Shadows and Hunger
The world was cold.
I did not have words for it yet, but I felt it in my tiny bones. The air pressed against my skin, damp and heavy, and my body shivered against it. Hunger was a hollow ache, an emptiness that never went away.
My mother held me close, wrapping me in the only piece of cloth she owned, shielding me from the cold. But even her warmth was not enough to chase away the hunger. Some nights, there was nothing—no milk, no comfort, only the sharp cries that tore from my throat until exhaustion silenced them. My mother would whisper soft words I did not yet understand, her arms tightening around me as if she could will the pain away.
The days blurred together. My world was the rise and fall of her chest, the rhythm of her heart beneath my ear. Sometimes, she carried me on her back, my tiny head resting against the curve of her shoulder as she walked. I did not know where we were going, only that we never stayed in one place for long.
I did not remember faces, only voices.
> "She still carries that child around? Like a stray dog dragging its pup."
"That baby is doomed."
"No one should have to live like that."
And the worst of them all—words I did not understand then, but would one day come to know too well:
"That child should not have been born."
I was too young to know shame, but I could feel it. I could feel it in the way my mother's body tensed when we passed through the village, in the way her grip on me tightened when the whispers grew louder.
She walked for hours, her footsteps unsteady, the air thick and heavy around us. I did not understand what she was searching for, only that she never stopped moving.
One evening, I was tied to her back, my tiny hands curled into the rough fabric of her wrapper. The sun was sinking, casting long shadows across the dirt paths. The air was thick with strong, unfamiliar scents—something warm, something sharp, something rich. I did not know what they were, only that they made the ache in my belly worse.
She walked to the back of the marketplace. I could not see much, my body pressed against hers, my head lolling weakly against her shoulder. But I felt the shift in her body as she crouched down, her hands moving through something rough and crinkling.
Then came the laughter.
Sharp, sudden, cutting through the air like a blade.
> "The mad woman!" a child's voice rang out, high with amusement.
"She eats from the dirt like a dog!" another one said, and more laughter followed.
I did not know what they meant, but I felt the way my mother's body stilled for a brief moment. I felt the way her breath hitched in her throat before she let it out in a quiet sigh.
She did not speak.
She did not lift her head.
She only picked up something, brushed it off against the torn fabric of her wrapper, and cradled me closer.
> "Eat," she whispered, though there was nothing I could take but the milk she no longer had.
The thing stayed in her trembling hand.
I did not cry, though I wanted to. The hunger inside me had turned into something deeper, something colder, something I did not yet understand.
That night, she held me tighter than ever before, as if she could keep the world from touching me.
She rocked me gently on the hard, unforgiving floor of our hut, humming a lullaby that cracked at the edges, breaking in places where words should have been. I closed my tiny fingers around a piece of her wrapper, clinging to the only thing I knew, the only warmth I had ever had.
And as sleep pulled at me, as the cold pressed in from all sides, one truth settled into the small, fragile parts of me.
No matter how much I wish
ed it away—
this was my life.
I was the mad woman's daughter.