My father treated my mother like a servant—worse than one. Even while she was pregnant, he showed her no mercy. He insulted her daily, mocked her endlessly, and struck her without reason. To him, she was worthless because she was poor, because she had no parents, because she had nowhere else to go.
I grew up watching my mother cry in silence whenever his voice thundered through the house. We were barely fed. He often said he was ashamed of us, ashamed to have a family like ours.
Episode 001
“Listen carefully, you ugly woman,” my father sneered one evening. “You are not allowed to eat at my expensive table. You eat on the floor with your children. And don’t forget—wash my clothes, mop the entire house. I want everything spotless.”
My mother obeyed because she had no choice. Disobedience meant pain.
She was terrified of him.
One dark, freezing night, my father stormed into her bedroom in a rage. He grabbed her hair and screamed inches from her face.
“You cursed witch!”
Before she could speak, his hand struck her cheek.
“How dare you burn my expensive shirt?”
“I—it was a mistake…” my mother sobbed, clutching her burning face. “I was cooking for the children. I forgot to remove the iron from your clothes.”
“How dare you forget?” he roared, tightening his hands around her neck.
“P-please… let go…” she pleaded.
He shoved her violently against the wall. She narrowly missed cracking her head open, but her arm slammed hard instead, splitting the skin. Blood began to flow.
“Mama…” I cried when I saw her bleeding. I ran to her, clinging to her shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.
Each day, my father grew more violent.
My mother was pregnant. She was starving. She hadn’t eaten all day. My father barely brought food home anymore. He constantly called her a witch, a curse, an ugly woman.
She endured it all because she had nothing—no family, no friends, no money, nowhere to go.
My father was all she had.
Things spiraled out of control.
One afternoon, he called her downstairs. Struggling under the weight of her pregnancy, she finally reached him—only for him to pour a cup of scalding hot coffee onto her.
She screamed as the liquid burned her skin.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “How dare you serve me such tasteless coffee?”
Weak and exhausted, my mother collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down her face. The pain was unbearable.
My baby brother cried from his room, hungry and alone, calling for her.
But she couldn’t move. She sat on the floor, shaking, her body overwhelmed with pain.
Episode 002
My mother fell terribly ill. She coughed nonstop and burned with fever. She hadn’t eaten in five days. She hadn’t taken any medicine.
My father didn’t care. Even during her pregnancy, his cruelty only deepened. Whether she lived or died meant nothing to him anymore.
She feared for her unborn child.
One cold morning, as she mopped the living room floor, the bucket accidentally splashed water onto my father.
In a burst of fury, he stood and slapped her with brutal force.
For illustration purposes only
“Are you blind?” he shouted. “Can’t you see what you’ve done? You splashed water on my expensive suit—something a filthy, poor woman like you could never afford!”
“I… I’m sorry…” she whispered.
Before she could finish, he grabbed her hair and slammed her onto the floor.
She fell hard, crying out in agony. Dust covered her face, her hair spread across the cold ground.
“This is what you deserve!” he snarled, kicking her violently in the waist with his boot.
“Please… stop… you’re hurting me…” she screamed, sobbing uncontrollably.
When he finished, he spat on her.
“You won’t eat any food in this house for ruining my suit,” he said coldly.
As he turned to leave, my mother weakly reached for him.
“Please… help me up… I can’t stand…”
Her voice was barely audible.
“Don’t you dare speak to me,” he hissed. “I lost my suit because of you—and you expect help?”
He kicked her one last time and walked away.
My mother struggled to sit up—and then she froze.
Blood was running down her legs.
“No… no… this can’t be happening…” she cried.
“Help me!” she screamed.
Her voice echoed through the house.
When I heard it, panic seized me. I ran to her room and saw her clutching her stomach, bleeding, trembling.
“Mama…” I cried.
“I need help…” she gasped, struggling to breathe.
I screamed for my father—but he refused to come.
I stood there, helpless, watching my mother bleed… unable to do anything but cry.
Episode 003
My throat burned from screaming, but my father still didn’t come.
The house was quiet except for my mother’s broken breaths and my baby brother’s cries upstairs—thin, hungry cries that sounded like they were coming from a place even smaller than his room.
“Mama… please,” I sobbed, pressing my little hands against her shaking shoulders. “Don’t close your eyes.”
Her lips were pale. Her fingers—usually so quick and gentle when she braided my hair—were cold and trembling as they reached for me.
“Listen to me,” she whispered, fighting the panic in her voice. “Go… go to the neighbor. Knock hard. Don’t stop.”
I didn’t even put on shoes.
I ran into the cold night, my feet slapping the ground, tears blurring the world into one dark smear. The streetlights looked like they were shaking too. I knocked on the closest door until my knuckles felt like fire.
A woman opened it—Mrs. Harlan, the neighbor who always looked away when my father yelled.
But this time… she didn’t look away.
When she saw my face—wet with tears, shaking so badly I could barely speak—her expression changed.
“She’s bleeding,” I choked out. “My mama… she’s on the floor… he won’t help.”
Mrs. Harlan didn’t ask questions. She grabbed her phone and a thick coat, then pulled me close with one arm as she hurried across the street.
Inside our house, the air felt colder than outside.
My mother lay curled on the floor, her eyes glassy with fear. Mrs. Harlan knelt beside her and spoke in a firm voice that made the whole room feel different—like someone had finally remembered my mother was a human being.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Help is coming.”
