“Is your daughter screaming again?!”—and that came from a woman who calls herself a grandmother.
“Why is your daughter screaming like that?!” my mother-in-law spat at me with such disdain, like I’d dragged some stranger’s kid into the house instead of her own granddaughter.
“She’s ill, she’s got a fever,” I tried to explain, my voice tight from exhaustion and frayed nerves.
“I don’t care! Make her stop! My head’s pounding!” she snapped, not even glancing toward the nursery, where my little girl was lying on crumpled sheets, whimpering hoarsely from the heat of her fever.
I was darting around the flat like a trapped animal. The baby was moaning, her tiny body aching—I was frantically searching for Calpol, checking the bottle, closing the curtains so the sun wouldn’t hurt her eyes… Then I switched on the star projector—the only thing that soothed her even a little. She’d stare at the glowing constellations on the ceiling and, just for a moment, stop crying. And in that tiny window of peace, I’d sprint to the kitchen—making porridge, steeping chamomile tea, checking her nappy. All at once. All alone.
And my mother-in-law? She was sprawled in her armchair like royalty in her snakeskin-print dress, groaning about her “splitting headache,” demanding silence, and accusing me of “not being able to shut my kid up.”
“Listen here,” she hissed as I rushed past again, “you’ll be out of this house soon enough. You and your snivelling brat. My son could’ve had girls ten times better. He didn’t marry you to live in a madhouse! He’ll tire of this ‘family’ nonsense fast, mark my words.”
And y’know what? Sod off. Just sod right off. But I didn’t say it out loud. I clenched my jaw and ran back to the nursery because my baby was crying again—burning up, in pain, with no one to hold her but me. I tucked the blanket around her, kissed her hot forehead, pulled her close.
Then back to the kitchen. And again, through her venom:
“Good mums don’t raise screechers!”
“That child’s just spoiled rotten!”
“Women like you are a disgrace!”
“My son needs a proper wife, not this…”
And where was my husband? Always busy. Always blind to how his mother poisons every day. “Ignore her,” he says, “she’s just getting on.” But my exhaustion, my shaking hands, our sick child, this nightmare I face alone—none of it seems to matter.
I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I don’t know how much longer I can last in this house where my daughter and I aren’t wanted. But I do know this—no one will belittle my little girl again. I’ll walk away if I have to. I’ll fight. I’m not just a wife or a daughter-in-law anymore. I’m a mum. And that means I’m stronger than any of them reckon.
