“Hay naku, anak. Why did you reject that boy? I thought you liked him!”
My mother swats me with her hand towel, clicking her tongue like a chicken hawk, stirring the food on the pan with her other hand.
I stand there with balled fists, my tongue trembling. My toes were clenched in my worn sneakers, too.
She doesn’t understand me. She just thinks Julian was some kind of suitor, a guy courting me. It didn’t even occur to her that what he was doing was borderline obsessive.
The memory of him pinning me to the wall flashes across my mind and my nails dig into my palms some more, into the same indents I made a few days ago, where I gripped my breath in my palm as he leaned in close...
She gives an exasperated sigh, “He bought you flowers for Balentine’s, he walks you home from school, he takes you to go shopping‒" She clangs the side of the pan with each deed listed, "I don’t understand why you reject him?! I don’t understand why you young people are picky. I settled for your father and look where that got me!”
I flinch, anticipating the creak of the old leather reclining chair, signifying that he was awake and about to bite his wife’s lips for her, but I couldn’t hear anything but the muted TV static running across the old screen in the living room.
My eyes begin to water as I struggle to hold in everything. There's static in my head now as my mother empties a can of liver into the food concoction, opening another can of tongue lashings on me. I stood there with my head bowed, searching for the answer on the tiled floor, tracing the winding path of my tangled shoelaces. I'm still in my uniform, still have shoes on my feet; I don't want to sneak upstairs anymore, it's hard to hide the red splashed across my face like an open wound. In a split second, the blood rushes to my head, reviving my tongue as I say-
“NAY. I might be gay.”
“Putang ina- GAY?!”
She spun fast, the spatula caked with burning food whipping across my face. My left cheek was padded by a curtain of hair, but still I yelp with shock and pain as the food sizzles on my cheek, accentuating the sting.
My arms shot up, forming a protective X in case there was more, but my mother's facing the stove again, spoiling the food rotten with a string of curses I couldn’t understand.
“Go to your room!” She was done talking to me, but I wasn't.
Under my breath I mutter, "You're the ina here so fuck you, too."
I take off running for the stairs as my mother roars after me, my skirt twisting around my wobbling legs. With the thumps of my heart on the wooden boards, I could hear the creak of a chair behind me.