Andrea's scrutiny

CW: abuse

It was a deliciously warm afternoon and then sun was shining pleasantly on Andrea’s face. The weather was a strange, but welcome, surprise as it was winter and the previous week had consisted of chilling wind and heavy rain. 

Despite the fact that the weather was so nice, allowing her dry out her clothes and air out the house, Andrea couldn’t shake the dark cloud hanging over her. She had been feeling like this for a while now, growing increasingly more frustrated as the months had worn on. No frustrated was no longer the word for it, more like defeated now. The days had been getting harder and with Benny’s hours being cut yet again they had barely enough money to feed the children after the rent and bills had been payed, let alone themselves. She wondered if it was worth working by candlelight at night now, rather than fill the room with the dull electric buzz she had become so accustomed to.

Her thoughts were disturbed by a loud bang coming from inside and Andrea realised how long she had been sitting outside on the rickety old chair, scrutinising what her life had become.

A child was calling for her now, with the wobble of newly emerging tears in their voice. Andrea couldn’t help but wait just a few extra seconds of some-what peace before facing the storm awaiting her. 

Charlotte had fallen off the very table she had been told not to climb just a half hour before, hit her head and was inconsolable. A bump was already forming and the other three children were crowding around to offer their sympathy. Amongst the crying and the chattering children, Andrea could feel herself drifting away from her reality as she rocked her daughter back and forth. The sounds grew quieter and she closed her eyes. She remembered how her own mother would rock her after a fall and kiss her head, assuring her everything would be ok. If only she could run back into her mothers arms and be told that everything would be ok. But she couldn’t. Those days were over and she could never return home, never again would she feel the comforting embrace of her mother. She felt tears push themselves out of her eyes and drift down her cheeks. 

The children quietened when they saw their mother crying. They didn’t often see her cry and it was an unusual sight. Filled with concern, they wrapped their little arms around Andrea and Charlotte, forcing the bundle of them to collapse onto the little couch that stood with three legs and a brick to fill the place of the fourth. The five of them sat there, arms and legs and faces all smooshed up together until Charlotte and Andrea stoped crying. 

Later that night when the children were asleep and the last of the dishes had been done, Andrea sat down and pulled out the rug she had been working on. However she couldn’t bring herself to start and instead found herself thinking of her mother again. Thinking of home again.

Her and Benny had married young. Too young many would say, but they had been in love. They still were, despite the troubles the world had thrown at them. However her father had not approved. For as gentle and loving as her mother had been, her father was equally as rough and hardened, likely due to the mine explosion that had taken his leg and half his hearing. Or perhaps from the lies of his religion that had twisted his mind and thoughts.

The teachings of Corvin stemmed from a mysterious book that had supposedly been found in the mines hundreds of years ago, containing messages of how to live and prophecies predicting the future. Unfortunately many of these prophecies became fulfilled, attracting hordes of impressionable miners from the area that had suffered at the hands of poverty for many generations. 

Andrea had been five when her father found a way with Corvin. It was not long after his accident, and he needed support. He needed something to believe in. He had found a family in the church and people who gave him the help he needed. Andrea and her mother never knew what happened at the secret meetings, but each night when he would come home in a blissful daze they were grateful for his lifted mood and that no hands would be placed heavily across their faces. 

As Andrea grew older, she had not been allowed to leave her home and instead learnt how to craft clothes, rugs and pottery with her mother, listening to her stories and songs from a world far away from the mines. A world without the beatings of an angry father and a town filled with people worn thin by a lack of money and a surplus of hard-work.

In the house next door, Benny was also growing older. As children they had played secret games through the fence, sharing morsels of food and imagining they were great explorers discovering new worlds among the stars. Now as blossoming adults, they shared secret kisses and warm embraces behind the old tin water tank that separated their yards. 

They had always planned on leaving and running far away to the world her mother had told her about, but when their marriage had been sorely taken by Andrea’s father their plans were forced to become a reality. 

Her father had threatened murder on Benny, raging that his plans of marrying Andrea to a fellow Corvin had been disturbed. In the night her mother unlocked Andrea’s door, shoving a small bag of food and memories of their life together into her hands. She whispered that Benny was waiting with her father’s car and that she needed to leave now.

Andrea and her mother held each other in a final tight embrace and her mother whispered that she was sorry for the life she had let Andrea live and that she loved her. Then she was gone and Andrea was in the faded front seat of her father’s car about to start a new life.

The next morning her father would awaken to discover that both his car and his daughter had disappeared, his wife was sitting calmly in her usual seat with breakfast placed at his usual seat. His body would fill with rage and thoughts of killing Benny swirled back into his mind. He would walk out of the room and moments later return to put three bullets through his wife’s head.

Months later when Benny and Andrea had found a home in the city, they received the news of her mothers death. Her father had been arrested but had been found dead in his cell before his trial, with traces of cyanide showing in the autopsy. 

The years to follow was filled with bought of grief, blessings of children, job losses, new homes. Waves of blessings and curses, with a recent blow in the economy placing the young family in a state of desperation.

Yet, they had no choice but to continue fighting the injustices of their lives. There was nowhere to return to, no home other than the ones they would make themselves.