It was a sunny and warm, late summer, Sunday afternoon. I was holding a ladder steady for my father as he fixed some guttering at the edge of the roof at the front of our house. The garden at the front of the house was mostly lawn but surrounded on 3 sides by thick, high, beech hedging. The driveway to the house cut though the beech hedging and ran alongside the lawn before stopping next to the house.
As I held on to the bottom of the ladder I could see my mum watering flowers at the other side of the driveway. It had been almost 3 years since I saw her in a fight, and it was still something that I thought about every day. Today was no different, I found myself watching my mum and wondering what she would have looked like fighting in the clothes she was wearing today.
Her dark brown, shoulder length, hair was tied back in a ponytail, allowing the sun to give a warm glow to her tanned skin. she was dressed in a blue and white, light cotton, kaftan that was fastened up the front with small buttons. It was open enough from the neck that when she stood straight it was tight enough to show off all of her curves, but when she bent over it was loose enough that if you happened to be standing in the right place, then let’s just say the view was.. interesting.
I snapped out of my daydream as I heard my mums wooden scholl sandals crunching on the pebbles of the driveway as she walked towards us. As mum reached the lawn she stopped and turned to face a rusty, blue coloured, Lada Riva car coming up our drive. The car stopped just next to my mum and turned off its engine.
My mum stood, with hands on hips, facing the car as the as the woman driver opened the car door and got out. The woman was similar in height to my mum, dark brown hair, similar build, though not as tanned. She looked younger by a few years and was wearing small, tight, jean shorts and a loose fitting green V-necked t-shirt.
“Are you the owner here?” the woman asked in a stern voice. “Yeah, what’s it to you?” my mum answered, taken aback by the tone of the visitors voice. The woman continued “How dare you! How dare you embarrass my boyfriend like that in front of his friends. Telling him he was not welcomed here and that the guys in the shed should make sure that they count their tools before he left!”
I felt my hands tighten on the ladder. My mum's shoulders squared, her jaw set.
“Excuse me?!” My mum answered sternly “Who are you to come to my home and lecture me about anything? He is a tarry-fingered, thieving, scumbag, who was lucky I didn’t set the dogs on him when I caught him trying to break into my house!”
The woman's face flushed red. She moved closer, the gap between them shrinking to barely a foot.
And boyfriend?” Mum gave a short, sharp laugh. “Honey, please, I thought he was your grandson!”
“Bitch!”
The slap came so fast I barely saw it. The crack echoed off the house like a gunshot. My mum's head snapped to the left, the red imprint of fingers blooming instantly on her cheek.
Her right hand came up fast, fingers tangling in the other woman's dark hair, yanking hard. The woman shrieked and grabbed at my mum's hair with both hands. They crashed together, a tangle of limbs and fury.
"Yes!!! Smash her! " My father's voice came from behind me, excited, urgent. I heard him jump down from the ladder. "Rip her face off!"
They staggered across the lawn, locked together, pulling hair and clawing at faces and necks. The woman in the green shirt drove my mum backward into the beech hedge. The branches shook violently. Mum's kaftan caught and tore down the front, buttons popping loose and scattering across the grass, leaving her breasts exposed. She shoved back hard, and they both went down onto the lawn in a heap.
I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to look away, watching the two brawling women.
They rolled, grappling, each trying to pin the other. Fingernails raked across skin, leaving angry red trails. The woman got on top, her hands finding my mum's throat. Mum bucked and twisted, her knee coming up hard into the woman's ribs. The grip broke. They separated, scrambling to their feet, both breathing hard.
"Come on then you fucking bitch!" my mum spat, blood at the corner of her mouth.
They came together again, this time on the gravel driveway. The crunch of stones under their feet, under their bodies as they grappled and staggered. The woman's V-neck tore down the front as my mum grabbed for purchase. She responded by sinking her teeth into my mum's forearm. Mum screamed and drove her fist into the side of the woman's head.
"Hit her! Kick her fanny in!" my father shouted, clapping his hands together.
Time seemed to slow down as they fought across every inch of the front garden—rolling across the lawn, crashing against the Lada, stumbling through the flower beds my mum had been watering.
Both women were marked now. Scratches crisscrossed their arms, necks, faces and breasts. My mum's kaftan lay in a torn heap in the middle of the lawn. The other woman's shorts were grass-stained, her green shirt ripped off and lying on the driveway. A dark bruise was already forming under her left eye. My mum's lip was split, bleeding down her chin.
But the younger woman was stronger, or fresher, or just more desperate. She caught my mum with a wild punch that landed solid on the cheekbone. Mum staggered. The woman pressed forward, driving her back resulting in both women falling onto the edge of the lawn.
