I pretended to be asleep while my mother packed

Dear Delyara, I was eleven when my mother left my father. Tonight, at twenty-nine, I remembered that I was awake. For years, I told myself I slept through the packing and woke to find her gone. That version made her departure something that happened around me. The truth returned while I was folding clothes for my own move. I had been lying under a blanket, eyes closed, listening as she opened drawers and placed things into plastic bags. She paused beside my bed. I could smell her hand cream. She whispered my name once. I did not answer because I thought if she believed I was asleep, she might postpone leaving until morning. She kissed my hair and walked out anyway. My father told everyone she abandoned us. I believed him because anger was easier than remembering how frightened she sounded when she tried to wake me. She called later. He never let me speak to her. By the time I found her as an adult, illness had taken most of her memory. Tonight, I am packing to leave a man who has never hit me but has taught me to fear his footsteps. My daughter is asleep in the next room. I keep opening her door, waiting for her eyes to move beneath the lids, terrified she is awake and learning the same silence I once used to keep a mother who had to save herself.