You know how you can feel something and not know how to explain it but then something happens and the perfect word to express how you feel comes to your mind? It’s like a light bulb moment, exactly like finally remembering the title of the song whose tune troubled your mind. This was what happened that morning. As a child I thought my mom had the answer to everything; the way she just knew baffled me. Even when I asked a question and she said, “Stop being inquisitive,” I never thought it was because she didn’t have the answers; I just thought it was because I was pestering her. I’d come back with my homework and I’d ask for assistance and she’d assist me and if I were to fail, I only failed one but I’d always think maybe the teacher was wrong. That was my exact thought that afternoon when I came home with a bag I roughly packed and bruises all over my body. You see, I’ve always been a stubborn child and I was always beaten, so when Douglas laid his hands on me the very first time, I understood. It became frequent, though. More frequent than it was when I was little, or was it that I couldn’t remember all the times I was beaten as a child? Anyway, when he beat me to the point of blackness I ran home but mother said, “No daughter of mine will leave her husband’s house.” She sat me down and talked to me and I saw reasons or maybe I didn’t think she’d be wrong. Not even allowing me to spend the night, she took me back to the man who had paid my bride price. He welcomed me with silent treatment, how could I have exposed what was going on in our house? How dare I wash our dirty linen in public. I apologized, I begged, and he forgave me. It happened again and again and few times I had my mom to tell me that it was normal. She can’t be wrong but I had this clawing feeling that something wasn’t right and I couldn’t tell what it was. But as I lay on the hospital bed, barely alive, I knew it, like a lightbulb moment. My mother was wrong.