Chapter 33

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The moment she shut the door, she leaned against it and tried hard to control the tears streaming down her face, one hot in its pursuit of the others, again and again. She heard him drive away after a while. Then, she broke, snapped like a rubber band that had gotten to its elastic limit and wept, crudely, wailing, lamenting the emptiness in her heart, yearning for what she had lost. She was there for a long time, possibly an hour, pouring out all of her pain, trying very hard to not regret a single thing. She was there till her voice grew hoarse and faded, and until she had no strength whatsoever. She was there till her body stopped shaking with her sobs and there were no more tears left to cry. She was there till her eyes grew heavy and sleep came over her. She was there until it washed over her, slowly, tenderly, pitifully stealing her in all of its blessedness, causing her to quickly fall into a place of deserved oblivion even if it was only for a little while.

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When she next opened her eyes, awakening from her peaceful oblivion, it was nearly daylight. She realized then that she had slept of there, crouched at the door, curled up pitifully. She tried to stretch and failed woefully at it mainly because her joints were too sore. She stood up with much difficulty and attempted the much needed stretch again anyways. She managed to crack a few places and felt better after it all. Her body smiled, having being released from all the knots and kinks in its every nook and cranny. She lowered her hands which had gone up in the stretch, running it along her stomach. Her attire felt prickly so she looked down at it. The silver dress -and the suitcase she espied at the side of her, staring crudely at her- helped her with her little case of morning amnesia, jolting her quite unmercifully from her state of forgetfulness, taking her down memory lane, and bringing all of her great troubles to mind. All the painful memories of last night broke free from the waters and came to the surface, eating her up quite quickly.

She felt the fresh onslaught of tears before they appeared, falling quietly down her cheeks, carrying with it a new pain that made her fragile heart hurt. She wanted him, needed him, and missed him greatly. She felt incomplete without him, all broken and empty. Her heart constrained with the pain that she could not obliterate even if she tried so hard to do so. She sagged against the door once again, crying her eyes and her heart out for it was rendering to pieces from the pain that squeezed and struck it over and over again. She finally consoled herself with the fact that she had not totally lost him yet. He was actually still within her reach, but she must quickly tell him, spill out everything of the bitter truth that plagued her continually. She couldn't be with him with such secret, anxious every day that he would find out the next minute and then lose him cruelly when he did so. It would jeopardize her entire existence. It was Clement, and not any other. The effect of his final parting will be thrice more painful than all the hurt that she had received in this life. Well, she didn't look forward to that at all.

She finally found the courage to glue her pitiful self together temporarily and drag her suitcase into her living room. She stood and looked around it as if hoping for Clement to be there. Well, if it was really what she had been doing it would most surely have been disappointing for he was not. She stood there for a while, sobbing and sniffing like a scolded three year old child. She was as sad as a bereaved wife who had just lost her newly wedded husband even before the honeymoon. She padded slowly to her bedroom and abandoned the suitcase in a corner. She cleaned her mouth in the bathroom sink, holding back her tears, trying to be strong. The tears overcame her as she got out of the silver dress that did no good to remind her of so much. She let it lying on the ground went to take a much needed steaming bath. She cried again, in the bath, assuring her broken self that it wasn't because of Clement but rather the scalding temperature of the bath water. She succeeded in deceiving herself into believing so. She scrubbed every inch of her body, detesting the hideous markings on her skin, reminiscing on the pain that brought about the things, hating the inflictor of the pain and their aftermath, condemning he who was dead to die again, forever.

When she got out of the bath about an hour later, she was feeling much better after sentencing her dead and rotten but not forgotten father to numerous insanely cruel things in her head. It was her own way of venting, wishing that the Ahab of a man was even alive to receive an ounce of insult from her for his unworthy deeds. Yet, she was happy –an oxymoron- still that he was gone to a faraway place –taken by the death that haunted him for so long, keeping him evil- where he could never again hurt them, his own family. She did her makeup and dressed in warm clothes. She phoned in sick at her work place. Her manager told her to rest well till she recovered. Her sections would be cancelled for the meantime. She had no appetite but knew that she must put something in her stomach. She went to the kitchen to prepare one of her many quickies. She placed a small glass bowl on the kitchen counter. She went to the fridge, opened it and took out a keg of sweetened yoghurt from it. She uncapped the keg and turned out a huge helping into the bowl, and then she recapped the keg. She went to the freezer and got out various fruits from it. She set to work, dicing and chopping. When she was done, she added the finely diced bananas and sliced strawberries -as she had done them with so much patience.

Next she put in broken chocolate cookies and in went in some shredded apple. She put in a spoon after that a sprinkling of nutmeg. She stared at her creation with some sort of satisfaction that healed a little part of her heart. She placed it in the freezer for a moment to thicken. She waited for it, standing there, trying to think of nothing else but the yoghurt. When it was ready, she took the spoon and brought it to her lips, very sure that a bite would do the same as a look. Well, it did, heal another small portion of her heart that is. She relished the taste of the yoghurt in her mouth, feeling better. Sweets did indeed help with sadness like the doctors always said. She took a blanket from her bedroom and headed to the living room with her plate of yoghurt in hand. She wrapped herself in the thick blanket and curled up in the chair next to the television which she had switched on. She took the remote, going through the channels until she settled on one which was screening a movie. She ate her breakfast quite slowly, trying very hard to taste nothing but the sweetness of it, and watched the movie, determined to think of nothing but her for the remainder of the day.