Standing Still

In the last few months, it had gotten a lot harder for me to lie to Dad. Not because of any moral dilemma on my part; but due to him figuring out video chat. Now, he saw me roll my eyes whenever he asked me a question about the trip back home.

“Your flight is tomorrow morning,” said the echoey voice through my phone. “Are you done packing yet?” Dad asked me for the hundredth time and for the hundredth time I lied.

“Marium, you haven’t visited Dhaka in over two years. I know you aren’t a fan of me getting remarried, but you can at least attend my wedding.”

“Of course, Dad. If your daughter doesn’t come to the wedding, what will the relatives think, right?” I said sarcastically.

“That’s not fair, Marium,” Dad said as he let out a long sigh. “It has been over ten years and you still haven’t let this go. Are we supposed to mourn her for the rest of our damn lives?”

Another déjà vu conversation. Fantastic. We’ve been going around in circles for years now.

“Okay Dad, I gotta head out; I have to get up early in the morning. See ya!” I said as I cut the call. The classic trick worked like a charm. At this point, I barely needed to pause as I said the lines with a practised monotone. He rarely called back after that but this time around I, honestly, had a lot to do.

I scanned my room and buried my face in my hands. I had been putting off the packing for the trip for almost two months at this point. Since I had never met Dad’s fiancé in person, I could just pretend she didn’t exist. That his wedding was an abstract concept which didn’t relate to me.

And there was her.

The ghost, which emerged from my shadow into the image of my mother. It wasn’t a frail, surreal being like you would see in the movies; but serious and stern as ever. And just like her, she would speak in that wretched voice.

Not ready to make progress on the matter, I changed, put on my running shoes and set out for the empty suburban roads under the summer night sky.

Dark clouds had enveloped the sky even before I hit the road and within ten minutes of my night run, it was raining cats and dogs. Within another ten, I was drenched from head to toe. But I didn’t stop. Or more accurately, I didn’t allow myself to think of the possibility of stopping.

The rain wasn’t the only thing trying to stop my run. There were also my throbbing calves; my screaming lungs; and, of course, those unbeatable uphills. The thing which kept me going was the apparition of Mom’s spirit trailing behind me. It was the only way to keep the apparition out of my head, even though it was only for a short while.

Thousands of times, I had run in every single street in my local suburb of Monash. So much so that if someone re-modelled their porch, I noticed. Every single stretch of the road held a specific memory for me. This the Maccas where the apparition criticised me for failing my first class; here’s the bus stop where she complained about my spending habits in the summer of 2018 and also where she was disappointed by my haircut in 2019. Her standards knew no bounds. There was always something for her to pick apart about me.

The clock struck midnight. My legs finally gave out and I sat down on a familiar bench. Every inch of my body was aching, and I hoped for it to never stop for I knew it was the only thing keeping the ghost away.

When my heart rate slowed down, the apparition appeared again like clockwork. Before she could criticize me for anything, I just mouthed off to her.

“Why can’t you leave me alone, you fucking bitch? You died; years have passed since then, and I’m even in a different country. Why can’t you let me go!”

I would usually talk to her in my head. But this was different for I was screaming at the top of my lungs; not caring about my surroundings. As thunder clapped, the ghost faded into an abyss.

But I knew—I knew in my gut it wasn’t over.

While the ghost was gone, I walked to the university campus. I hadn’t been there as much since my graduation and a lot of the campus looked different from when I was going there due to all the new construction. I hoped this would prevent me from triggering memories every few minutes. Obviously, it didn’t end up working. As soon as I saw a new building, a new pond or whatever, I thought about how it looked before and lo and behold a memory would flare-up.

Despite the storm going on in my brain, I had a hard time staying awake. I hadn’t slept in days. The ghost would appear to me at night and spent endless hours explaining how I and Dad had failed her. How the world had failed her.

The ghost reappeared. Before she could begin her tirade, I started mine. “What do you want from me, Mom? Do you want me not to go to the wedding? Do you want me to sabotage his one opportunity for happiness, instead?” I continued as tears flowed down my cheeks, “Is that what you want? Is that what it’ll take for you to leave me alone? Just tell me and I’ll do it. Just fucking tell me!”

After my futile attempt at negotiation, Mom replied, “You know perfectly well what I want. Don’t look away and don’t pretend. Deep down you know what you need to do to set this right.”