I watched her call an ambulance. Then she called again—another number, her voice low and urgent. I didn’t know who she was calling, but I heard two words that made my heart pound:
“Domestic violence.”
Upstairs, my baby brother cried louder.
I ran to him, scooped him into my arms, and rocked him the way my mother did—even though my arms were small and weak and I felt like I was falling apart.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, not because it was true, but because I needed someone to hear it. “It’s okay. Mama will be okay.”
When the ambulance arrived, the flashing lights painted our walls red and blue like a warning the house could no longer ignore.
The paramedics lifted my mother onto a stretcher. Her eyes found mine.
And even through all that pain, she tried to smile—like she didn’t want the last thing I remembered to be her suffering.
“Be brave,” she mouthed.
My father finally came downstairs.
He looked irritated—like we were all inconveniencing him.
“What is all this noise?” he snapped.
One of the paramedics stared at him for a long moment, then turned away without answering. Another asked my mother gently, “Did he do this?”
My mother’s eyes flicked to my father, then to me.
I knew she was afraid.
But I also saw something else.
A tiny spark.
My mother swallowed hard, and with a voice so small it almost vanished, she said:
“Yes.”
That single word hit the room like thunder.
My father’s face twisted. “She’s lying. She’s dramatic. She’s a curse—”
“Sir,” a calm voice interrupted.
A police officer had walked in behind the paramedics.
“I need you to step outside.”
My father laughed like the world was a joke only he understood. “For what?”
“For her,” the officer said, nodding at my mother. “And for those children.”
My father’s smile dropped.
For the first time in my life, he looked… unsure.
They took him outside while the ambulance doors closed. As the vehicle pulled away, I stood in the driveway holding my baby brother, watching our house shrink behind us.
I thought I would feel terrified.
But what I felt was something new.
Like air was finally reaching my lungs.
Episode 004
The hospital was bright—too bright, like it was trying to erase the darkness we came from.
Doctors moved quickly. Nurses spoke softly to my mother, like they were afraid a loud voice might break her. One nurse tucked a warm blanket around my baby brother and handed him a small carton of milk.
He drank it like it was the first safe thing he’d ever held.
A social worker came and sat beside me.
Her name was Ms. Reyes. She had kind eyes that didn’t pity me—just saw me.
“You did the right thing,” she said.
I didn’t know what to do with those words. No one had ever told me that before. In our house, “right” was whatever kept my father from getting angry.
But Ms. Reyes kept speaking, slow and steady, like she was building a bridge out of her voice.
“We’re going to help your mom,” she promised. “And we’re going to keep you safe.”
That night, my mother lost her baby.
I won’t ever forget the sound she made when the doctor told her.
It wasn’t just crying.
It was like someone had finally stepped on all the love she’d been carrying—love she never even got to hold.
I crawled onto the bed beside her and took her hand. Her fingers gripped mine so tightly it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not even knowing what I was apologizing for—being alive, maybe… when my little sibling wasn’t.
My mother turned her face toward me. Her eyes were swollen, her voice barely there.
“You saved me,” she said.
I shook my head hard. “I didn’t—”
“Yes,” she repeated, firmer now. “You did. You were the one who didn’t give up.”
And then she began to cry again, but this time her tears weren’t only pain.
They were release.
Because for the first time… she didn’t have to pretend she was fine.
Weeks passed.
We didn’t go back to that house.
We went to a small shelter with warm beds and people who spoke gently. There was food that didn’t come with insults. There was quiet that didn’t feel like fear.
My mother still woke up shaking some nights.
She still flinched when someone raised their voice.
But little by little, she started to look like herself again—like the woman my father tried to bury under chores and bruises and shame.
One afternoon, my mother sat at the edge of the bed and called me over.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
I climbed beside her, bracing myself like I always did before bad news.
But her voice was soft.
“I thought I had no one,” she said. “Because I’m an orphan. Because I’m poor. Because he told me I was nothing.”
She paused, then lifted my chin so I had to meet her eyes.
“But I was wrong.”
She touched my chest gently, right over my heart.
“I have you. I have your brother. And I have myself.”
Her eyes filled with tears again, but she smiled through them.
“And that is enough to start over.”
Epilogue
A year later, my mother stood in front of a small apartment window, sunlight warming her face. She wore a simple dress, her hair neatly tied back—not because someone ordered her to look presentable, but because she wanted to.
My baby brother toddled across the floor with a piece of bread in his hand, laughing.
Laughing.
A sound I used to think didn’t belong in our home.
My mother worked at a bakery now—nothing fancy, but honest. The owner was kind. She came home tired, but she came home peaceful.
One night, while she tucked me into bed, I asked her a question that had been sitting heavy in my chest for months.
“Mama… are we still ashamed?”
She froze—just for a second—then pulled me into her arms so tightly I felt her heartbeat against my cheek.
“No,” she whispered. “Never.”
She kissed my forehead the way she used to before fear stole her energy.
“He wanted us to believe we were small,” she said. “But we were never small. We were just trapped.”
She leaned back to look at me.
“And you,” she added, voice trembling with pride, “you opened the door.”
I closed my eyes, and for the first time in my life, I fell asleep without listening for footsteps, without preparing to run, without wondering what I’d done wrong.
Because the truth was simple, and it finally belonged to us:
We didn’t escape because someone saved us.
We escaped because love—quiet, stubborn love—refused to die.
And in the end… that love was stronger than him.