breathe...

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After years of suffocation... I finally took a clear breath... I felt free
There was nothing tying me down anymore.. nothing that made my eyes drop instead of meeting those in the mirror..
The bruises would fade in a while.. the scars would heal.. and HE would never again threaten me..
I looked once again at his face.. Frozen in the shock of my response to his threats..
“You never thought I would ever develop the backbone to fight back did you?” I threw the question at him as I straightened my clothes... my blouse was torn... my head probably missing a few strands of hair that were still clutched in his hands… my legs were slightly unsteady as I shuffled to the trunk in the corner.. But I felt no pain.. I could finally breathe…

It was a heady moment.. an endless moment.. when I had thought I was marrying the most wonderful man in the world.. who would love me and care for me and we’ll live a happy life forever.. we would have to work hard I knew.. life as teenage runaways had always been hard.. as a newly married couple we would have to work even harder..

The stars were soon replaced by despair in mine… he lost his job in the dhaba where he worked.. My wages as a maid sustained us.. he started drinking to drown his disappointment..
and then I got pregnant..
my work had to stop soon.. I wasn’t going to be able to work for more than two more months before I got too far to work in my pregnant state.. he didn’t get another job.. as the day of delivery drew closer, He began to resent the baby growing inside me. The baby that stopped me from going to work, from doing a lot of the housework.. from sleeping with him..
And things began to go downhill from there.. till a day that he said it out loud.. he hated that baby for how it had changed our life.. I screamed at him in loathing.. and something snapped in him… that was the first time he hit me..
And then he never stopped..
Soon I began to look forward to the days that he would come home too drunk to actually hurt me before falling asleep.. I couldn’t run.. not with the baby so close to coming to this world..

The day my daughter was born was the day I lost my humanity… he took my newborn daughter out of my sleeping hands.. and sold her to someone who wanted a child…
when I woke up.. my womb and my life were empty… I asked for my baby.. begged for her.. but he only laughed at me..
The next day he told me that he was not going to support me any longer.. I was too weak to say anything … he told me I had to do what he said if I ever wanted to see my daughter again… and he took me to the brothel nearby and left me there…

I was not allowed to eat till I had earned my first meal…. The price was the satisfaction of the brothel owner.. he ‘sampled’ every woman who was taken to work there.. I resisted for as long as I could... he finally got his wish when I got too weak to resist.. I lay there semi conscious.. as the owner sated his lust.. I got a bowl of rice and a roti as reward for surviving.. my husband got three hundred rupees.. I had been found acceptable..

My tears or my screams never moved him.. he just dragged me to that tiny room in the late afternoon when the work in the ‘house’ started… I wasn’t given food if a client complained.. the beatings and insults were my only sustenance…

I began to doubt my humanity.. till the day I found out where my daughter was.. he HAD sold her… not to a couple who wanted a child.. but to a runner of beggars who needed another prop.. my baby had finally died at age 5.. when the sahib decided that she needed to be burnt in places to be a more acceptable beggar.. her heart had stopped with the pain the acid brought on…

And my ‘husband’ had just told me that because he thought I was to blame for her weakness… he had kicked me awake to tell me that... taken his belt to beat me because I hadn’t produced a daughter strong enough to survive as a beggar…

I finally lost my desire to live then.. my daughter was no more.. she had been the reason that I had survived this long.. that one day I would see her again and have the life I wanted.. when I would remove him from the clutches of the alcohol that had clouded his senses.. and we would have a family again..

I lost my tenuous hold on my humanity and hope..

I wanted to die.. but he would continue living as he had..

I couldn’t let that happen…

Before I stopped hurting forever.. I had to show him what pain was..

I rallied the last of my breaths.. and threw my plate at his head… it glanced off his throat.. stopped him for a second as he choked.. then he lunged forward and grabbed my hair… pushed me to the floor.. but I still had some strength.. I kicked him in the stomach.. like he had hundreds of times.. showing him just how that felt. Watched him double up in pain like I had so many times.. and I ran to the door.. he caught me and threw me against the dressing table.. the glass shattered behind me.. a shard landed near my hand.. my fingers curled almost unthinkingly around it.. and before I knew it.. the glass was through his heart…

I watched his knees buckle.. watched him fall and twitch and finally be still.. the shock and pain still on his face..

And took my first free breath in years…