2017, july
ACT 1: EXPOSITION there are days, father is here to stay, and there is so much to do that mother can’t breathe. and there are days father is away and there is so little to do that mother. can’t breathe.
ACT 2:Â RISING ACTION sometimes we have family discussions and as we talk, talk and talk; mother drowns, drowns and drowns; the pressure cooker screams, screams and screams; until the maid runs in, crying someone in her village is dead Amma nods her head in empathy.
ACT 3:Â CLIMAX mother, her tongue, Slips, slides and stumbles over this foreign language her husband and children converse in so effortlessly - A world she is invited to, but not welcome in. Hovering on the threshold, never in, nor out we watch her performance with sympathy.
ACT 4: FALLING ACTION Mother should leave. But won't. Can't. The implicit permission to rebel not granted. Sometimes she looks at me the way I look at myself: abandoned. betrayed. lost. alone.
ACT 5: RESOLUTION I declare parenthood is not for me, & motherhood is prison. mother laughs. “why?” I demand, terrified of her answer. “silly girl” she chortles “you remind me so much of me!” “Do you think I was any different, when I was you?”
