The pink clock in the hallway reads 5 o'clock in the evening and it is pouring cats and dogs outside when I finally reach the outside the of my room. Mum is home and it is she who speaks to me first. I bought the biscuits, she says. Her words are short and unclear at first but it doesn't take me long to realize she is talking about the Hello Panda biscuits that I like so much because two blue and cream-coloured boxes sit on the wooden cupboard just outside my room. Oh, I say. Thank you. I take a look at the price tag and make a comment about how the price went up by 10 cents. Not really, she says in reply. It depends on where you buy it from. Yeah, but in Desa Herbs and Food Center, it used to be RM2.70, I try to get my point through. And that is not Desa Herbs and Food Center, she replied with the familiar cold edge to her voice. I take a closer look at the price tag, and I realize she's right. Oh, I say and with that final word, I go inside my room so I would be shielded from my mother's gaze.
It isn't like my mother doesn't buy me things. No, don't get me wrong. But it isn't often that she buys me something that I like just for me unlike the way she showers my little brother with every single Naruto comic book or DVD episode she finds in town. Right then, it occurs to me that maybe she bought the biscuits to make up for what my father had said the evening before. The same reason why she chose to scoop my share of the dishes for me at dinner yesterday. Something she rarely does. Maybe she could tell I was hurting from my blank expressions. Maybe she thought I was stupid for hurting at all.
At dinner, my father walks into the house, returning from work. I am sitting at the dinner table staring at the food laid out in front of me. I am perfectly aware that everything set on the table is of his money and of his efforts to go to the market every other day just to supply us with the food. But this knowledge doesn't erase the damage done. My sister calls out to him and says Hi, Dad. I don't. I make it evident that I wasn't intent on saying anything to him at all.
When he is no longer in earshot distance, my mother asks, Didn't greet your father? I pause for only a split-second and then I mumble something that I'm not quite sure she manages to catch, No. What for?
Soon, he joins us at the dinner table sitting at the head chair of the table. I manage to keep my ignorant, constant gaze at everything but him.
Before I know it, he and Mum are arguing with each other about tennis all over again. Gradually the argument grows into a shouting match about how the newspapers in Malaysia respect Roger Federer so much that they didn't put him down directly when he lost to Rafael Nadal in yesterday's French Open finals. Oh, next thing I know, he's saying they're testing Nadal for drugs too. Being my mother's favourite player, she was obviously angered at his silly proclaims of Nadal's skill.
And all the while that they are shouting, I feel my insides battling a non-existent war. Instead of feeling the old feeling of dread mixed with sorrow swallow up my heart each time my parents fought or argued last time, I see myself put up an imaginary wall against those feelings. I am fighting to prove that I no longer cared that the both of them are shouting. I am fighting to show what consequences my father's words had brought all by simply putting on a silly ignorant display of which I tell myself screams to the whole world that I do not care.
But what I don't tell myself is that no one notices the stupid war I am fighting.
What I don't tell myself is that amidst my attempts to put up that wall, the same feelings were pushing up against that very same wall trying to get out.
What I don't tell myself is that the simple act of me not greeting my father the second he stepped into the house like my sister had just to prove that I was hurt made me feel bad.
Iknow that he realized I purposely did not greet him because he made it a point to not speak to me at all either.
And the best part of it all?
I am so sure it hurts me more than it hurts him.
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