When Mom Goes to War

Trigger Warning: domestic abuse

The boy woke to loud voices downstairs. He looked out his window to see that it was still night, he should be asleep. But the voices grew louder, and he recognized them as his mother and father. He shrugged off the covers and padded silently to the top of the stairs, looking down upon the argument. But as he reached up to rub the sleep from his eyes, he heard the loud crash of the door, followed by the quiet sobs of his mother. He stayed there for a minute, watching her cry to herself. He wanted to go down and hold her, make her tears go away, but he knew she would send him back to bed.

The boy stood across from his father as he sifted through a stack of papers, the room shrouded in silence. What the papers were for, he did not know, there were too many for him to find anything out. Beside him, his sister hovered over the chair protectively, waiting for their father’s wrath to show itself. He coughed, lifting his arm to his mouth suddenly, and his sister flinched. They had been burnt by his flame before, and she would not let it happen again.

The boy waited patiently, watching the voices echo off the walls. A loud pounding shred through the arguments, and his father collapsed into his chair in exasperation. A woman, older in age, much older than him, began to talk. Her mouth moved, but the boy heard nothing. His mind was filled with the silent screams of his mother as she tried to contain her emotions, like a volcano holding in it’s fire. He shifted his gaze from the brown, chipping walls, to his mother. She looked tired, both of mind and body. Her eyes sat deep in their sockets, and her hair fell in front of her eyes chaotically. She was a shell of the woman she used to be. But her purpose, it never faltered. She looked towards him and his sister and smiled, mouthing words of love and assurance.

The boy now sat comfortably in the wooden chair, oblivious to the world around him. And his mother observed this happily, as she, with a renewed determination, went to war for him.