They grappled there, rolling over in a tangle of legs, hands buried in each others hair, breasts mashed together. Both women gasping for air as they struggled and clawed at each other. “cxnt!” the woman spat as mum dragged her nails over the woman’s breast, leaving angry red scratches. The woman retaliated by headbutting my mum in the face. “Urghh!” mum winced from the blow.
"Mum—" The word caught in my throat.
The women rolled off the lawn and on to the gravel. Stones bit into skin. She kept one hand twisted in my mum's hair, the other pulling her head back at a vicious angle, punching her in the face with the other hand.
"You done?" the woman panted, her voice raw. "You fucking done bitch?"
My mum's hands clawed at the woman's wrist, but weakly. Her chest heaved. Blood dripped from her nose and split lip onto the white stones.
"You fucking done bitch!?," the woman demanded, jerking her head back further.
A long moment. The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant trickle of the hose.
"Please," my mum finally whispered. "Please, stop."
The woman held her there a few seconds longer, making her point by punching my mum in the face another two times, then released her and rolled away. My mum curled into a ball, her face turned into her arm, blood and sweat dripping onto the gravel beneath her.
The woman stood over her, topless, chest heaving, face, breasts and body scratched and bruised but victorious. She looked at my father, then at me. My father cheered excitedly “Yes! That was fantastic!”
She turned away and walked unsteadily back to her car, yanked the door open, and got in. The engine turned over, coughed, then caught. She reversed down the driveway too fast, stones spraying, then was gone.
The silence that followed was absolute.
My mum stayed in a ball on the gravel, head down, shoulders shaking. I couldn't tell if she was crying or just trying to breathe.
My father walked over to her, looked down for a moment, then offered his hand.
She didn't take it.
He reached down anyway, his fingers closing around her upper arm, trying to pull her up.
"Get OFF me!" Her voice was raw, vicious. She wrenched her arm away so violently she nearly fell sideways. "Don't you fucking touch me!"
My father stepped back, hands raised, startled by the fury in her voice.
My mum stayed there on the gravel, breathing hard, and I saw it then—the moment she became aware. Of the missing kaftan. Of how much skin was exposed. Of us watching her. Of her defeat played out on our front lawn for anyone to see.
Her hands moved instinctively to cover her breasts. Her face flushed deep red beneath the bruises and scratches, and for a terrible moment I thought she might cry.
But she didn't.
Instead, she pushed herself to her feet. Slowly. Deliberately. Gravel stuck to her knees and palms. She swayed slightly, then steadied herself. She looked at my father with an expression I'd never seen before—something between contempt and humiliation and rage all twisted together.
Then she moved to the lawn, picked up the torn kaftan where it had been ripped off, and wrapped it around herself with as much dignity as she could muster. She then stepped into her discarded sandals. Her movements were careful and controlled.
She turned toward the house, her back straight despite everything, and walked. Not hurried. Not running. Just walking, each step measured and deliberate, her wooden scholls crunching on the gravel with the same rhythm as when she'd approached the car ten minutes earlier.
She reached the front door, pulled it open, and stepped inside.
The door slammed behind her hard enough to rattle the frame.
My father and I stood, surrounded by the wreckage—scattered buttons, trampled flowers, dark spots on the gravel that were most likely blood.
My father shrugged his shoulders and grunted disproval at my mum rejection of help, walked over to the ladder, and started climbing back up to finish the guttering.
I looked at him for a moment, then turned toward the house.
The front door was still vibrating slightly from the slam. I opened it quietly and stepped inside.
I found her in the hallway, standing in front of the full-length mirror in her white satin and lace knickers. The torn kaftan lay in a crumpled heap at her feet. She was checking herself over, turning slightly to see the damage—the scratches running down her arms and breasts, the darkening bruises on her ribs, the bite mark on her forearm already purple and swollen.
She was crying. Soft, quiet sobs that shook her shoulders. Not the violent grief of someone broken, but something worse—the sound of someone who'd fought to defend her home and lost, who'd been humiliated in front of her family, who was now cataloguing the evidence of her defeat in the privacy of her own hallway.
She caught sight of me in the mirror's reflection.
Our eyes met for a second. Then she looked away lifting an arm to cover her damaged breasts. “I’m sorry “ I said. “it’s not your fault” mum replied through sobs “I’ll be ok. Better go back and help that idiot outside before he starts to complain, I’m going for a bath.”
I turned, opened the front door and headed back out to hold the ladder again, thinking about everything I had witnessed in the past 15 minutes.
