The Sound of a Broken Dish

Unmindful of her dishwashing, Faye my daughter, slipped a bowl from her hand, it crashed on the floor. The shattered sound thundered in my brain. It woke up my childhood memories.

 

It’s Faye’s first time to break a dish. Her face pale. She spun around poised herself in front of her Mom. Mur, not distracted.

 

“Don’t worry. Careful.  Picking up the shards,”.

 

Faye expunged a sigh.

 

The props I saw, the dialog, the impression I kept, flash backed. The scene exposed the cruelties of the old times. It anchored on the broken dish.

 

The scene between Faye and Mur occurred in our century old kitchen when we lived at Victor Street. The same scene took place in our dysfunctional hut between my mother and sister when we lived in the Philippines.

 

My mother dubbed our house as the Dove’s house. Often, she spoke of it in spite.

 

Mur pitched to Faye caring and unblaming words. While my mother then, ranted off indignant barbs.

 

“It’s not shard-money we buy those dishes,”.  Her favorite.

 

“You want me to necklace you with that broken pieces?”. Her second favorite. My mother shivered in anger. She pinched my sister’s groin. My sister cried in pain.

 

My sister did not intend to break that dish. Neither my mother wanted to get high strung or hurt my sister. I blamed it on time. The creator of spirit to go awry.

 

My mother, to help with my father’s scrimpy income, she slaved up with our relatives whom she thought are rich. Little did she know, she’s being exploited.

 

In my mother’s absence, she designated my sister as the mother in charge. At age nine, she skipped her childhood, and jumped to motherhood. And being a mother, she usurped her power dividing our breakfast, myself getting the little ration, yet I am the eldest. I couldn’t dare question her authority.

 

When my mother got home, if she found things not to her liking, she lectured my sister. My sister couldn’t just let it passed. She answered back. She challenged my mother’s verbal assault. And she got my mother’s palm on her mouth.

 

Such a big job my mother laid on my sister’s shoulder. At her tender age she knew why our mother had been that way.

 

My mother wanted a decent home stripped of the indignities of a cave dweller. She aimed to live beyond food.

 

She wanted other things; toothpaste, soaps, towels, pillow cases, furniture and other civilized things. Whenever she scrimps  money, she bought these things beyond food. And if those civilized things got wasted or broken, it devastated her. Blinded by rage, she ignored how my sister make up a home out of a Dove’s house.

 

My sister worked as a kitchen-helper in a small kitchenette near the Baliwag Academy School. Her purpose: for us, to live beyond food. She got paid one peso per day for ten hours work. The kitchenette had a leaking sink. As she wet her feet most of the time, she developed a swelling legs.

 

When my sister handed in her thirty pesos earning to my mother, she looked up to our Nipa ceilings, to cover her eyes. But her tears fell.

 

She bought my sister a Wintergreen, a twelve pesos ointment to appease my sister’s swelling legs.

 

Then asked my mother to buy herself a curtain, a new sleeping mat for us and another pillow, so that my third sister not share with my fourth sister. Mother never let my sister worked on the kitchenette again.

 

I hated recalling these scenes.  But it always comes back whenever a dish crashed.