart, I knew that there would be no end to this. There would never be an end.
I see mom crying again. I feel like crying too. But I look so ugly when I do, so I just smiled instead. The smile on my face felt almost permanent. I had always smiled for no good reason—maybe it’s a way of comforting myself and the others from all that pain. I have read that laughter was a natural pain-killer—is it the same for smiling?
I can’t say that I am a strong person, but I have learned to endure my sufferings in silence. That was what mom taught me anyway.
So I was caught by surprise, when mom packed our stuff and left to stay at a motel. We rented a room and stayed for a week. During this time, I was late to school practically every day. When the teacher asked, I said that it was family trouble. The teacher would give me a sympathetic look, full of empathy. I didn’t understand why that was though. I was just a kid. In my eyes, at the time, whatever dad was doing was right. I would never disobey him no matter what—not when he beat me with his belt, burnt me with cigarettes, lock me out of the house. But I did felt sorry for mom when she told me that daddy had found someone else.
All those years, I remembered how quiet my mom has been with dad’s promiscuous behaviour, but I guess enough was enough. She kept telling me how he has been ‘taboo-ed’ into falling for that woman—whoever she was. I didn’t feel any sorrow when mom said she was leaving him or when her family arrived dragging me away from what I thought of as home.
All the neighbours watch as what they thought of as a decent man snapped, throwing the furniture and hurling curses at his wife.
Two weeks later, the papers were signed and that was the last time I saw of him. I felt a little regret—I think I might have wanted him to stay with us as a family. One year later, we heard that he got in trouble with some bad people and well...he died.
I feel regret now too, but only because I wished it had happened earlier.

Publication Date: 01-25-2010

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