Mother Page #4

I wrote this story for the girls. If he has hurt you, you know this feeling.

• Fiction

								

 Her bottom lip was busted, with dried blood caking her chin. She felt every joint scream in agony after having Solomon’s prolonged weight pressing hard against her. Perdita caressed her wounds with trembling hands while fighting back the urge to vomit, to scream, to cry, to do anything and everything or nothing at all. Nothing made sense. When did it ever? Disgust was all she’d known, all she’d felt. Why is it that she only now feels an outpour of shame for the disgust she carried? When had life ever been kind? Why now could she look at herself in the mirror and do nothing but cry for something she doesn't even know she lost?
Perdita moved without a thought and grabbed the iron fire poker beside her fireplace, raising it over Solomon like a sword about to be placed in its stone. One quick jab to the throat, and that’s it, that’s all it’d take. Her uncle would be gone, and so would the shame. 
So why was she hesitating? Why was she backing away? Perdita grabbed her gown and fled the room, fled the estate, fled from the looming sense of disgust that began to envelop her. She couldn’t face it.
				

	
Perdita wiped tears from her swollen eyes as the sobs in her chest began to settle. The forest maintained its silence aside from her occasional sniffles. She felt heavy in her body like it had never been hers. The disgust that Solomon planted followed her into the woods, and now, there was a looming shadow that followed each step Perdita took. There was no escaping what had happened to her. She could keep building huts and fires and play pretend in the woods all she wanted, but the truth of it all was still ever-present in the back of her mind. It’s not fair what happened to her. She knew that. 

“But if I had stayed…Nadia…”

She couldn’t think of it. She wouldn’t. Perdita shook her head violently before pushing herself off the ground and collecting the basket. She hesitated, eyeing the map for a moment, before turning away and heading home. She decided to give Nadia the apple and save the cookies for her sixth birthday. 

A hissing sounded to her left. Jumping, she reached for her knife and stood ready to defend. But there was nothing. She cocked her head, straining to see over some nearby brush when another hiss sounded, followed by another. Perdita saw three baby cougars huddled together in the darkness and trembling at her presence. They were thin and scraggly with patches of fur caked with dried mud and leaves
. 
The cubs spat warnings at her as she turned her attention to the wafting smell of decay behind them. Outstretched on the ground was the rotting carcass of a cougar. Its stomach was open with a spillage of guts and innards that drew swarms of rot-eating insects.
The cougar's tail had been gnawed off, and bits of its haunches looked like shredded paper. Realization struck Perdita when she spotted a gunshot wound.

 This was the cougar that Buck shot, and these three cubs were her babies. The mother returned to her cubs before succumbing to her injuries and now lay rotting and cold at their feet. It looked as if the cubs had attempted to eat their mother before her meat began to sour, but now that she was too decayed, the triplets sat hungry, scared, and alone.

Perdita stood in silent understanding. She recalled her conversation with Nadia along the riverbank. 
“Everything dies eventually…”
“Even you, mama?”

“Yes, even me.”



Nadia dropped a handful of pinecones, rocks, and bug exoskeletons onto the dirt near where her mother sat. 
“Mama, I wanna bring these!”
“Okay.” 
Perdita smiled briefly at her daughter's excitement before going back to packing. She’d taken the pelt off their bed and spread it out on the ground to gauge what could be carried. There wasn’t much to bring, really. What use would her fishbone needles and antler knife have in society? Same with her woven baskets and animal fat candles; they weren’t needed. So far, she could only justify taking the pelt and roasted fish. She glanced at the map, wondering how far of a walk it would be from here to the camp, and reconsidered bringing her knife.

“Do you think the walnut tree will be ready when we get back?” Nadia arranged three little pinecone dolls in a row on the pelt.
“Didi, we aren’t coming back.”
“Huh?” Nadia halted her playing to look at her mother with a puzzled look.
“We have to; this is home! Silly mama!”
“This isn’t going to be our home any longer, Didi. We’re going to find Buck so that we can go back to society with him. No more hut. No more walnut tree. “

	Nadia looked as if she’d been slapped across the face. Her brows arched upward as tears began to spill over her eyelashes.
“No, mama! No! I don’t wanna leave,” her protesting became an incoherent mixture of sobbing and screaming at the sudden change in her life. Of course, she was devastated; this life in the forest was all she’d ever known, and now Perdita was hoisting her from it and throwing her into the all-seeing eye of civilization. 
	Perdita reached out to comfort her daughter, but Nadia stepped away and continued her sobs of protest. 
“Nadia…Mama made some mistakes. When I was younger, I got hurt really badly. Instead of dealing with it, I ran away because I was afraid. I’m still afraid. But, Didi, I can’t keep you out here like this any longer. It’s not fair to you. There are so many wonderful things in the world that you’re missing because of me.”
	Nadia’s sobbing became softer. She looked at her mother through tears and wiped her runny nose. 
“Mama was…scared?”
“I was. I wanted to keep us safe so badly that I ended up putting us in an even more dangerous position.”
“More dangerouser than Bucky?”
“Maybe. We don’t know Bucky. But as long as we pay attention when we’re around him, we will be able to react if something happens.”
“Mama, if everything is dangers then why can’t we stay?”
	This time when Perdita reached for Nadia she climbed into her mother's lap and leaned into her. 
“Because I don’t want you to be afraid of the world. I thought I was leaving only the bad stuff behind when I ran away. But Bucky reminded me that I ran away from good things, too. I want you to experience those good things with me.”

	Nadia rubbed her snotty nose against her mother’s arm.

“What good things?”
“Well, things like apples and cookies. Soft beds, warm baths, storybooks, and other kids your age.”
“There are other kids?” Nadia gasped, her eyes wide at the possibility of another child to play with.
“That’s right. There’re tons of other kids. You’ll be able to make new friends, go on picnics, and learn to read and write.”

	Nadia went silent as she considered everything her mother had said. In that silence, Perdita could hear the hum of the river and the sounds of chirping birds.

“Okay, mama. I wanna go too.”

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