Once upon a crime.
Not until Maytime
Some whinings are raising in the room darkness. There is a slight burnt wax odor and a volute of white smoke twirling till it evaporate totally.
Someone, strapped to a chair with arms, someone is trying to unfasten the leather ligaments, the metallic closing features and the knots. The fists are tighten, the wrists and the ankles are doing a dance. No effort can break it opens. The lass eyes crack into a torrent of tears. Rage and despair are in her voice when she shout:
"Will you forgive me, Maataa?"
Then, she speaks, in the dark, to herself. She is alone, alone and kept against her will.
"I've tried, I've tried so hard to get back home. To flee from here. Our bedroom has no window, and I and four other girls, are prisoners inside it. We do go out, to work on the farm or to do some shopping in the big town. I attempted a lot to flee during those opportunities. But of course, if I am still here, strapped to that commode, with an heavy head and heart, I have failed in each occasion.
I see no more the sun. I feel so weak. I am drained. I feel like that candle aside me, that just light off.
At the beginning, I must have tried each hour to escape. My mind was totally sets on it, at each second. Everything was considered as a tool to get out of there: comb, brush, scissors…everything. I was unable to stay still.
But now, I wonder why I even tried. I was so eager that I was blinded from it. After some nights, I had no choice but to sleep.
Whether I had slept or not was not something that bothered my keeper. I had a purpose here. My role of sister among the sisters and the work task I could accomplished. If I was to not cooperate, I was deprived of the following meal.
I am sorry I complained so much about your strictness toward me.
I am sorry I did all I can to not do my homework or to skip school. School was perhaps dull, but never did they made me crouched to wash my own vomit after I did it. Same with you and daddy. And even if he was all green when he was doing it, there was concern more about me than about the cleanness of the room I was in.
Never you would have shout at me to have destroyed a carpet when I had an 'accident'.
Never you took me by the hair to tow me where you wanted me to be.
There was always the 'three strikes', like in baseball.
"I told you, Haley, don't make me repeat. I am counting till three, and if at three you are not out from under the couch, I am removing the couch from over you! One… two…"
And I was usually out. The worst punishment was to be put into your bedroom to think about why and what I did, and to come with something to console you to have make you or another person angry.
Your bedroom is uninteresting. Drab walls color, drab sheet cover. No perfume, no make-up, no toys, no TV. But at least, I was able to do my crisis, to shout a loud and to cry. I was unrestrained.
I promise I wont complains again. I promise I will comply and no more get you in a bad situation when you have to punish me up. More, I pledge!
But, please, just get me out of here…I beg you!"
The chair is slightly put upward, then thuds on the floor with the two legs that had touched back the floor. For a moment again, the little girl cries.
"I miss you all! I miss all that I had, all that was my life.
I truly thought often, lately, that not waking up in the next morning would be better than being here. But I so want to see you all again. Even Mam Ellen and her two sons I hated so much for pulling on my braids.
This person that took me made me call her "Mother" and she speak to me like if I was her daughter, Kasha. When she is not in the room, only Kamla still dare calling me by my real name.
Mother is all for the girls. She is their teacher, their cook, their nurse, their guardian, but also their executioner.
Looking her act, I wonder if she honestly love them. Like everything in this house, like every animals present on that farm, she seems to more own them then love them. She is very upset when something unexpected happen, be it a wrong number call or the wind that suddenly blown in from a crack in the wall.
Each time, one of us is obviously the instigator, so we all have to be punished. Do you know how many times that happen in a day?
This life is near unbearable for me."
She sighs opening her mouth with some clack of the tongue."I would take a good glass of water…I lost the count of how much hour they are gone now.
We got up early. We always eat a bowl of oatmeal. Always the same with the same texture. All the day, all the meals we ate, are so alike the previous one that I lost the count. Which days of the week are we today?"
There is a silence, before she answers to her own question with a shrug that makes her grin with pain.
"I could not tell. I didn't abandon my project of breakout from here. I am thinking of it right now. But I don't see farther than my nose. Each days, that matter occupies a big chunk of my brain. I have interest in all that could portent the success of such an enterprise.
