Breaking Walls
| May 9, 2023Dizzy sparks cascaded in my skull, and accusing inner fingers leached self-esteem from my bones
Yesterday, the kitchen wall gleamed with a fresh coat of paint. Today, it’s streaked with a black scribble.
The order I crave vanishes into a black hole inside my chest. “Who did this!” I lunge toward my seven-year-old. “Was it you?!”
Avi looks me in the eye. “No.”
I swing around to glare at five-year-old Shifra. She shakes her head. Wide eyes stare at me.
Is this how I looked at Mom when she yelled?
I whip back to Avi, and my breath stops in my throat. He’d had a hard week. He fought with the neighbor’s kids and a rock ripped through his upper lip. We raced to Shaare Zedek, and the doctor had laid surgical blades and cotton swabs on the table. “Only one parent, please,” he said.
Avi had reached past me to his dad and pulled on his shirt. Rejection… it stung like a wasp’s venom. The psychologist’s report shot up in my brain: “Avi is uncertain of his attachment to his mother.” I swallowed it down. Yehuda’s better with him anyway. That didn’t soothe the sting. I crouched outside the steel door that muffled Avi’s screams. Dizzy sparks cascaded in my skull, and accusing inner fingers leached self-esteem from my bones.
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