The Stove

A boy watched as his mother pushed the stove to where the water ran.

“When he comes,” she said, “he’ll come here to wash, and I’ll push the stove so it burns him. You’re to run then, do you hear?”

With no answer, she slapped the boy across the ear.

“Do you hear?”

The boy nodded but said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the stove. The boy remembered his father holding his hand there, telling him pain was part of becoming strong, like his father.

Like father, like son – all a cycle. Crickets shrieked warnings from the bush. Wind whistled through the iron roof. The boy took his eyes from the stove, stared out at the sky where clouds merged moonlight with darkness. He’d been taught that bad things come in the darkness. He wondered where to run.

His mother was wringing shaking hands on her rags, staring, fiery eyed at the night.

“You’re wondering where to run,” she said. “I had to run when I was your age. My father beat me so hard I thought I would die. I ran into the bush. When I came here, only your father would marry me.” She looked down at her bare arms, black. “They said I looked like the night,” she said. “Only bad things come in the night.” She sighed. “Now it’s night again, an endless cycle.”

The boy looked down at his hands. His flesh merged with the black of the shadows, skin dark like his mother, scars of burns like his father. Just then, the boy’s father arrived home and went to the water to wash. His mother pushed the stove atop him. She screamed at the boy to run. The boy stood still and did not move. He was afraid that life was a cycle.