The Shape of My Shadow: She’s my invisible shackles.
The Shape of My Shadow (Part 1) – The smell of burnt garlic rice always woke Elena before the alarm did. From the kitchen of their tiny, rented room, the rhythmic clack-clack of her mother’s worn sandals signaled the start of another day.
Sandra’s mother, Elena, was a woman carved from hard edges. She had only finished elementary school, a fact she rarely spoke about, but her expectations for Sandra were skyscraper-high.
A rhythmic clack-clack of her mother’s worn sandals signaled the start of another day. Her mother was a woman carved from hard edges.
The kitchen was thick with smoke, the sharp, bitter scent of charred garlic stinging Sandra’s eyes as she sat up on the thin mattress.
Outside, the first light of dawn was barely cutting through the Manila smog. The heavy clack-clack of Maria’s slippers suddenly stopped right outside the open doorway.
“Sandra! Gising na,” Elena called out, her voice scraping through the small room like sandpaper on wood. “You have twenty minutes before the jeepney fares get expensive.”
Sandra rubbed her eyes, stepping into the cramped kitchen where her mother was aggressively scraping the bottom of a blackened iron pan. “Ma, you burnt the rice again. I told you to let me cook it.“
“Burnt rice keeps you awake,” Elena said without turning around, slamming a chipped ceramic plate onto the small wooden table. A mound of dark, oily sinangag sat next to a single, perfectly fried egg.
“Eat. You need brain food today. The accounting midterms are no joke.“
“I know, Ma. I studied until two in the morning,” Sandra sighed, pulling out a plastic stool. “My head still hurts from all the ledger balances.”
Elena stopped scraping. She turned around, wiping her greasy hands on a faded dishcloth. Her face was lined with a tiredness that sleep couldn’t fix, but her eyes were sharp, unyielding.
“Good. If your head hurts, it means your brain is working,” Elena said, pointing a finger at Sandra. “I don’t want to see another eighty-five on your report card, Sandra. Eighty-five is for people who want to spend their lives cleaning other people’s houses.”
“An eighty-five is a good grade in university, Ma,” Sandra muttered, staring down at her plate. “The professor said only three people passed that exam.”
“Then you should have been the fourth,” Elena countered instantly, her voice dropping to a fierce, quiet intensity. “Look at my hands, Sandra. Look at them.”
Sandra didn’t look. She didn’t need to. She knew every callouse, every scar from hot oil, and the deep embedded dirt from decades of manual labor.
“I only made it to grade six because your grandfather thought girls didn’t need algebra to harvest rice,” Sandra continued, leaning over the table. “I spend every single centavo from the market on your tuition. I don’t give you a life so you can just ‘pass.’ You are going to graduate, you are going to wear that black gown, and you are going to sit in an air-conditioned office where nobody tells you what to do. Do you understand me?“
Sandra swallowed the lump in her throat, the pressure tightening like a band around her chest. “I understand, Ma. I’m trying.”
“Don’t just try,” Elena said, her expression softening by a fraction of a millimeter as she pushed the fried egg closer to her daughter. “Be better than me. Now eat the egg. I saved it for you.”
To Sandra, Elena wasn’t just a parent; she was a warden. “Why are you still in bed?” Elena barked, throwing open the door. “The sun is up. Your books should be open. Do you think tuition pays itself?”
“It’s Saturday, Ma,” Sandra groaned, pulling the blanket over her head.
“Saturday is for studying twice as hard,” Elena retorted, pulling the blanket away. “You want to end up scrubbing floors like me? Clean your desk. Now.”
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Sandra and her classmate Janice are sitting on the bleachers during their lunch break, watching the rest of their classmates on the field. Sandra slumps forward, holding her head in her hands.
Sandra: I swear, I am going to lose my mind. I can’t take this anymore.
Janice: (Setting her lunchbox down) Wow, okay. What happened now? Is it your mom again?
Sandra: Yes! Who else? She grounded me for the entire weekend because I got an 88 on my math quiz. An 88, Janice! That is still a B+.
Janice: Wait, seriously? A B+ gets you grounded? That’s insane. I got a 75 and my parents just told me to study harder next time.
Sandra: Must be nice. My mom went on this massive tirade about how “mediocrity isn’t welcome in this house” and how I’m ruining my chances for university. Then she took my phone. I had to sneak it out of her room just to bring it to school today.
Janice: Ugh, that’s so stressful. No wonder you look exhausted. Are you still allowed to come to Chloe’s birthday party on Saturday?
Sandra: (Sighs deeply) Nope. That’s completely off the table. I’m locked in my room and still do reviews of past lessons. I feel like a prisoner in my own house.
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Sandra hated the strictness. She hated the constant scolding, the lack of freedom, and the absolute refusal to let her hang out with classmates after school. Her peers at the prestigious St. Jude Academy—a prominent school where Sandra felt like an impolar among wealthy kids—had parents who smiled, drove them to malls, and praised their efforts. Her mother only demanded more.
By her sophomore year of high school, Sandra began to rebel. She started locking her room door, intentionally ignoring her chores, and answering back.
“You don’t understand anything!” Sandra screamed during one explosive argument. “All you do is yell! You don’t know what it’s like to be stressed by school. You didn’t even go to high school!” Elena abruptly raced her hand.
The slap never came, though Sandra braced for it. Instead, Elena froze. Her dark eyes, usually fierce, looked suddenly hollow. Without a word, she turned back to the stove, her shoulders tenser than usual.
Sandra left the house with the echoes of their screaming match still ringing in her ears. She hated how suffocatingly strict her mother was. Desperate for an escape, she spent the night at Janice’s house. Janice, knowing the volatile friction between them, welcomed her without question.
Back in the house, Elena started getting worried.
The kitchen clock struck midnight, its rhythmic ticking the only sound left in the heavy, suffocating silence of the house. Elena sat at the dining table, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea that had gone cold hours ago.
On the floor near the entryway lay the shattered remains of a ceramic vase—the physical casualty of the fierce argument they had hours before. Elena closed her eyes, but she couldn’t block out the echo of her daughter Sandra’s final words, screamed with a raw, agonizing hatred: “I wish you were never my mother!” Then, the definitive, earth-shattering slam of the front door.
Elena had assumed Sandra just needed to walk off her anger around their suburban neighborhood. But daytime had bled into a bruised twilight, and now, deep into the night, the streets outside were pitch black and drenched in a sudden, torrential downpour. Elena had called Sandra’s phone thirty-two times. Every single call went straight to voicemail.
Shouted voices suddenly shattered the quiet of the street outside. As the chaotic murmurs crystallized into a horrific announcement—that a little girl had just been struck by a car—Elena felt all the color leave her face. __
Part 2 drops next Monday. Don’t miss it!