A childhood story that I keep thinking about

Hello Reader,

I hope you are having a great day, wherever you may be right now.

I just wanted to share a story from my childhood that I cannot get out of my mind, thought someone may find it interesting.

This happened to me when I was still in primary school, to give some context: my mother was cheated on by my father and they recently divorced, my father moved out with the woman that he had cheated on my mother with. My mother is now dating a new man, I usually give them their numbers when I first meet them (why did I do that?), and this guy was... number 6 I think? Let's call him number 6.

Number 6 was a young gentleman, younger than my mother I think he was in his early twenties? He drove a red car and often brought my mother flowers.

When he interacted with me, he would ask me to teach him another language, to which I would elaborate a great deal on to make it easier for him to understand. So it appeared to me that he was very attentive, and genuinely seemed to care for a relationship beyond just getting laid.

After maybe two weeks or so, number 6 visits our apartment in a drunken state and my mother lets him in. He begins to yell profanities which causes my mother a great distress, as she has not subjected herself to this kind of behavior before. It also burdens her that I (a young child) am listening and watching this as well.

After awhile, he calms down, apologises and they make up and move on.

Some time passes, number 6 visits us one day with a blue budgie inside a cage. This was a present for my mother, but my mother has never owned a pet before as she perceives them to be dirty, hard to tidy up after, and pointless to keep.

My mother still accepts the bird, despite making it clear she did not want this gift and number 6 had insisted it would be a companion for me also - I have never owned a pet, but I was very keen on raising one.

Another week passes and I have grown quite fond of the budgie, it stays inside it's cage the entire day because again, my mother thinks it would be messy if it left the cage.

Number 6 visits at night, at some point he begins to get extremely uncontrollably angry, he starts yelling which prompts my mother to usher him onto the balcony and lock the balcony door on him, whilst trying to tell me that everything will be okay. At this point, I am very concerned and have already offered to call the police. It is now very late at night, maybe around midnight?

Number 6 calms down, starts apologizing through the balcony door so my mother unlocks the door and lets him inside which was a huge mistake. He makes straight for the bird cage, picks it up with the bird inside, heads straight back to the balcony and HURLS the cage off in a fit of rage. We are 3 storeys above the ground floor. I hear a huge clang and crash, and now I am visibly upset.

Some arguing happens and maybe after an hour my mother finally gets him to leave, I watched him get into his car and drive off.

This felt like the first time in my life where I have just told my mother (instead of asking her if I can) that I will be going downstairs to see what happened with the bird, to which she vehemently tells me not to because it is dangerous, dark and there is no way the bird would still be there (if alive).

I make a short, teary but compassionate statement about needing to know. I head downstairs.

I hop the fence to the abandoned block next door, this is where I think the cage landed after assessing and not locating it immediately downstairs.

Shining my low watt torch, I locate the cage which had completely collapsed in on itself, the walls of the cage were piled on top of each other and flattened, the budgie was standing directly on top of the cage, unmoving.

This surprised me greatly, with my little knowledge of bird behavior at that age, I assumed the budgie would have simply flown off if it had survived, but deep down inside I was expecting to find it crushed and dead.

I pick up the bird with no resistance and start stroking it to reassure its safety, though also seriously doubting if my strokes were providing it with any comfort at all. My mother had silently hopped the fence and is now telling me that she will pick up the cage and try to fix it. So we make our wary back inside the apartment, I inspect and can see no visible injury to the bird, it must have made its way out from the cage and been stunned or too scared to move in the darkness.

Several days pass, the cage is fixed and the bird is safely back inside, eating and drinking water. Number 6 is calling and apologizing but my mother is emotional, but rejecting his attempts at communicating.

Another few days pass, I get home from school to find the bird and cage are both gone.

When questioned, my mother tells me that she gave it back to him.

I NEVER UNDERSTOOD THIS. NEVER.

You might think, ok why not ask her? To which I did not question her for many years because I was afraid it would cause her distress, and after awhile, I did ask but she told me she had forgotten.

See, I am thinking that if she simply wanted to have nothing to do with Number 6, she could have just cut ties with him and then given the bird up to an animal shelter, even set it free if she was lazy. Why would she ever give it back to him after he tried to obviously harm the innocent thing? Just so he can finish the job?

Thoughts?