Better Luck Next Time

I didn't sign up for this!



I mean, I knew it was part of the job, but I kind of overlooked the painful parts in my excitement over the beautiful parts. Sometimes, you turn a blind eye to the pitfalls when you want something so bad. But no job is perfect.

I watched Marilyn as she lay in her hospital bed, all drowsy and delirious. The morphine was doing its magic, slipping her into a golden realm. She dove into a day on the beach, where she ran on snowy, soft sand chasing the setting sun. She must've been five or six. She squealed as her father caught up with her, scooped her up and threw her in the crisp, salt-laden evening breeze. Each time he threw her, she felt her little heart leap with the thrill of flying over everyone's gasping faces. The feeling that the golden orb was that much closer and the possibility of it grazing her tiny fingers was that much greater. The absolute certainty that her father's strong arms would never fail to catch her as she descended from the limitless ablaze sky.

Brandon walked into the hospital room with the three girls, who were buzzing with the excitement of seeing their mum after two days away from home. I was always filled with pride and satisfaction when I saw Marilyn's girls. They were almost as stunning as their mother, but they were more self-assured. I suppose they had to inherit something of value from Brandon, other than his nose and big ears.

I was hoping they would let her continue with her blissful slumber. Her knee operation was complicated, and she had been seizing up with pain an hour before the nurse gave her the morphine. Brandon looked at his watch and rolled his eyes. I guess he had another "meeting" to attend to, and Marilyn was disturbing his plans with her attempt at recovery.

The oldest girl, who thought of herself as her mother's right hand and best friend, shushed her blathering younger sisters so they would let their mother rest. But her father told her it was OK if she woke up; she had the whole day to continue sleeping and he didn't have all day.

Marilyn stirred. Her eyelids were fluttering befuddled butterflies. She tried to get them to peel back, but it was as if their wings were stuck in a jar of honey, too heavy to move. She wanted to move them with her hands, but her hands seemed even heavier than her eyelids. Through the fluttering wings, she saw her toddler.

"You're a fierce warrior!" she slurred, "So strong, so… black!"

"What the…?" Brandon shook his head, half amused, half annoyed.

The two older girls burst out laughing at their mother's hallucinations. The toddler, who was not black, laughed along with her older sisters. They left the billowing balloons and crafted cards covered with varying versions of rainbows and happy homes and left. The toddler, who threw a tantrum for not being able to stay with her mum, was lured out by promises of ice cream.

Marilyn drifted off again.

—---

Hanati nodded as the tribe's Chief, and her father, admonished her for her battle plan. 

"That was A DISGRACE!" he bellowed, eyes bulging, "We lost five of our best men!"

"But Chief…" Dabon started to defend her.

"Dabon!" she said sharply, "It's OK!"

Blood rushing to his head, he clutched his sword and stormed out of the tent.

"You're right," Hanati tried to keep her voice from quivering, "but if we hadn't sacrificed those five men, the whole tribe would be in flames right now!"

"Honestly, I don't know what will happen to this poor tribe when I'm gone!" he shook his head in disappointment. "With someone like you in charge! Might as well burn our dwellings with my own hands!"

"But Father!" she attempted to explain one more time that this had indeed been the only option. That those men would have certainly died, along with their families, if they, including herself and thirty more warriors, hadn't preempted the imminent attack by luring the Sanam Tribe into a battle on neutral grounds.

"Get OUT!" he screamed as he kicked a nearby tray of milk and dates.

Dabon was waiting outside the tent as she stormed out. He tried to catch up with her, saying things she was too mad to hear about how great she was and how unfair the Chief always was to her.

Suddenly, she stopped and turned around to face him, "I know I did the best I could do. And I know he would've done the exact same thing!"

Dabon looked at his sandal-boots.

She realised she was screaming at him.

"I'm sorry!" she made her eyes very large, hard and unblinking–her way of trapping the tears behind her eyes. The only place she would allow the dams to subside was deep in the woods, alone with her horse Blast.

"Don't be," Dabon tried to touch her arm, but she'd already run off.

Blast was in the stables being tended to by a little girl. Hanati stroked her hair and took the half-brushed horse for a ride. She was clearly exhausted from battle, so Hanati had to let her go at her own pace. She didn't care where it took her either. Anywhere away from this place. The place where she gave everything and got nothing.

Well, that was not entirely true because, despite her father's harshness and disapproval of her, she was highly regarded by the rest of the tribe, and not just because she was his daughter. She was fierce in every way. The warriors always joked about how she seemed to want to die in every battle. But she was too alert and nimble to die. It was a blessing and a curse. Sometimes she thanked her guardian angel for looking out for her, and sometimes she wished she would look away.

"You shouldn't do this," her father had said when she asked the Wise Ones, of whom he was a member, to be in charge of the defence operations. It wasn't unusual for women to apply for such positions, but it had been many years since the Wise Ones deemed a woman worthy of such a position.

Interestingly enough, her father was the only member who voted against her. Everybody thought it was because he was worried about losing her in battle, but she knew and he knew that he didn't think she was good enough. When was she ever good enough? If she was good enough, she would've been born with different genitalia.

As her horse took her to the waterfall, she watched the trees amble by, proud and tall, never wondering what their fathers thought of them. Each tree was its own tree, strong, loving and giving. Whole.

As she let the horse rest by the gushing waterfall, she sat on a boulder, wondering about Dabon. Dear Dabon.

What did he see in her? Her bony hips, probably not fit to give him a baby; her brown skin, not the coveted ebony that shone in the dark; or her quick temper that scared the fiercest of warriors? 

