Mother Humiliated My Eight-Month-Old Daughter in Front of Everyone at Christmas, but Her Face Suddenly Went Stiff When She Saw the Letter

My mother put the wine glass on the table and looked at the face of my eight-month-old daughter as if the child were standing not at a festive table, but in court.

“She looks somewhat strange,” she said loudly. “Are you sure she is healthy?”

The clinking of forks in the room stopped. The Christmas tree lights were still blinking, but for me the room suddenly became cold. Nino was leaning against my chest, dressed in a red bodysuit, with a small white rabbit-shaped clip on her ear. She knew nothing. She only clutched my sweater with her tiny fingers.

“Mom, stop,” my sister Salome said quietly.

My mother tilted her head slightly.

“I am just saying what everyone is thinking. Some children are not normal.”

My uncle squeezed the glass in his hand so hard that the veins showed on his knuckles. My aunt looked at her plate. Salome’s husband folded the napkin four times.

I looked at my mother and waited for a moment for her to smile and say that she had been joking. But she only shrugged.

“Don’t look at me like that, Ana. You know that I am telling you the truth.”

The truth.

She had used that word against me for years. My clothes were never good. My job was not serious enough. My small apartment was shameful. After the divorce, she said that a weak woman like me could not raise a child.

Every time, one of the family members would fall silent. And I kept the peace.

But peace that you buy at the price of a child’s dignity is no longer peace.

I stood up from the chair. The wooden leg scraped sharply across the floor.

“Where are you going?” my mother asked.

I did not answer. I went to the Christmas tree and picked up my daughter’s presents one by one. Salome’s knitted book. The little rabbit my aunt had bought. Two crookedly wrapped boxes that I had wrapped with my own hands at two in the morning, after Nino had fallen asleep.

My mother stood up.

“Don’t exaggerate. I didn’t mean it that way.”

I closed the zipper of the diaper bag. Its sound resembled the locking of a door.

“This is the last Christmas Nino will spend here.”

For the first time my mother said nothing. She looked around the room as if someone should stand in front of me and call me oversensitive. No one moved.

I went to the door. Beside it stood a miniature Georgian flag placed in a small blue ceramic vase. Nino’s cheek touched my neck. My hand trembled on the handle.

I heard Salome’s voice from behind.

“Mom… you didn’t tell her about the letter?”

I slowly turned around.

“Which letter?”

My mother’s face changed. She moved her hand toward the pocket of her cardigan and gripped the folded envelope hidden there.

I took one step toward her. Salome held her breath. My mother took out the envelope, placed it on the table, and pressed her fingers on it.

“Ana, you must listen to me first,” she said.

“No,” I answered. “I must read it first.”

I reached toward the envelope, but my mother seized my wrist with her fingers, and at that very moment the room door opened from outside…

The door opened and our neighbor, Mrs. Marine, stood on the threshold. In her hands she held a small wooden box, like the ones in which my mother kept Christmas candles in childhood.

“I’m sorry,” Marine said, “Salome called me and asked me to come here.”

My mother immediately released my wrist.

“You should not have been here,” she told her.

“That is exactly why I came,” Marine replied.

I took the envelope. The marks of my mother’s fingernails could be seen on the edges of the paper. I was still holding Nino, and her plastic clip clicked quietly with every movement.

“What is this?” I asked.

My mother pulled out a chair.

“A letter that I was supposed to give you at the right time.”

“And the right time became today, when you called my child sick?”

Salome lowered her eyes.

“Ana, I did not know she would act like this.”

“But you knew about the letter.”

“I knew that Mom was hiding something. I did not know what.”

My mother placed her hands on the table. On her left wrist she wore an old silver bracelet, whose little cross nervously touched the wooden surface.

“You always turn everything into drama,” she said. “I only want to protect the child.”

“From whom?”

My mother did not answer.

I opened the envelope. Inside lay one sheet of paper and a small memory card. The paper had a children’s doctor’s stamp. I read the first line and something broke inside me: an official conclusion about Nino’s health.

“This is from my doctor,” I said.

“Yes,” my mother said. “It says that she needs additional examinations.”

“But the doctor told me that she is completely healthy.”

Salome suddenly stood up.

“Ana, read it to the end.”

At the bottom of the sheet there was no doctor’s signature. Only a copy of the stamp. Beside it, several words had been written in an unfamiliar hand: “The mother will not be able to care for the child properly.”

My fingers went cold.

“Who wrote this?”

My mother cast a glance at Marine.

Marine placed the wooden box on the table.

