The Other Woman

Noorulain Noor The Other Woman

First, I heard my mother crying in the bathroom.

Like a survivor of any disaster, I recall that it was a perfectly ordinary July night, starry and humid, dogs barked, cicadas sang, the neighborhood watchman sent a screeching whistle-call as he circled the block on his bicycle. I stood on the warm epoxy floor and looked into the slat of light between the door and its splintered frame, while the painted window glass of that room diffused the moonbeams, swathed all objects and my skin in a curious deathly blue.

She wept like she lived— fiercely, bountifully. Maybe there was too little air for both of us— she drank it in large liquid gulps, wailed through thinned white lips, contracted mouth, placed her hand on her heart, flat palm, heaving chest, pressing, pressing, to no avail, no comfort to be had.

How long I must have labored with my breath, harboring it for ages, and then exhaling a storm, wishful and fearful of being discovered.

Maybe we are both still there, my mother disintegrating in the bathroom of her married home, and I, an accidental spectator of her grief.