Writers 
HIS PERFECT WIFE 4
I woke up with Mama right beside me. For a few seconds, I lay quietly, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember what had happened. The house was unusually quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet we sometimes had in the early mornings, but a strange, heavy silence that made my chest feel tight. Something was wrong. I turned to Mama. She was lying still, staring blankly at the wall. Her eyes looked tired, swollen, and empty, as though she had spent the entire night crying. My young mind began searching for answers.
Where was Daddy?
Where had he gone?
Was he all right?
When was he coming back?
The questions kept running through my head, one after another, but there was no one to answer them.
“Where is Daddy?” I finally asked.
Mama didn't respond.
I moved closer to her and asked again, but she simply turned her face away from me. That was when I noticed something I had never seen before. Mama looked broken. For the next three days, everything in our home changed. The house that had once been filled with laughter became painfully silent. The sound of Daddy's voice was gone. His footsteps were gone. Even the little things that used to make our home feel alive seemed to have disappeared with him. Mama stopped cooking. She barely ate.
She didn't clean the house like she normally did, and she no longer bothered to ask me about school. Most of the time, she simply sat in one place, staring into space, with tears gathering in her eyes.
Sometimes, I would find her wiping her face quickly whenever she noticed me looking at her.
I didn't understand depression.
I didn't understand heartbreak.
I didn't understand what could make an adult lose interest in everything around them.
All I knew was that Mama was sad, and Daddy was gone. And somehow, I was beginning to feel scared. Every morning, I still went to school. But things were no longer the same. I would wake up, dress myself, pick up my schoolbag, and leave the house without breakfast. There was no warm food waiting for me anymore. Sometimes, Mama would hand me a small piece of bread or a few snacks if there were any left. I would carry them to school and eat them slowly, trying to make them last until the end of the day.
I stopped asking for more.
I knew Mama didn't have the strength to provide it. At school, I tried to behave as though everything was normal. I listened to my teachers and sat quietly with the other children, but my mind was always back home. I wondered if Daddy would return before I got home. I wondered if Mama would smile again. I wondered if our family would ever be happy like it used to be.
I was now ten years old.
My family had fallen apart.
One person's disappearance had turned a once happy home into something that felt like a graveyard.
My father was gone. My mother was hurting. And the family I once believed was perfect was slowly becoming nothing more than a memory.
