CH 15

My mom decided to not let me go outside. Since she couldn’t know who was harassing her child, she decided to keep me where she could watch me. My room was the most dangerous place at the time, but my mom didn’t know that. Naturally, my scars never went away. As my injuries increased one by one, my mom got upset and yelled at me.

Eventually, I decided to keep it to myself, even if it hurt. It didn’t matter whether I cried or clung to my mom for help; nothing changed. I only wished that my mom would feel better.

I pretended not to feel anything when those things bit and pinched me. When it hurt so much that I thought I would let out a noise, I covered my mouth with my arm. I thought that those things would back off eventually if I stopped reacting.

But unlike what I anticipated, those things turned their eyes to my mom. They made my mom trip and fall, bump into furniture, and frequently cut herself while cooking. No longer than 10 days had passed, and my mom’s body was covered with bruises and injuries.

One time, she was almost hit by a car. My mom and I were waiting for the pedestrian light to change, but my mom suddenly swatted my hand away and ran into the middle of traffic. The four-lane road instantly became chaos because of my mom’s mad dash. A few cars braked suddenly, and there was one driver who quickly turned their handle but ended up crashing into a streetlight.

My mom couldn’t remember that incident. She was taken aback even while she was called by the police since she had no idea what had happened. Only I knew what really happened that time.

The back of my mom’s neck had a black bruise while she was being interrogated by the police. While my mom was waiting at the crossing, someone knocked her unconscious, and then, another person grabbed her head and sprinted to the middle of the road. I was so shocked that I grabbed my mom’s hand, but the force that pulled her was so strong that I couldn’t stop it.

I sat next to my mom and tears rolled down my cheek. One of the officers must have felt sympathy for me because they gave me a drink from the vending machine, but I couldn’t drink a sip of it. I cried in the corner of the police station until the cold can became warm. I felt like I put my mom in danger because of my thoughtless stubbornness.

My mom apologized for scaring me and bought me three of my favorite ice creams. My tears came out again.

I started to sing that night.

Since then, most of my nights have been sleepless. Even after being tucked in with my mom’s good-night kiss, my humming continued. After seeing me nodding off in the day looking sick as a dog, my mom found out that I sang all night long.

“Why are you singing? Did something good happen?” At first, my mom asked me nicely as I hummed. But after it continued for a week, she started showing reactions closer to hysteria.

“Why are you doing that?” It was the same question in essence, but her voice cracked at the end.

“Why do you keep singing? Stop it, right now.” Even if my mom told me to stop, I couldn’t.

Back then, instead of my mother’s angry face, I was more concerned about the ghosts that filled this house. Those things stared at me when they heard my voice, and when I stopped, they looked at my mom. Those things sat in a circle around me and stared at me ceaselessly as I sang. Every time my eyes met with one of them, I felt like I was sinking down to the bottom of a subterranean lake, a hole with no bottom.

“Stop it!” My mom finally took out the cane. However, all I could see was the woman stepping on top of my mom. It was the woman who grabbed my mom’s head and pulled her out onto the street, so I couldn’t avoid the cane that my mom whipped me with.

The child that kept singing every night.

On top of that, that child couldn’t sing before his accident. It didn’t matter whether he was struck, scolded, fed good food, or was introduced to a new interest, the child kept singing. It was easy to imagine the severity of my mom’s fear.

My mom took me to the hospital, but nothing improved from that visit. Instead, she came under suspicion of child abuse from the scars on my body. My mom frequently saw me biting my arm. It came from my unconscious effort to keep my screams in, but my mom must have seen it as self-harm.

“I didn’t do this.” My mom explained what she witnessed thoroughly to the doctor. However, instead of clearing the misunderstanding, it only served to solidify the doctor’s suspicions of abuse. The doctor concluded that my strange behavior was a result of stress. I told them my mom didn’t do it, but nobody believed me.

“Then who did this to you?”

“The monsters in my house,” I said.

“…I see.”

Maybe it was obvious that they didn’t believe me after having that earlier conversation.