Tell me honestly am I wrong?

Don’t look at me that way. I get upset. I am perfectly normal like anyone of you whatever others may say about me. There had been a few accidents in the last one year for which I was in no way responsible. You can ask my mom and she will vouchsafe for my sobriety. Though in the last two months she acts a bit weird and looks concerned. There is a reason for it which I shall explain.

 Let me give a brief background about me and my childhood. I am an introvert and not given to much talking. My dark eyes are round and big that my mother used to say proudly they resembled a lotus on my beautiful face. But most people are jealous and accuse me of staring or gawking at them even when I look normally. This naturally made me angry and either I  shout at them or scratch them with my long nails.

It all started when I was 12.But I looked bigger than many of my classmates. There was this mathematics teacher who always spoke to me softly and patted me saying ‘good’ whenever my turn came to receive the homework note book from him. He personally handed over the note books to the girls and generally patted on the shoulders or gently touched their cheeks to express his appreciation. I felt his hands lingered a little longer on me than others and invariably got a feeling of cockroach running over me. I used to shrug away and he would laugh. I dare not tell my mother lest she stopped me from the school.

One day as I was on my way to home after the school hours, he was standing at the entrance of staff room. He beckoned me inside saying he had something to tell me. There was none in the room and I was scared to enter. He put his arms around me and dragged me close to him. I struggled to get out of his clasp but he embraced tighter.  Luckily I had my pen in my hand with me and opening the cap I stabbed him hard with the pen and its sharp nib several times on his neck and face. As he loosened his grip I ran away as fast as my feet would carry. My timid mother instead of taking up with the school authorities stopped me from the school at the instance of my paternal grandmother who was living with us. My dad worked in another town and visited once in two or three months. All my friends stopped talking to me since then. Other schools were not willing to take me.

With nothing much to do, I did most of the chores in the house to help my mom. My grandmother disliked my mom and always would be hurting her with insults and her poor back ground. She will carry tales to my dad when he came home with many false charges. The couple of days he spent would be a torture for mother with his beating her. I developed a deep dislike for my granny ever since she stopped my studies and frequently quarreled with her taking cudgels for my mom. One day I was cleaning the bath room and found it slippery. I sprinkled soap powder and was scrubbing with brush. I left it midway when my mother called me to fetch water from the well. As ill luck would have it, grandma meanwhile went inside to take her bath and fell flat. She had severe injury on the head and was in coma for a fortnight before breathing her last. My dad accusingly pointed his finger at me for her tragic demise and never failed to mention that I did not shed any tears for her.

Two months later my dad’s brother came for the first time after my grandma’s demise. He called me a killer and a madcap. I was naturally hurt as I was in no way directly responsible for grandma’s fall. When I resisted his accusation, he hit me. I suppressed my anger and went inside the kitchen. I had kept the cleaner liquid inside a bisleri bottle for want of any other container and wished to clean the cupboard and electrical parts of dirt. How can I be held responsible if my uncle drank from that bottle mistaking it for water? He had to be rushed to emergency and given repeated wash before he recovered after incurring a hefty bill that included ICU charges. He charged me that I wished to kill him too making my dad let lose his temper by showering blows on me.

Another instance soon after this comes to my mind. My dad had come for a week. My mom had gone to the temple and I was away at the neighbour’s house. When I returned unannounced I caught my dad without his knowledge his hugging the maid and cuddling her. I was shocked at this monstrosity and retraced unnoticed. I thumped the front door hard as if I was entering the house just then. A week later the maid who had taken the left over rice soaked in water and buttermilk vomited many times at her place. She was taken to the hospital by her neighbours but could not be saved. The doctors it seemed said it was a case of food poisoning and may be a lizard the cause of it. I did not tell anyone that I had seen a long object in the rice I mistook it for a cooked eggplant vegetable. My dad was saddest and my mother was admiring his compassion for the poor when he paid in full her  hospital bill.

I have been truthful to you. Tell me now whether I am insane as others accuse me of. My mom hardly talks to me these days and dad rarely comes home.