Chapter 35

Jasmine


Finding Martha's door open, I barged into her room.

"Jasmine,'' Martha looked profusely surprised by my sudden arrival, hiding something into the trunk and quickly shutting it down to avoid my eyes.

"I am glad you have come back, how was your trip?" She smiled and walked over to me.

Despite noticing it, the elastic my attention went to the fact the woman who have never hidden anything from me tried keeping something away from my eyes.....or so I had thought that she had never hidden anything from me. 

Thousands of questions bombard my head without any pause, the shattering feeling of everything being broken into pieces in the need of finding an answer that could solve the dilemma; The mess I was stuck in.

"Who am I, Martha?" Out of all questions, the one that left my mouth was this, my voice suppressed in the rage arising amidst all.

"What?" She asked, flabbergasted, "What are you talking about?"

"Who. AM. I?" I emphasized every word, the anger fighting to get out in the form of the fire that could destroy everything.

"Jasmine....why are y-you asking this?" She stuttered taking a few steps back as I began walking closer, she seemed scared but not because of me or the change I could feel within myself too.

She seemed scared of something I might figure it....

"Answer my question, Martha."

"Jasmine, listen....you need to calm down at first," she tried to reason.

"I told you to answer my question, why are you trying to hide from me?!"

"Jasmine, it's not like that. There's no such thing," she once again tried to cover up the truth I was looking for.

"Don't fucking lie to me, Martha. Tell me the bloody truth! " I shouted, "WHAT IS MY IDENTITY?!"

"WHO AM I?!"

"You are what you are, Jasmine! A human!" She yelled out, her emphasis on the word human-made it seem more than obvious that the truth was far more different than what she was trying to portray.

"That's not the fucking truth, I know that's not the truth,'' I speedily walked towards her and grabbed her arms, too lost in the rage to even realize that the color of my eyes had changed into....red, like a burning flame.

"You are and always have been hiding a lot of things from me, Martha! I have never doubted you but now I know.....I could be everything but not a human!"

"Yes, you are a human. Whether you accept it or not, Jasmine, that's your identity and you have to live with that!" Her voice too has gotten filled with rage and indecipherable determination.

"No! You can't keep it hidden from me anymore!" I spat, "For all these years you have left my questions unanswered; Every time I'd ask you about those flashbacks and those voices, you'd always kept those unsolved and hidden as if you are keeping me away from the depth of the reality. But now, I need my damn answers, Martha!"

"Then you are at the wrong place, Jasmine," She shrugged my hands away, and looked outside of the window in dismissal, "Because I have got no answer for you."

Her careless behavior and visible reluctance made me more furious than before. The anger and sadness both attacking from every side were making me lose my control piece by piece.

"You know who my parents were, you know where they used to live. You know everything I need to know" My words weren't tied in the boundary of a question, "YOU KNOW MY PARENTS!"

She did not say anything in response, instead, she kept her stare outside the window.

"Tell me who were my parents? Tell me about them, Martha. Where did I used to live, how those memories have vanished from my mind?!"

"I have already told you, Jasmine. I don't have any answers to your questions." She walked to the other side of the room, avoiding my gaze at all costs.

"YOU ARE LYING!"

"I don't know what you are expecting me to say but Jasmine, get this inside of your head very clear—Your identity is what you are, what you have always known and nothing is ever going to change that, did you hear me?!" She shouted, said from her anger a strange kind of fear had taken place in her eyes that had to do with something about my doubts.

"Who am I?!"

"A human!"

"That's a lie!"

"If you want to think so, then I don't care. I have told you all I had to, there's not a single word more that you are going to hear in this matter. No matter what you ask, the answer is not going to change. You are what you are— A human, raised by a human who found you by the riverside. The past you want to know had been washed away in the waves of time, beyond discovery." She let out.

"You know everything, Martha. But you are denying it," I sneered, "You fucking know the damn truth but you are keeping it hidden. You don't love me, you don't care for me ....because if you had loved me, you wouldn't have done this to me. You would have told me the truth. "  The tears gathered in my eyes, in anger and the feeling of betrayal.

Her eyes softened and she tried to reach me, "Jasmine...''

"No! Don't touch me," I moved away from her touch.

Hurt flashed in her eyes as she saw me backing away from her, the guilt remained there too but that did not thaw the ice that kept her determined on her unjust decision.

"Whether you tell me or not, I'll find it out. I'll find out who my parents were and if they are alive or....not. I am going to unfold everything I deserve to know even if I get no support from you at all." I roughly wiped away my tears and headed for the door.

She remained mum until I had reached for the door and then she spoke...

"Don't try to dig the secrets of the dreadful past, Jasmine. Because the one who is going to face the demolition the most is you. Remember, the one who resides by the shore in hope of detection are the ones who get struck by the destructive waves of the tsunami once the boundaries are broken."

My feet halted at their place as I heard her, looking through the meaning of every one of her words but keeping all my emotions at bay.

"Then I'll gladly let it ruin me." With that, I head out of her room.

If I had any doubts even at the very corner of my mind that Martha might not know the truth I was looking for, today her behavior had made it very clear to me. If anyone I knew had the answers to the unsolved mysteries of my past and present, was Martha.

And if there was anyone who did not want me to know about my past, was her.