I can hear him shouting again in the kitchen.
Each new vibration I feel through my walls hits me like another blow.
Why can’t they understand that I have a paper I need to finish by tonight?
Why do my shitty walls have to be so paper-thin?
I sit back and close my eyes and listen to the rhythmic pulse of his voice.
His accent is thick, just like his eyebrows.
I can imagine them lifting as his pitch becomes higher.
I don’t know when he first started shouting at her.
I can’t remember.
Was it that time when she broke a glass in the sink?
Or that time when she didn’t put enough spice in his favorite dish?
Or that time when he found the oil painting in our entry hall crooked?
I don’t know when he first started shouting at her, but it has become a daily routine.
He yells at her for the smallest things, the most ridiculous things.
I know he loves her.
He has to, right?
I don’t know why she takes it.
She probably doesn’t want to piss him off even more than he already is.
She probably doesn’t want to start another fight and make it a huge deal.
But boy, do I wish she would stand up to him for once.
Because after each tirade, after each storm, she comes into my room, aged and defeated.
I hate seeing her like this.
She brushes my thick black hair back from my forehead and tells me that I should go to sleep because it’s getting late.
I blink back the tears that gather in the corners of my brown eyes and threaten to spill over my face, onto my brown skin.
I hear her bark something at him, and he pounces back as a cat does on a mouse.
I want to slam open my door and throw myself out into the kitchen and scream at them to shut the hell up.
But if you saw me here, sitting in my room with my eyes fixed on the computer screen and my fingers tapping on the keyboard, you wouldn’t see me flinch.
I don’t know when he first started shouting at her, but I’m used to it.
The voices subside, and I’m left with the sound of the clicking keyboard.
The silence outside my door broods gloom and emits a darkness that feels like it will slowly permeate into my room and consume me.
There is a soft rap at my door, and I think that it is her.
But tonight, it is not her. Tonight, it is him.
Bitiya, he says. Do you want some ice cream while you study?
No, I say.
He leaves, and I continue to type.