But I ought to be careful. Even during our stroll into the big cities. I know no one, I know not the place. I might be fleeing from here only to get in more serious troubles. And that, I can't risk it.
Whereas I can say that I am outmost surprised of the frank collaboration I received from the other girls that the Mothers wants me to call "My sisters". I can't expect such a dedication from total strangers, I fear.
We tried those escape together and the fact we got punished also the same ways after each endeavors only anchored more the bond we got for each others. It is getting harder to leave them here if ever I got to.
The punitions we took in were all out of proportion. Like if you would have taken a hammer to kill a fly. Yours are nothing in comparison. The girls were all in awe when I shared it with her. The comment that went out commonly was "Only that? You are sure? It would have deserve this or that…"
I made so many nightmare out of it. I mean, for the punitions. Due to them, I know now of the smell of a steamed skin, the sound of a breaking bone and of the appearance of blisters. Having a scratch is now, seriously, the least of my problems.
There is work, also, that is both a blessing and a curse at the same time.
The thing I do enjoy the most is tending to the herbs garden. They have like a low ceiling greenhouse. Flowers, spice plants and herbs are growing up there. Nothing is classified. That is all a mismatch.
I remember when you brought me into a real greenhouse. All is grouped and identified in there. You know when you are standing aside a box of Italian parsley or when it is coriander. You took time to explain all that to me, with Grand-ma, and I did learn a bit. So I did vent my anxiety by transferring that knowledge to the other girls. I dreaded that the Mother would had punished us for it, but curiously, she seemed please. She never shout at me to shut up, or anything.
She soon afterward brought me some coffee wooden stirring sticks and a marker. She briskly asked I note on it what each plant was. So I did write what I knew. Not a lot, but I knew some. For the one I was ignoring the name, I just made something up. It does me some good on my moral when I found out there was a huge plant of Thyme. It smells so much like you, Maataa."
The little girls took some brief breathing and stirs as much as it is allowed. Thenshe continues her monologue.
"In the barn, aside the one I have met Kamla in, there is chicken. Hens, more precisly, and one aggressive rooster. Each time we pops in the place, it jumps on us and try to pick our eyes. Kala has one dead eye due to one blow that attained its goal. So she is the one entering first, and taking the broom to fend our friend away while we collect the eggs.
After the breakfast, till the lunch, we are locked back in our room. The mother goes out and I think she is selling up the fresh eggs we got. I am not sure. Just that the basket has vanished when we do go back in the kitchen.
While she is away, we have plenty of things to do: Tiding the room, copying a passage of a book, over and over, any other things the Mother mentions upon leaving us. That depend, mostly, of her fantasy of the day.
Rarely, it happens that we finishes all she asked us to do before she comes back. But when it occurs, we do use that extra time to do some categorically forbidden things, like learning songs, playing and telling each other stories.
I normally am the one telling them. They are just so curious about how the life is outside the farm. They never heard most of the song I listened to. None, not even the old one.
So I taught them some of my favorites. But it was into brief moments. I got caught this morning.
It is hard to know what would displease her. Not two days ago, it was alright to sing. She even asked me more of it. Then, suddenly, she lectured us about the fact that singing was a sin. Any of us that will be taken at it will be restrained on the commode for three hours.
And that is where I ended up, while the others are out to see their grand-mother.
No underwear, strapped there in a dark room. I've been warned to not do any mess, because otherwise , I would have to wash it up. I knew she was not joking.
Just before her usual leave, before I was caught singing, she asked Kamla to prepare the coffee. She found it too mild, so she asked her to place her arms in the air, in front of her. She poured the boiling liquid, spreading it all over the already bruised arms."
The little girl choke on a cry, but then she wiggles. Something is brushing her naked legs.
"Awe…that is Queeny." She exclaims."That is a she-cat that find a way to enter her. The Mother tolerate her. She is pregnant and we all are thrilled at the idea to have kitten, soon, under our care."
There is some other thud and the door opens. The girls are pulled by their hairs, and pushed in. The door is slammed.
