The routine of college became a mask I wore to survive. Every morning, I put on my dress, brushed my hair into that same, austere ponytail, and stepped out into the world, determined to pretend that my life hadn't been upended. In the lecture halls, I sat in the back, my eyes fixed on the professor, my pen moving across the page, but my mind was a traitor. It was always back at home, pacing the hallways, measuring the space where my mother's presence was slowly being scrubbed away.
The impending marriage hung over me like a guillotine.
It wasn't just the wedding; it was the inevitable erasure. That house, my cold, silent prison, had been a sanctuary because it held the ghosts of my mother. In the kitchen, I could still imagine her humming. In the living room, I could see where she used to sit. But with the arrival of a stranger, that would end. A new person would occupy those spaces, rearrange the furniture, and fill the silence with laughter that wasn't hers. My father was desperate to replace the void with a new shape, a new love, a new reality. He was moving forward, and I was being left behind in a home that was becoming a stranger to me.
At nineteen, I was supposed to be navigating the threshold of adulthood, yet I felt like a small child losing her only anchor. The emotional betrayal was constant; my mind fought to ignore the wedding preparations, but the evidence was everywhere.
The days blurred into a haze of mounting preparations. The house began to change, transformed by shopping bags, new linens, and the frantic, forced energy of a man trying to reinvent his future. My father looked vibrant, almost unrecognizable in his eagerness, but it was a light that didn't reach me. We stopped having our quiet evenings; the air between us was now thin, occupied by the specter of the woman I hadn't even met.
My studies became my only refuge, but even they were failing me. The anxiety was a physical weight, a knot in my stomach that wouldn't uncoil. Because I couldn't focus during the day, I had to double my efforts at night, hunching over my desk until my eyes burned. The aunt who cooked for us still came, but with my father hovering nearby, the fragile hope of a real conversation with her vanished. We traded polite, hollow pleasantries, her presence a brief, ghost-like flicker before she retreated.
One day. That was all the time left.
As I walked home from college on the second day, I turned on some music, trying to drown out the internal monologue of grief. Don't look, don't feel, don't remember, I told myself.
But as I rounded the corner to our street, the sight of a delivery van in our driveway stopped me cold. They were bringing in new furniture. My mother's old, worn-out chair—the one she had sat in for years—was sitting on the curb, waiting to be hauled away.
My breath hitched. I felt the familiar, dangerous prickle of tears behind my eyes, but I bit my lip until I tasted iron, forcing them back. I wouldn't cry. Not here. Not in front of the people watched us with their pitying, prying eyes.
I walked past the chair, my heart shattering into pieces I knew I'd have to glue together again in the dark of my room. I was nineteen, I was alone, and I was watching my past being carried out to the trash.
The house had become a stranger's terrain. Every time I stepped through the door, something else was missing, replaced by something new. I felt the ache of it, a constant, dull throb in my chest, but I allowed myself no time to linger. My textbooks were my barricade. If I could just master these chapters, I could secure that future and eventually escape this house.
But there was one person I couldn't bear to let go of without a word.
The evening before the wedding, the air in the kitchen was thick with the scent of spices. The aunt who had cooked for us for so long was there, moving with a quiet, efficient grace. I knew this was my last window. My father was occupied, and the house was chaotic, but I carved out a sliver of time, leaning against the kitchen frame as she worked.
"Auntie," I began, my voice steady despite the tremor in my heart.
We talked of small, inconsequential things, but as the clock ticked, the weight of the inevitable settled between us. She stopped stirring, looking at me with eyes that seemed to hold all the stories of my family. She reached out, her hand calloused and warm, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
"Iris," she said softly, "you have a heart of gold. Take care of yourself, child. Truly." Her smile was sad, tinged with a finality that made my throat tighten. "I know our paths probably won't cross again. I will always wish you good luck. Promise me you'll look after your own soul."
I nodded, unable to speak. I hadn't realized the goodbye would come so soon. It felt like the last thread holding my past together had just been snipped. I wanted to say many things to her but I couldn't except, "you should also take care of yourself and don't worry about me".
The next morning, the house was a whirlwind. My father left before the sun had fully risen, his energy frantic and focused. My sister arrived shortly after, her presence a complicated mix of tension and obligation.
Then, the front door opened, and the air in the house seemed to drop ten degrees. My paternal aunts and grandparents arrived one by one.
I felt a coldness wash over me that had nothing to do with the morning air. Looking at my grandmother, a wave of pure disgust rose in my throat. I remembered the days when my mother was alive, how incredibly cold they had been toward her. Even when my mother was terribly ill, they had refused to believe it. To them, she wasn't a human being who felt pain or exhaustion; she was just a machine, expected to run endlessly for their convenience. Their ignorance and cruelty had slowly drained the life from her.
Now, they were here to give their blessings.
They moved through the living room, immediately launching into their well-rehearsed performance. They made a great show of acting reluctant, loudly reminding anyone who would listen that they had initially opposed this marriage. They claimed they had told my father not to marry, to just focus on raising his children. They put on this mask of concern, trying to show everyone how deeply they cared about my well-being.
But deep down, I knew it was all an act. I had grown up relying solely on my mother because I learned very early that no one else in this family would ever truly care for me. They were just pretending to be nice to maintain their image. They justified their presence today by reciting my father's promises: he had insisted on the marriage, he swore he would look after me, and the new wife would care for me, too. According to their loud rationalizations, this marriage was exactly what was needed for the family to 'flourish' as it had before.
I stood in the hallway, completely fed up with their endless hypocrisy. I didn't want revenge, and I didn't even have the energy to hate them anymore; I simply resented them and the masks they wore.
So, I ignored the bile in my throat. I stepped forward and played my part. I greeted them politely, fulfilling my duties as the obedient daughter of the house. I expected absolutely nothing from them. I just stood there, entirely detached, silently watching their theatrical act as my father's new life began to take shape over the ashes of my mother's memory.