The Unicorn

She could not help noticing the two girls beside her exchanging sideways glances and suppressing their laughter.

She had no idea why.

Their eyes were fixed on her mother, who was sitting on a small mound just outside the classroom.

What had her mother done to deserve such ridicule?

Was it wrong that she had brought lunch for her daughter?

Or was sitting on the ground somehow a crime?

The questions swirled through the little girl’s mind.

Yet seeing her mother resting beneath the shade of the bending trees filled her with quiet joy. It was a rare moment of rest for the woman who worked tirelessly from dawn until bedtime.

Her mother was a woman without expectations. Even if she told her about the girls’ mockery, she knew exactly what her mother would say.

“Don’t let such things trouble you.”

Still, the uneasiness refused to leave her.

That afternoon, knowing her daughter would be busy with extra classes, her mother had walked all the way under the blazing sun to bring her lunch. Usually, she prepared both breakfast and lunch early in the morning. But today she had cooked something special. She couldn’t bear the thought of eating at home after leaving her daughter alone at school, so she had walked all that distance just to share the meal with her.

As she was leaving, she reminded her daughter not to waste a single bite.

The little girl’s eyes, however, searched only for one thing—whether her mother had remembered to bring an umbrella.

She tried to concentrate on the lesson again, but her classmates’ mocking laughter pulled her attention away.

She looked outside once more.

Another woman had joined her mother. She was the domestic worker employed by the family of one of those two girls, and she, too, had come to deliver lunch. The two women sat comfortably together, chatting as though they had known each other for years.

The girls’ sneering smiles did not fade until the women finally stood up and left.

Inside the little girl, anger toward her classmates, helplessness at being unable to defend her mother, and a quiet sorrow for her mother’s dignity became one overwhelming emotion.

By then, her mother was already too far away to hear anything.

She had crossed half the road in silence.

And, in many ways, she had crossed much farther in life.

That day, the little girl did not understand social hierarchy, nor did she understand the quiet strength with which her mother had risen above it.

She did not yet realize that beneath identical white school uniforms, children could carry invisible colours of class, silently inherited without a word.

She lacked the maturity to understand it.

At only ten years old, she could neither recognize the pride that had already taken root in her classmates’ hearts nor find the courage to challenge it.

All she knew was that her heart ached for the mother they had mocked.

Her eyes refused to leave the path her mother walked.

On the page before her, her pen lay motionless beside the unicorn she had been drawing.