After the Rape, They Spoke to their Mothers
“I went inside. I saw her there crying,” her mother
told the police later. “She told me in English, ‘Mummy,
I’m vanished.’”
*
Mr. Sheikh, too, saw his mother
for a few moments that night.
He discussed the rape with her, she said.
I asked Kasim, Son, why did you do this to her?
He told her that his friends had come
upon the couple embracing at the mill
and they thought ‘What is she doing
with this boy here? She must be loose.’
Obviously, the fault is the girl’s,
Why did she have to go to that jungle?
Also, she was wearing skimpy clothes…
they tied up the boy who was doing bad things
to her and said, ‘Madam, let us also do it.’
The madam said, ‘Don’t do it to me, take my
mobile, take my camera, but don’t do it to me.’
Her body was uncovered.
How could he control himself?
And so it happened.
*
“How do I know how he got into this mess?
It must be the Devil,” murmured Salim’s mother,
who was sitting on the floor, one eye blind,
cloudy white.
“I want my children to grow up to be
good human beings, that’s all,” the mother said.
Marjorie Tesser (she/her) writes poetry and fiction. Recent work has appeared in Molecule, SWWIM, The Marbled Sigh, Landline Literary, and others. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Magic Feather (FLP) and THE IMPORTANT THING IS (Firewheel Chapbook Award Winner), and is the editor of MER – Mom Egg Review, a literary magazine on mothers and motherhood.
The Marbled Sigh 