A Legacy of Hope

2018/08/08

It was a bit like having your life flashing before your eyes, although why I was reminiscing then, I couldn’t have known. I was holding the door down, a human barricade of one. It was locked, but we had no doubt that he’d find some way around that eventually. The others were huddled in the darkness, sweating nervously and trying their best not to make a sound or movement. I was calm, believe it or not, I wasn’t nervous. It could very well be my last day alive but I wasn’t worried. We did the best we could, didn’t we? And if the best was not enough, then at the very least we’ve tried our best, and that was enough.

I don’t know how this began. It feels like it’s gone way back further than I could remember. He had always been nasty. He beats me and Mother and all the rest of the family constantly. I grew up learning how to hide and how to escape and how to not be at home when he was. Mother was often with me, during our escapades, but she never dared go too far. He’d know. It was like he was a hound who always had his nose on Mother’s scent, or a satellite pointed always at her direction. When we went for too long or too far, nevermind if we took the bus or the train or the car, he’d always find us, and it was always Mother he took, before each of us, inevitably, had our turn with his fist and stick.

There were seven of us living under his rule, eight if we counted his friend or aide, a small man who grinned constantly, his sharp teeth flashing. Sometimes when he was busy, it’d be him who caught me and brought me to him. The hound’s hound, the bailiff to his executioner. None of us consider him part of us. Out of the seven, there was me, my mother, my baby sister, my bachelor uncle, my two cousins whose parents disappeared in an expedition years ago, the young caretaker of the house who ended up being as much a victim as us, and a second-cousin aunt of unknown relation.

We were miserable, yes, and we lived each day terrified, but we had each other and we survived and together, we hoped for better days. Perhaps things would be different if we had tried things on top of hoping, if we fought our fears earlier, before things got worse. But looking at their terrified faces in the darkness, holding the door with my back, I realised that perhaps there was no good way for this to end. Perhaps we had tried our best and the best we could do was hope. And that was enough.

Fighting back was hard, impossible, even. We lived each day in that house watching for opportunities and taking them, scant as they were. We went outside. We found the bliss of life as much as we could before we were brought back and thrust to hell again. Sometimes the anxiety of those coming moments would wreck us for days, but Mother had always found ways to make me smile. She’d take me to see fireworks and the elephants and all the flowers in the botanical garden. We’d go to movies and I’d see lives that ended well.

I believed that to everything, there was an end. Mother’s came earlier. One day, after a particularly long and eventful day, he caught us and took my Mother inside the room and she never came back out. I saw the little scattering of blood he had missed and the dirt in his aide’s fingernails and I whispered all these to the other six of us. Perhaps it was grief that gave us courage, or perhaps for all this time we had just been scampering for the last bit of light left and now she was far away, in the end of the tunnel. With Mother gone, we, quietly, loaded ourselves and what we could bring into the car and drove away in the night. We all must have thought, perhaps, that he’d find us eventually. Nothing had escaped him before. But with Mother gone and her trails finished, we all believed that there was a chance. My aunt was in the driver’s seat, where I often saw Mother sat, and hit the gas for all she could. We knew we would never return for as long as we live.

We were worried and terrified during the long, long trip, but we were also relieved. We slept in hotels or tent or under the night sky or huddled together in the car, the windows open to the night air. We woke up to see the world that constantly changed and moved and filled itself with a hundred different colours a second even without us, and it was comforting to see a world that goes on. We took turns taking watch, took turns driving, took turns asking for direction and help and places to go and people to meet. It lasted for a year, perhaps, but it was like our entire life. Even if it all ended here, in the locked room with my back to the door, with him somewhere out there, hounding us and far too close, I believed that it was worth it. Worth getting into the car and driving away. Perhaps, even, although I don’t dare say it out loud, worth Mother’s death.

None of us dared take a peek outside. We kept ourselves as still as possible, afraid the slightest twitch would bring him down on us. I could see my two cousins huddled together in the corner to my right, one of them trembling ever so slightly. My uncle was on the opposite side of the room, hiding behind a lamp too short for his entire body, his eyes fixed on me, terrorized. Next to him, under a table, I could almost see my little sister. Years of living under his reign had hardened her into a quiet, unmoving shell. I could only guess at what was going on in her mind since Mother was gone. My aunt was somewhere to my left, somewhere behind a chair. The caretaker must be more well-hidden, but I could almost make him out. He must had had his slingshot ready to shoot, one he’d never dared to use before but I knew he would now. The end of the line.

I should’ve been somewhere else, hiding, maybe, but with the same guts that brought that slingshot out, I wasn’t. There was nowhere left to hide, and the moment we brought light or sound into the room, he would find us. I was the one who first saw him, coming out of his car with his henchman. He came with no warning, no signs of coming doom. It was entirely a blessing of chance that the room we were in was dark. I hunched down and I signalled the others to do the same and so we held our breath. That I was close to the door, that I was in a position to do something, was another blessing. I locked it. I put my back to it and readied myself to hold it back. Perhaps, if he did reach the door, he’d thought the room was inaccessible. Perhaps he’d pass by us and look elsewhere. Perhaps he’d be in the other side of the planet by the time we were confident enough to breath easy.

It was a strange thought to have, but it was hope. If there’s anything Mother had taught me both in her life and death, it was to have hope. Even when I heard the click of the lock opened, when I saw from the corner of my eyes the movement of the door handle, I still held on to that hope. Maybe it was just the building’s owners, the nice old ladies. Maybe it was a flicker of my imagination.

And then come the push, the pounding. I held on as best as I could, as much as I could. My hands were sore, my feet keep slipping, but I held on and I pushed back. He wouldn’t get us if he couldn’t get in. He couldn’t possibly get us if he couldn’t get in and I wasn’t going to let him. My uncle was stuck in place, my cousins were hugging each other, my aunt had soundlessly let go of her bowels, my sister was hiding, still, hiding, and I wouldn’t let her be anywhere else. I held on for what felt like eternity, keeping the door in place, keeping him out.

We must had had a thought that he’d get inside and find us and exact his wrath and that it was an eventuality. Up to this point, we must had believed otherwise, or we wouldn’t have made it that far. I held him back for what could be an eternity. I kept the door closed as long as I could. But, one way or another, as my Mother’s own had taught me, is that everything has an end. And this ended with me sprawled on the floor, unable to move, and him, a looming figure on the broken doorway. In my dazed vision I saw the gun in his hand, and he pointed it at all the directions I knew the other six of us were.

He barked out orders, a voice that we had hoped never to hear again, and I heard the others shuffling, crawling, out of their hiding places. It was an end. We’ve had a year of good run, of stars in the night sky and the breeze of the wind on our face and the ruffling of leaves in the trees and of sunlight in unexpected places, and then this was the end. He berated us, lashed at us with words as if the opening volley of more to come. He grabbed me by the collar and hurled me at the others. My cousin let out a stifled cry. My sister stared at me, expressionless. I remember what he said, when all else was hazy, I remember what he said.

He said, screamed, that I had been a thorn on his side for too long. That when everyone else hid in fear, as they should, in his mind, I alone openly defied him and got in his way. He said that this would be the last time I ever do so, that it would be the end.

I was sprawled down on the floor at his feet. I was spent and couldn’t fight back anymore. I have forgotten what kind of pain was streaming under my skin because all I remember, over all that, was this: I was proud. I was glad of what we had and even though there are many, many ways things could have done, I believed I had done the best I could do. I have tried.

That was the last thing I remember. There was the loud scream of gunshot, and then there was darkness.