“Ok, fine.” I glared at her. “I knew what you were going to do when I took you to the roof of our apartment building. I didn’t expect you to go through with it, but I knew. Hell, I even I wanted you to go through with it.”

And then I stopped. I couldn’t go any further. Mom continued to stare at me—using it to silently hound me to keep going. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

Strength was returning to my legs. I saw this as another opportunity to temporarily get rid of the ghost. The university had built a new area specifically for running. It was a circular path, one kilometre in circumference, with a grassy field in the middle. But more importantly, the path was out of the way of anything else so dorm students can have their sweaty runs without getting in anyone’s way. The rain seemed to escalate in its violence as I started my run.

Running on the edges of this circle, I felt small—trapped in a world beyond my control. And before I knew it, I was transported back to the day of the incident. I saw Mom about to take a step off the ledge. She had just gotten into a fight with Dad about me of all things. Dad had come home late—as usual—on my birthday. It hadn’t bothered me, but this wasn’t relevant to the equation for Mom.

“This will teach your father a lesson,” said Mom as she stood on the ledge. “Even though I was feeling sick and didn’t get out of bed today, he still went to work.”

I looked away. “Are you listening? He went there even though I haven’t eaten in three days.”

You refused to eat. I thought to myself.

“I bet he just spends time in the office—not doing anything to avoid coming home. Let’s see if this triggers some guilt in his thick skull and he sees the error of his ways.”

I remembered just standing there. Not moving a muscle. That’s where I’ll stop every time. I had come to this frame of the event numerous times, unwilling to face what happened next.

Back in the current, real-world, I was running. Around and around, over and over. Memories of my past run and my current runs were being smashed together in my mind. I had been on this path before. Coming so far only to fall short every time. The finish line, always out my grasp and returning to the starting point of my journey.

I sat down on the road with my face buried in my hands. Despite the rain going on for so long, it showed no signs of slowing down. It’s not like it would’ve made a difference at this point. I doubt I could’ve gotten any more drenched.

In a few hours, I would need to head out to the airport for the wedding. Dad’s wedding. He had finally managed to move on, and I was here sulking in the road. I got to my feet and turned around. I clenched my fist as I looked at the ghost; eye to eye.

“I have failed you but this time I’m not going to fail Dad,” I said as I took a deep breath, “That day. On the rooftop. I went ahead and pushed you over the ledge.” I fell on my knees as I forced my confession out, “I never told anyone in the family about it. No one at all. Hell, before today, I couldn’t even admit it to myself. I had hit my breaking point when you told me how you planned to guilt trip Dad and I couldn’t let that happen. I was tired of letting you use me as a pawn in your disgusting game.”

The ghost continued to look at me, without making a sound. “I wanted you out of my life and I didn’t want to risk you not going through with the suicide. I couldn’t stand living with you and after you died… I mean after I killed you, I realized I couldn’t live without you either.”

But Dad didn’t need to shoulder my sins. He had a shot at happiness, and I wasn’t going to let Mom’s shadow ruin this for him. For once, I needed to take responsibility for my actions. After years of running, I finally took a step in the right direction.

By the time I arrived home, the rain had slowed down substantially. I changed and packed my bags. As I drove to the airport, it continued to drizzle, and it seemed like another thunderstorm could erupt at any point.

I somehow managed to get through the wedding, which mostly went off without a hitch. Besides the not-so-subtle remarks from my relatives, Dad was happy. Something I hadn’t seen in a long time. No thanks to me. I was barely able to keep it together for Mom’s apparition hadn’t completely disappeared. She loomed behind me throughout the event, probing me to snap at someone for anything at all.

Five years in, the ghost still hadn’t left me. She still lingered in the corner of my eye, but she had never spoken to me since the night of my self-confession. Sometimes, she keeps me awake at night but it’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Hell, some of them were just conversations where Mom was helping me get through a difficult situation. The ghost was no longer just a caricature of her worst habits, but a better approximation of how she was. The good and the bad.

I remember when I first started running. I was told that running was the exercise for change. Each time you took a step, you shed some of yourself on the road and some of the roads became part of you. I had changed. I picked up bird watching and nature photography. But I still couldn’t wear a skimpy outfit even if I wanted to. The shadow on Mom’s memory was never something I could shed or grow past. But now, at least, I could acknowledge the blood on my hands.