In the end, I found the courage to tell the principal everything.
She was a woman in her forties, a little heavyset and not particularly sharp-looking.
But she had a kind heart.
I had nowhere else to turn.
That was the only reason I finally told her what was happening at home.
The principal and I had never been close.
We barely knew each other.
So telling her those humiliating things was incredibly difficult.
Every word felt like a burning coal stuck in my throat.
My throat tightened.
My voice became hoarse.
I had to force out every sentence.
She listened quietly until I had finished.
Then she decided to help me.
She couldn’t give me money.
But she gave me something even more important.
A place where I could stay.
The school would provide me with two meals a day.
I could also live there with one of the school’s older female servants.
The principal found some work for me, too.
I could help copy school documents when I had time.
“You don’t have to rush,” she told me.
“Your handwriting still needs practice. Take your time.”
Two meals a day.
A roof over my head.
They sounded like small things.
To me, they solved the biggest problem in my life.
For the first time, I didn’t have to depend on my mother.
I didn’t have to choose between watching her suffer and destroying myself to save her.
The day I left, my mother didn’t ride away in a bridal sedan like she had before.
She hired a rickshaw instead.
She left quietly under the cover of darkness.
She gave me all her bedding and the few belongings we had.
Before she left, she tried desperately not to cry.
She kept her face calm.
But she couldn’t hold it back forever.
All the sadness and love she had been carrying finally turned into tears.
She knew what this goodbye meant.
From that night on, her only daughter would no longer be by her side.
I stood there completely lost.
I didn’t even know how to cry.
I just stood with my mouth open, sobbing helplessly as tears ran down my face.
I had been her only child.
Her only companion.
The only person she had left to love.
But I couldn’t save her.
The only way I could have helped was by destroying myself.
I couldn’t do that.
Later, when I thought about everything that had happened, all I felt was sorrow.
My mother and I had been like two stray dogs wandering through the world alone.
All our lives, we had struggled for something as basic as food.
We had suffered simply because we needed to eat.
Sometimes it felt as if our entire existence had been reduced to one simple need:
We had to find food.
To survive, we had been forced to give up our dignity, our security, and almost everything we had.
But I no longer hated my mother.
Not anymore.
For the first time, I truly understood her.
None of this had been her fault.
We had not been born to suffer.
We had not been meant to live this way.
It was the world around us that had been cruel.
Hunger and the simple need to survive had pushed ordinary people into choices they never should have had to make.
After that goodbye, something inside me finally became quiet.
All the anger and confusion I had carried for so long began to fade.
And that night, the crescent moon did not appear.
It was strange.
For years, whenever I cried, that thin moon had been somewhere above me.
But not that night.
There was only darkness.
A deep, endless darkness without even the smallest light.
My mother disappeared into the night.
Her figure slowly faded until she looked like nothing more than a shadow.
Then she was gone.
I would never see her again.
I don’t even know where she eventually died.
And I doubt she was ever buried beside my father.
Perhaps she had a grave somewhere.
Perhaps she didn’t.
I will never know.
She was the only family I had in this world.
She was my mother.
My friend.
My whole world.
After she left, the world suddenly felt enormous.
And I was completely alone in it.