Sometimes these things can't be explained. His fate was to yearn for but never get the brightest star in the sky; so near yet so unattainable. And why? Because she was busy proving to the Chief that she was better than any man. She needed no man. Also, deep down, she didn't want to risk disappointing another man.

That was painful to watch. After everything I've done!

—-------

"Hey!" smiled Melinda, closing her book as her sister woke up from her morphine-induced slumber.

"Hey," croaked Marilyn, still trying to remember where she was, "how long have you been sitting there?"

"A few hours! But your book here kept me company," she waved the yellow book, "forever the self-help queen!"

"You know," Marilyn laughed feebly as she tried to prop herself up, "I gotta crack that code! There must be something I'm doing wrong!"

"Sweetie, what you did wrong was that you married an abomination of a man. It's HIM!"

Melinda was never a fan of Brandon. Her otherwise handsome nose was always crinkled around him or even when he was mentioned.

"But why would he cheat on me if I didn't repel him somehow!" Marilyn said, holding back the tears.

"Because that's Brandon!" Melinda threw her arms in the air. "He cheated on you before you even got married, but you took him back! He made you leave your job at one of the finest universities in the country, and you let him! He isolated you even from Mum, and you didn't stand up to him!"

"What do you want me to do, Melinda? Ruin my family and destroy my girls?" she made her eyes very large, hard and unblinking–her way of trapping the tears behind her eyes. The only place she would allow the dams to subside was the bathroom where she could be alone.

Melinda pulled her chair closer to her sister's bed and took her hand in both of hers.

"LEAVE. HIM." she whispered emphatically. 

Marilyn squeezed her eyes shut, but a hot tear had already escaped the corner of her eye. 

"But …the girls," she cried, "they love him! I grew up without a father and the last thing I… I want is for them to… grow up without one of us!"

"You did NOT grow up without a father! Our father loved you very much. You were his little princess, remember? If anyone should be crying, it should be me who had her father's heart stolen by a poopy baby called MayMay!" 

Marilyn snorted as the unexpected laugh caught her mid-sob. Melinda jumped to get a tissue from the other side of the hospital bed.

When Melinda left, Marilyn had the whole day and night to think. She tried not to think herself into madness, but rather out of madness.

It was true what her sister said. She needed to get out. At first, she loved Brandon's doting attention, but then it seemed like he made it his mission to break her spirit. 

She needed to leave.

They had met at a university function. He didn't have to pursue her. She helplessly fell for his sweet talk and assertive personality. Despite having been the youngest lecturer on faculty, she never really liked being independent. She would jump from the arms of one guy, good or bad, to the next. Until she fell into Brandon's lap. She enjoyed being the damsel in distress, and he enjoyed being her knight in shining armour. With that, however, she slowly wasn't able to recognise herself.

Of course she didn't want to put her girls through turmoil and heartbreak by breaking their home in two, and that was her main reason for staying with a man who didn't show her any respect, but she was also terrified of being alone. Would she have to get a lawyer? Would she have to handle her own finances? Would they even take her back at work after being out for so long? Would she have to find a small apartment on the edges of town? Would she have to handle a whole household, alone? She didn't risk putting fuel in her car for fear of getting the wrong kind.

I watched her despair, and it pained me. The thing is, just like a good parent, I should not step in and solve things for her. She had to find her own way out. It looked like she did find it, but the real question was: was she going to take that way out.

It didn't seem very likely. 

She was in pain again. Another shot of sweet relief, and she was out for the night.

—--- 

Hanati looked at the dark sky. The clouds looked menacing and the sun retreatng. Blast snorted loudly, shaking her head and kicking dirt with her hooves. Hanati must have lost track of time. It was getting dark and dangerous to be outside, especially with the neighbouring tribe seeking revenge.

She got up to her horse, whispered a few words of reassurance and stroked her mane to calm it down. Then she immediately mounted the horse and turned back. A few fat drops fell on her head as she spurred Blast to move faster. As the wind whooshed in her hair and past her ears, the thoughts whooshed past her mind's eye. 

Then it hit her, just like lightning hit that faraway mountain. She was going to resign from her post. She had spent the past thirty years of her life proving her worth to the one man who refused to see it, all while pushing away the one man who refused to stop seeing it.

She was going to give Dabon a chance. It's true what her grandmother once said, "If you bare your fluttering heart, it might very well plummet to the ground, but what if it soared to the sky?"

Her tears joined forces with the cascading rain streaming down her face and washed away the grime of battle. Of all the battles.

Minutes away from home, a tree fell on the slippery earth, and before Blast registered that she had to jump over it, her hoof was entangled in an unforgiving branch, and they were both flung over the tree trunk. The terrified horse scrambled to and ran off.

Hanati never opened her eyes again. 

I, her guardian angel, had exhausted all the attempts to save her allotted to me and had to let her rest there. How it pained me.

I spent two hundred years planning her next life. I wanted her to have all the beauty of her time. Almond-shaped, large eyes and lush eyelashes that fondly fanned them. Round hips and breasts and long, red locks.

This time, I matched her with a father who saw the light only through her eyes and heard the angels only through her ringing laugh.

That he died was no accident, in our sense of the word. I had to prove that she would be able to find worth through having been loved so fiercely, even if for less than ten years. But, though she tried, Marilyn pushed away those who loved her and went for those who were bound to hurt her. Even those who did not set out to hurt her, inevitably did, because she almost expected it. Alas.

I will spend the next two hundred years perfecting her next life. Maybe the next one will be a tree. Whole and upward-looking, finding her light in all the right places.