YRKB
07-11-2011, 11:48 PM
Penny was not enamoured by her daughter.
Hannah was a smug, relentless child with a cruel laugh that made Penny want to set her down by the roadside and walk in another direction. It was easy to leave her, she'd never truly felt a connect.
So when Michael asked her how she thought she could - at the very least - leave her, the 5 year old 'baby', she hoped her expression communicated something she, despite her lack of regret, wouldn't say.
He almost punched her. Instead he took off his ring and threw it, with a stiff childish fury, into the center of her face.
Red, and chest heaving, he looked like their little girl exactly.
In the cab she cried silently into a clenched fist, puffing dramatically between each new fresh well of tears - a disorientating mix of long-restrained fury and a broken dam of relief being exorcised.
Having a baby had ruined everything. Like she'd suspected, anticipated - but had never found space or comfort (and it had once been comfortable enough between the two of them) to communicate.
Because it couldn't be right. It just wasn't normal for her to feel.
The fact was she did - and now, since he'd wanted Hannah so much - he could have all of her. Penny would not pretend.
It was going to cost her everything, an entire support network. A happy, involved husband - a good-looking young girl; no one - not her sister, not her friends - would understand why she refused to participate wholeheartedly in her life, let alone why she would not now be a part of it.
Why had she not just said? Why hadn't she taken herself seriously when she had felt she wasn't made for this?
You're just scared. You're just selfish. She just wasn't that kind of woman, and she'd understood that after it all. Too late.
Where would she sleep for the next few months?
It was then she pictured Michael, 26, and his head of deep brown hair in the crook of her arm - one of his wide hands across her flat, athletic, empty stomach in their old studio apartment where they lay swaddled in thin linen on the mattress.
That had been everything, and she hadn't been unaware.
She'd always have herself to blame.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
Hannah was a smug, relentless child with a cruel laugh that made Penny want to set her down by the roadside and walk in another direction. It was easy to leave her, she'd never truly felt a connect.
So when Michael asked her how she thought she could - at the very least - leave her, the 5 year old 'baby', she hoped her expression communicated something she, despite her lack of regret, wouldn't say.
He almost punched her. Instead he took off his ring and threw it, with a stiff childish fury, into the center of her face.
Red, and chest heaving, he looked like their little girl exactly.
In the cab she cried silently into a clenched fist, puffing dramatically between each new fresh well of tears - a disorientating mix of long-restrained fury and a broken dam of relief being exorcised.
Having a baby had ruined everything. Like she'd suspected, anticipated - but had never found space or comfort (and it had once been comfortable enough between the two of them) to communicate.
Because it couldn't be right. It just wasn't normal for her to feel.
The fact was she did - and now, since he'd wanted Hannah so much - he could have all of her. Penny would not pretend.
It was going to cost her everything, an entire support network. A happy, involved husband - a good-looking young girl; no one - not her sister, not her friends - would understand why she refused to participate wholeheartedly in her life, let alone why she would not now be a part of it.
Why had she not just said? Why hadn't she taken herself seriously when she had felt she wasn't made for this?
You're just scared. You're just selfish. She just wasn't that kind of woman, and she'd understood that after it all. Too late.
Where would she sleep for the next few months?
It was then she pictured Michael, 26, and his head of deep brown hair in the crook of her arm - one of his wide hands across her flat, athletic, empty stomach in their old studio apartment where they lay swaddled in thin linen on the mattress.
That had been everything, and she hadn't been unaware.
She'd always have herself to blame.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown