I didn’t know that I fell asleep when I heard a knocking on the door followed by cries from the hall. I groaned, feeling like I had the best sleep in my entire life. I felt like I just run a whole marathon from all of this mess and now that I was able to sleep in the room where I grew up, it felt like for once, my whole body relaxed, although this house has been nothing but horror for me.
The knocking on the door still hasn’t stopped and stood up, I opened it, revealing an all too familiar woman responsible for my nightmares.
Mother.
The same brown hair and brown eyes and standing five feet 3. She’s a beauty, considered by many, but I do not look like her. Elyana was the one who took after her, from the face to her body, while I looked just like my father. which my mother hated cause I look ugly to her.
“Mother.” I greeted them in acknowledgment, but I could see how she looked just like the last time I had seen her, except the wrinkles on her face were much more visible due to old age, her hair which she desperately colored in black has white roots in it now and her face was puffy due to crying.
With her usual frown, she glared at me, “Your sister is crying. What did you do to her?”
I scoffed, “Damn, I just arrived from my flight and here you are, not even welcoming me properly.” I said sarcastically. “Is this how you greet your oldest daughter, the one who saved you from poverty?”
Instanlty, I felt a stinging pain on my cheek as her cold hands met my skin.
Harsh.
I bit my lip, staring at her calmly as if that slap was enough to break me.
I’ve been through worse.
Well, that was true. My parents see me as their retirement plan, someone who could save the Ramirez tech but looking at it now, they failed.
Ramirez tech is gone.
I couldn't save all my salary and use it to buy my own house because instead of using that for me, I used up all my money to support my family.
To pay for my father’s medical bills.
To pay for my sister’s tuition fee.
And to pay for my mother’s gambling addiction and luxurious life.
“Slapping me now?” I scoffed, “I’ve been gone through years and here you are, defending your youngest daughter. Looks like she’s still a crybaby. She needs to learn life the hard way. You keep on coddling her.”
“Do you think that pretty little mouth spewing some sarcasm is funny?” Mother asked, her cold harsh voice slashing through.
I scoffed, “Well, that’s what you get for not being a mother enough. Did you ever perform to be a mother? I raised myself!”
“How dare you!”
I could feel her hand going for my face again but I grabbed it. I knew I deserved one slap, but receiving another might leave a scar on my face. Manager Smith wouldn’t like to see that.
He knows how harsh my family is to me that he would be willing to fight anyone who harms me….even if it's my blood.
“We only have ourselves now. Can you be kind, even for once?” She asked, her voice trailing off but I couldn’t help but laugh at the word kind.
Does she lose herself?
I hate how I begged them to save me and not let me marry early.
How they damaged my mental health.
I hate how I could not replace my parents because no matter how hard I try, they are my parents, and I am their child.
Out of the two of us, I know that I should be the one asking her that.
“Why don’t you? Can you be kind to me too? I am your daughter too.”
She gritted her teeth, “Did you know how hard your sister forced herself to be just like you? She wanted to learn how to drive the car so she could one day pick you up from your shoots. Your sister looks up to you.”
“I can see that mom,” I said, now feeling guilty. I know I was a bit out of line for treating my sister like that but just seeing her with her stupid grin feels too irritating for me.
I’m jealous of how she had it all easy. That she wouldn't have to deal with it the hard way just like I went through.
Suddenly, mother pushed a notebook on me.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Here. Swear to me all you want but read all of this. This is your sister’s journal. She wanted to update you.”
I looked at the simple notebook. It seemed to have a hundred pages, all full of ink and dates and I tried to skin through.
Mother sighed, “I prepared food for you. We can talk later after you’re done.”
I nodded, “Where’s the father?”
Mother suddenly paused, looking to the ground, “At the hospital. They were on the way to the funeral home. I already arranged it.”
I nodded, going to the kitchen now as mother silently served me food. I quietly ate all of it, letting tears fall as I could taste again my mother’s cooking.
I may have cursed them half of my entire life but I know that deep down, I craved this. For a mother to remember me. To let me eat her food again.
And damn I missed her cooking.
After I finished, mother, Elyana and I decided to visit father before he would be buried.
I learned from the doctor that my father’s kidney disease had become too severe that father decided to just let himself die.
I forced myself to watch how my father’s pale skin, ghostly face, and crinkly hands and feet were there, lying on the bed.
I thought I was numb enough to feel anything, but I let myself scream in pain from that day on. I let the tears gush like a waterfall, and let my feet fall on the ground as my hands tried to hold his lifeless hand.
I was desperate to bring him back, fighting hard as I pray on and hopelessly think that this was all just a dream, a prank, or not real.
That this was just in my imagination.
I want all of it to stop and he would wake up and hug me.
Because I never did. Out of my whole life, I never even remember him holding me like I’m his daughter.
I never even saw him looking at me with love. With proud.
That no matter how high I would reach in my modeling career, he was against it.
I hate him. I had always hated him, but seeing him in this state, I felt like a horrible person. I even wished that he would be dead.
Damn him for dying like this. From not even having the will to live on. Damn him for not even saying “I’m proud of you” or I love you.
As they finished delivering father’s dead body and we are now at the funeral, I looked at his body again and feel like my heart had died along with him. Elyana’s hand gently rubbed my back to try and comfort me.
“Did you know that he keeps a photo book, a collection of all the runways and magazines you were featured on?” Elyana suddenly brought up and I paused.
“What?”
Elyana suddenly fished out a little photobook full of pictures, all of it composed of me.
I gaped in shock, looking at it in awe.
“Father had always been proud of you, Ate.” Elyana said, “He had always been. Although he never called you, he always pauses whenever you are on show and would mutter ‘that’s my girl. You had always been a daddy’s girl.”
My knees wobbled and I suddenly dropped to the ground. I skimmed around the photos, starting from when I was just a teenage girl, having no name in the industry, to the time when I gained a name and up to the present one.
“He…kept all of this?” I asked in disbelief.
Elyana nodded, “He did.”
"He knew he was going to die so he had me record this..." Elyana said as she pulled out her phone and played a sound.
"Hi Ellaina my dear....it's me...your father. Your bastard of a father who made you marry just to save Ramirez Tech. I know I had been nothing but a bad father to you, and I know it's too late, but I apologize, my dear child. I know I was wrong, and I was guilty of it. I couldn't sleep at night knowing how I broke your heart. I know it might take time for you to forgive me, and I understand that. But know this, you are my daughter, my oldest, and I am proud of what you have become."