Read Online To Mervas by Elisabeth Rynell - Free Book Online Page B

because he can’t be left alone in this situation either.
    God wants you to see this, said something in my head.
    As a child, I believed in God even though both Mom and Dad called it superstition. I prayed to him every night before going to sleep, but no one knew except for my oldest sister.
    â€œDear God, make Daddy be good and make sure all children have food to eat. Let there be no more wars.”
    I didn’t have to say it aloud; God couldn’t hear my voice, he heard my heart. I tried to speak to him with my heart. I tried to explain this to my sister but she never quite understood.
    â€œThe heart doesn’t have a mouth that can speak,” she said.
    â€œThe heart is a mouth,” I said. “Another kind of mouth.”
    After Mom died and my sister and I moved into our grandmother’s, when I entered puberty, I killed my own faith in God. I started to despise it; I didn’t want it. In the years that followed, I was angrily antireligiousand spoke like Mom and Dad about superstition. I agreed with Marx about religion being the “opiate of the masses.”
    Now I don’t know what I believe. Except that my heart is mute, even petrified. Sometimes I wonder why there wouldn’t be a God when so many other seemingly impossible and unthinkable things exist. Life is so mysterious and I miss my heart, which has lost its strength. The heart is pure, they say. And I actually believe that, I’m almost sure it’s true.
    I’ve put on my shoes and through the doorway I see Dad, who is out of his mind with anger, attacking Mom.
    â€œBitch!” he pants, trying to keep her head still by grabbing her hair in his fist while he hits her.
    â€œYou think a legally married wife can run away from her own husband? You think you own his children? You think you can take the children away from their own father? I’ll teach you! I’ll teach you how such a wife should be treated. I’ll show you, you sly, hypocritical bitch in heat! I’ll break you in until you can neither sit nor stand!” Mom is half-prostrate, bent over on the couch, and Dad is standing over her beating her rhythmically, synchronizing the blows with his words.
    â€œMarta!” he yells suddenly. “Bring me the carpet beater!”
    â€œChildren!” he then screams. “Come out of the bedroom right now!”
    The bedroom door slowly slides open. My sister is standing there, pale and tense, with the twins close by her side.
    â€œAren’t you even going to say hello to your father when he comes to visit?” He spits out the words. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you going to say hello?”
    â€œYes,” my sister whispers. “Good evening, Dad.”
    I’m standing slightly to the side behind him with the awful carpet beater in my hand. I’m so terrified it’s as if I were standing in a highly charged electrical power field.
    â€œAnd you?” he snarls at me. “Lost your tongue?”
    I have lost it. I try to speak, but no sound comes from my lips; my tongue is like a piece of bark in my mouth.
    â€œYou naughty child!” he screams, and tears the carpet beater from me. He gives me a few blows on the legs with the handle.
    I gasp from the pain and swallow several times.
    â€œGood evening,” I blurt out.
    I can’t say “Dad.” It’s impossible.
    But this evening is apparently about Mom. She, not the children, is the one who will be disciplined.
    â€œSit down, children,” he says, in an unexpectedly friendly voice. “You see, I want you to know what a family father must do to a woman who has run away, and who also refuses to bring children into this world. Sit down!”
    We sit down on the floor, as far away as we can, and now we see how Dad with his free right hand gives Mom a few more slaps in the face while his left hand gets a better grip on her hair. Mom whimpers, it’s a drawn-out sound; she’s