“Is your daughter screaming again?!”—and this from a woman who calls herself a grandmother.
“Why is your daughter screaming *again*?!” my mother-in-law snapped, dripping with so much contempt you’d think I’d smuggled in a stranger’s child, not her own granddaughter.
“She’s ill, she’s got a fever,” I tried to explain, my voice thin with exhaustion.
“Well, I don’t care! Tell her to stop! My head’s splitting!” she spat, not even glancing toward the nursery where my little girl lay whimpering, flushed and restless under a crumpled blanket.
I dashed around the flat like a trapped animal—checking the medicine cabinet, refilling the water bottle, tugging the curtains shut against the glare. Then I flicked on the star projector, the only thing that soothed her. She’d stare at the glowing constellations on the ceiling and go quiet for a few precious seconds while I bolted to the kitchen—making porridge, steeping chamomile, checking the nappy. All at once. And all alone.
Meanwhile, my mother-in-law… Oh, she was sprawled in her armchair like royalty, dressed in snakeskin-print, groaning about her *splitting headache*, demanding silence, and accusing me of not being able to “shut that child up.”
“Listen here,” she hissed as I rushed past, “you’ll be out of this house soon. You and your snivelling brat. My son could’ve married a hundred better women. He didn’t sign up for this madhouse! Trust me, he’ll tire of playing family soon enough.”
And you know what? *Go jump in the Thames.* That’s what I wanted to say. But I clenched my teeth and hurried back to my little girl, who was crying again—burning up, aching, with no one to hold her but me. I tucked the blanket around her, kissed her hot forehead, and held her tight.
Then back to the kitchen. And back to *her* venom:
“Good mothers don’t raise screechers!”
“That child of yours is just spoiled rotten!”
“Women like you are a disgrace!”
“My son deserves a proper wife, not *this*…”
And where was my husband? Too busy, as usual. Too blind to see his mother poisoning every day. “Just ignore her,” he’d say. “She’s old.” But my exhaustion, my shaking hands, our child’s fever—none of it seemed to matter.
I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know how much longer I can last in this house, where my daughter and I aren’t wanted. But I do know one thing—I won’t let anyone belittle her again. I’ll walk if I have to. I’ll fight. I’m not just a wife or a daughter. I’m her mother. And that makes me stronger than they think.