“The second part of the letter is here.”

My mother moved toward her.

“Marine, stop.”

“I listened to you for eighteen years, Elene. Not this time.”

She lifted the lid of the box. Inside lay a small device, several printed messages, and sheets marked with dates.

I looked at my mother.

“What did you do?”

For the first time she could not hide her fear.

“I wanted to help you.”

“By taking my child away from me?”

“No one is taking anything away from you!”

Her voice shook the room. Nino startled and began to cry. I immediately pressed her to my chest. My mother fell silent, as if the child’s crying had given a stronger answer than her words.

Salome picked up the printed sheets.

“These are Mom’s letters to a lawyer.”

My mother hid her face in her hands.

“It was only a consultation.”

“It says here that Ana is emotionally unstable and that you should seek custody of the child,” Salome said.

I could hear the sound of blood in my ears. I turned the memory card in my hand.

“And this?”

Marine looked at me.

“What the camera recorded on the day your mother went to the doctor.”

My mother moved toward me.

“Do not turn it on.”

Those two words were enough.

I put the small device on the table and pressed the button with my finger. At first only crackling was heard. Then I recognized my mother’s voice.

“If the doctor does not sign, I will find another way. Ana’s child will be safer with me…”

My mother grabbed the device, but Marine seized her by the wrist.

“Listen to it to the end first, Elene,” she said.

A second voice sounded in the recording. A man’s, calm and unfamiliar.

“Then you should know, madam, that this recording is not alone…”

“…and if you submit an application to the court, another recording will follow,” the unfamiliar man’s voice said.

My mother let go of the device. Only Nino’s crying could be heard in the room. I rocked the child, but my own hands were trembling as if I had a fever.

“Who is this?” I asked.

Marine answered:

“Lawyer Irakli Meladze. I gave him everything.”

My mother put a hand on the chair.

“How dare you?”

“Because three weeks ago I heard at your door how you told her that you would take the child away and declare Ana crazy in front of everyone. Then I made this recording.”

Salome spread the sheet on the table.

“Irakli sent the letter too. The doctor officially confirmed that Nino is healthy. But Mother stole the doctor’s stamp and used it to create a false conclusion.”

My mother’s face turned pale.

“It is not false. I was truly worried.”

“Worry does not give you the right to declare a child sick,” I told her.

My mother looked toward me.

“You cannot raise her. You yourself barely survived the divorce.”

“And you took advantage of that.”

“I am your mother!”

“That is why it hurts more.”

When I said those words, I realized that I was no longer waiting for an apology from her. All my life I had waited for her to see me as I was. But my mother cared only about what I was supposed to be for her.

Marine handed me the second sheet.

“Read this too.”

It said that my mother had offered the lawyer to pay my apartment rent if I agreed to leave Nino with her temporarily. At the bottom stood my mother’s signature.

My apartment was small. Sometimes I truly struggled. But I had stayed awake nights for Nino, held her in my arms when she had a fever, and given every medicine exactly on time. My mother had turned my exhaustion into evidence against me.

“Why all this?” I asked.

My mother bit her lips.

“Because I made your father a promise.”

Everyone in the room looked at her.

“Father?”

“He said that the family would not fall apart. When you divorced your husband, everything collapsed. And I decided to save at least what remained to me.”

“My child is not the remnant of your family.”

My mother lowered her eyes.

Salome took out her phone.

“Irakli is on the line. He needs to know whether you are ready to sign the official statement.”

My mother leaned forward.

“Ana, do not destroy the family. I will apologize to you.”

“You should have apologized when you called Nino’s health into question.”

“Please.”

For the first time her voice no longer sounded like an order.

Irakli’s calm voice sounded through the phone:

“Mrs. Ana, the recording, the letter, and the doctor’s official conclusion will be enough for the demand for custody of the child to be stopped immediately. But there is one more issue.”

“What issue?”

“Your mother stated in the application that you no longer have contact with the child’s father. That is not true. She knows that the father has been sending you money every month for the last six months.”

I looked at my mother.

“What money is he talking about?”

My mother closed her eyes.

Irakli continued:

“The money was sent in your name, but it did not reach your account. Your mother received it through her own account.”

Nino’s rabbit clip fell onto the floor.

I bent down to pick it up, while my mother said only one word from behind:

“Ana, I swear, I kept this money for you.”

At that moment a new message arrived on my phone. The sender was Nino’s father, Davit.

“I found out everything today. I am coming to Tbilisi tomorrow morning. Your mother already has my signed statement…”