A Realization

by: Soma Ray   

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She stood for a few minutes, watching the brown steamer pull slowly away from the train station. "Why did I even come?" she asked herself, scouring the lonely vicinity. All the hope that encompassed her mind earlier had vanished. - No one was there to greet or drive her to her destination.

With the most strongest of emotions, she lifted her bags and walked for the next two miles into what was called her home. The house, cold as an ice block and still as any isolated boulder perched to receive with happiness the company of a winged object, stared back at her with a stolid gaze: the same as the one she tried to present from her denying mind. There were no children playing in the front yard, nor were any welcome mats placed in the front porch. The grass was dull and muddy, accenting the yellowed trees that the young woman's father had planted a few months previous to his death. - Nothing was there to embrace the young woman. She tried her best to keep a tear from smearing her flawless face.

She hesitantly walked to the front door and subconciously knowing of her predicament, she took out the small key she had placed in her left pocket before and opened the door. Sighting the area, she thought no one was home, and with a loud, restful sigh, she journeyed to the living room. - Her bags quickly dropped from her slippery palms.

"Oh, so the little tramp wants to come home!" exclaimed a stern voice across from her. The young woman with her large green eyes stared directly into the same colored eyes of the covered women.

"Mother! I didn't think ..."

"That's right! You don't think! - What type of woman are you, prancing in here without any sort of covering? Do you wish everyone to think that your mother raised the demon's child? - Look at what you are wearing! Jeans and that tight shirt! Who, ... oh who taught you to dress in such a fashion?" her mother screamed with disgust.

The young woman's breast heaved with anger by her mother's words. Tears began to stream down her cheeks and her voice broke her trying silence. "Why must I cover? Why can't I be myself? - I don't believe in your religion anyway! Look at what it has done to me ... to women! - I can't be anything in your religion. Do you want me to wear a scarf upon my head and not believe in your horrible religion? Wouldn't that be worse? - At least now I can be free from these pathetic ties and make it known that I am not a part of your pathetic God!"

With that, her mother extended her arm and striked her face with a hard blow. "Get out of my son's house! - You disgrace your family and your decesed father. How dare you reject God!"

"Oh, and what a God He is! If he was so wonderful, why does he torture me like this? Why does he make it a rule that women must cover their hair ... their face or every other part of their bodies? Why must the man I am forced to wed be the only individual to ever see all of me? - And when he is done with his thrills, why must he cover me again like a precious doll in his collection of four others he could lay in bed with? Why must I be treated like an object rather than an individual who has a nose, lips, a chin, and glorious amounts of hair? - The true God put me down here with none of those scarves or hideous garments. I was natural as any being. God never wanted to cover me or any woman. Can't you see that your God is only a man ... a beast that makes women his slaves?" the young woman said, knowing too well that her statements would bring her a good beating. Her mother, with a mind as stubborn as a mule's, began to shake her daughter violently as she screamed obscenities. Her wrinkled face was stained with tears and her voice began to crack as she helplessly fell to the ground, forming a puddle of droplets beside her.

"Get out! - Just get out! You are not my daughter! You have dishonored everyone. You are damned. Even God can not help you."

Wiping the tears from her eyes, the young woman picked up her bags and began to walk away from her mother. "I don't want the help of your God." She said, loud enough for her mother to hear. With a mind filled with both anxiety and freedom, she crossed the passage from her house and to the world.