“Is your daughter screaming again?!” spat the woman who called herself a grandmother.
“Why is your daughter screaming again?!” hissed my mother-in-law with such disdain, as if I’d dragged in a stranger’s child rather than her own grandchild.
“She’s ill—she has a fever,” I tried to explain, my voice tight with exhaustion.
“I don’t care! Make her stop! My head’s pounding!” she snapped, not even glancing toward the nursery where my little girl lay whimpering on rumpled sheets, her tiny body burning.
I rushed through the flat like a trapped thing. My daughter groaned, aching all over, while I hunted for fever medicine, checked her bottle, drew the curtains to shield her from the glare. Then I switched on the nightlight projector—the faint stars on the ceiling soothed her, if only for a moment. A breath of quiet. Just long enough for me to dart to the kitchen, stirring porridge, brewing tea, checking nappies—all at once. Always alone.
And my mother-in-law? She sprawled in her armchair like royalty in her snakeskin-print dress, moaning about her “splitting headache,” demanding silence, accusing me of failing to “shut that child up.”
“Listen here,” she sneered as I passed, “you’ll be out of this house soon. You and your snivelling brat!” My son had a hundred better women before you! He didn’t marry for this—to live in a madhouse! He’ll tire of you, mark my words!”
And you know what? Damn her. Just damn her. But I didn’t say it aloud. I clenched my teeth and hurried back to my daughter, who was crying again—from the fever, the pain, from having no one to hold her but me. I tucked the blanket around her, kissed her hot forehead, held her close.
Then back to the kitchen. Through another volley of venom:
“Good mothers don’t raise screeching children!”
“That brat’s just spoiled!”
“Women like you are a disgrace!”
“My son needs a proper wife, not this…”
And where was my husband? Always busy. Always blind to the poison his mother dripped into every day. “Ignore her,” he’d say. “She’s just getting on.” Never mind that my hands shook with exhaustion, that the baby was ill, that I faced this torment alone.
I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I don’t know how long I can endure this house where my daughter and I are despised. But I do know this—no one will humiliate her again. I’ll leave if I must. I’ll fight. I’m not just a wife or a daughter-in-law anymore. I’m a mother. And that makes me stronger than they know.