"I thought you forgot me." Makes the little girl, with narrow eyes because of the light that is now on.
"We have not." Makes Kamla. And Kaia untied her ligaments, one after the other. She rubs the red marks.
"My, you must have putted all a fight to the chair." Exclaim Kala. "We won't eat supper tonight. Mother is unpleased. But she should bring you water."
So when the Mother showed up, she asked for a glass of water and was brought in the bathroom. She has her head hold under water.
"Have you drunk enough? Now go to bed and that I hear you not complain to go to the back house." The Mother warned her.
Of course, that night, she had an accident. Not strong enough to go to the commode, she wet the bed. The sisters sleeping with her did not complain.
Kamla, that was unusually sleeping appart in the bed where the rotten Kasha was placed some years ago, tried to make it look like she did it by switching the sheets, but the mother happenned to open the door right at that moment.
And the scrubbing, rubbing, cleaning of the room was to redo again. This time, the Mother was all on Haley.
"Stop crying. You are weak, Kasha. That is why I never love you. You look like your father." She reiterated over and over with her acute foot piercing into her side by tiny kicks.
That night, Haley continues a bit her monologue, in a whisper.
"I don’t know if I can call that ‘adaptation’. I hope not. That has been a week till I arrived here and I saw more than the ever aired on CSI. The taste of it is bitter, but I learned more each day from my co-captives.
My friends, now, may I say.
We all suffer when one suffer. All is excluding Kara. But that is not her fault. She is a special little girl. She did like we are unable to, she completely disconnected from the reality. When I looked into her eyes, I understood a lot more of what my mother used to call, "Having vertigo." Kara is not taller or littler than me. Just that her eyes are so empty. It frightened me to peer in it. But she grew fond of me. She held my hand anytime we got to be together, and I mean, very tight. That surprised my guardian as well as my ‘sisters’. I didn’t ask for it. She sniveled each time we had to be separated. But the mother just cuffed her and hauled her away without a concern. She was constantly with the mother.
That does not make her more pampered than us. Like two days ago, I found out her little finger on the right hand was broken at least in two places. It hurt me inside. I felt very bad for her. If daddy would have been there, he would have known what to do.
During the activity we had that afternoon, I made her like a cast with the play dough. That is when I received my first blow on the side of the head. I bled of the nose and had to wash it up.
Once in the intimacy of the common room I am sharing with the others girls, they cuddled me. One on five was particularly attentive to me all night long.
"Kasha, it’s Kaia. Are you sleeping alright? Still with us?" she was frequently whispering, till she finally fell asleep as well than I.
On the morning, I was dizzy. I threw up. Of course, we teamed. So the Mother was unable to distinguish who did the stinky pond. We all had to wash the room thoroughly. And when she said ‘thoroughly’, she was not kidding.
"In silence, please, ladies." She repeated. No giggle, no chatter were admitted. If we were caught at it, we had a kick in the side. A gentle one, though. But that is hurtful, despite.
When she left the room, we waited a little till we heard her tempo no more.
"Wait till you see Ilta." They said, looking at each others with stern glances. "If you thought this was cruel, you saw nothing."
They took advantage of this time to stretch out.
"Who is Ilta?" I asked. I simply needed to know.
"Mother bad twin." Kamla answered as they quickly descended back to their knees.
"Hush!She is coming back." Spoke Kala, or Two on Five.
I must have frowned or something, because she also pinches me behind the ear, so I kneeled back as well, scrubbing the floor like we were doing when the Mother left.
She looks over at us with disdain.
I promptly understood why the girls liked so much going to sleep where I was strolling behind the first day.
But now, since the eve they came back from their grand-mother, I am greifing. Kamla sleep apart of us. And she is not hugging me as she was the prior day.
I'll have to ask her about this.
I wonder, Maataa. What would be better for me? Should I endure all that till someone find me up or should I tried to flee again?
I perfectly know that attempting to flee is almost assured death. And that could also mean you won't find me before May or perhaps June. That is the reason of my hesitation now, to act again. I'll sleep on it. Good night."
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