Chapter 32 BETH #2
“So…” Kenzo said into the phone pressed against my ear. “Did anything happen? Did your mom ask where you were? Cause I feel like she didn’t quite buy my little lie.”
“No,” I said as I doodled away on my tablet. “I just walked in, found her perched on a stool in the kitchen, sipping coffee. I greeted, and as usual, she didn’t reply. When she didn’t say anything or ask anything, I just walked to my room.”
Yes, the air had felt tight, pressurised when I entered the house, like it had been holding its breath. I made sure to not leave behind traces of my movements. The driver had dropped me off at least three houses away.
Maybe she indeed, bought Kenzo’s lie. Maybe she didn’t suspect a thing. She didn’t do anything, didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask anything. But when I began to head to my room though, I could feel it, her eyes on me.
“But does it look like something is off?” Kenzo’s asked again, more worried than usual.
“Not really.”
He knew Mother so well. If she called him whilst angry, then there was a problem. Mother would never just call Kenzo. In fact, I doubted she had ever called him before.
But I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to make the poor boy worry. It was my mother. I was used to her ways. If she decided to come back and hit me, it wasn’t a new thing. My body had been built for her strikes.
“She really sounded…angry.” He pointed out. “I hope–”
“I’m sure it’s going be alright.” I cut him off, pausing to analyse the sketch on my tablet.
I had closed my eyes earlier and had to search so hard before I could find Callan in my memory. And even when I did, he was nearly swallowed hole by a black ink. It was clear he was being erased, covered in shadows so I would not remember what he looked like.
They wanted me to forget him. And I didn’t want to forget him. I needed to paint the version of him I knew if ever there was a cruel reality where I never got to meet him again.
If I couldn’t hold him in my arms, I needed to hold him in memories somehow.
“Are you positive?” Kenzo’s voice pulled me from my train of thoughts.
“Mhmm.”
“If anything happens–”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know,” I replied, yawning.
I let my stylus rest on the tablet, far too exhausted to continue. I would do the rendering tomorrow, and add a bit more detail to the background.
“Good night,” he said.
“Yeah, good night.”
The call came to an end and I placed the phone aside, my head resting gently on the desk. But my eyes had barely closed when my door suddenly swung open, revealing Mother, eyes searching until they found me.
“Is there a problem?” I lifted my head from the desk, unease settling at the pit of my stomach almost immediately. “Do you need anything?”
I rose to my feet, bracing for what was coming for me.
“Yeah,” she drew out, a devious smile lifting the corner of her lips as she shut the door behind her, taking slow and slightly predatory steps further into the room.
“What is it?” I backed away on reflex.
“You know, I was wondering what my dear daughter has been up to since I was away.” She pulled a hand from behind her back to show me the screen of her phone.
“I mean, as far as I’m concerned, I left her to take care of the house.
So you can imagine my shock when I have images of her in a different location with a man sent to my phone. ”
She took casual, yet taunting steps further into the room.
“Could she have a twin? Am I just confused due to stress?”
“Th-that’s–”
“That’s not you?” She raised a brow. “Right, I thought so too. That can’t possibly be you.
I mean you were right here, tending to the house.
Come on, how would you have ended up in that fancy house up in Stratford Street?
It’s impossible, isn’t it? Anyone that thinks it’s you must be a damn bloody fool, huh? ”
“I-”
My eyes remained on the image displayed on her screen.
It was taken today, a few hours ago when Zaghan was bringing me home.
He was at the front and I was following behind him, arms folded across my chest as we headed for the car parked a few steps away from the stone stairs that led to the bungalow.
Whoever took it wasn’t so far away. I could almost see the dried tear stain on my left cheek, my black bra peeking through the open space left in the middle of my shirt, a space that would have been closed if I didn’t miss a button somehow.
I knew who took the picture. Mrs. Clara something.
She should have been a private investigator or secret agent, not a damn deaconess.
Her first son, an ivy league lawyer, got heavy pay cheques and lived in the most expensive part of Braemont.
How unfortunate that it was the same street with Callan’s guesthouse.
“It’s him isn’t it?” Mother demanded, her eyes glittering in the way that meant she had already decided my guilt. “The same man you went out into the night to see the other day.”
My heart pounded, not because I had done anything wrong, but because I recognised her tone all too well. Calm on the surface, surgical beneath.
“If you want to whore around so badly, couldn’t you at have least done it far away from those pew-perched critics?!” she sneered. “Those damn vultures?”
“He’s just a friend,” I said the same thing I said the last time. “We were just…hanging out.”
Her lips twitched. Not a smile. No, never a smile.
“Just…hanging out, huh?” she mused, softly, as if tasting the word. Then her gaze drifted, slow and deliberate, to my desk where they all laid. My tablet, my laptop, my phone. They were all lined up neatly, like a damn offering.
“Bet you think I’m stupid, don’t you?” she asked.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I–”
But she moved fast, so fast, I didn’t see it coming, barely had time to flinch, as her palm connected with my face, the sound loud and sharp in the quiet room.
My head snapped to the side, my ear ringing as stars burst behind my eyes.
I cradled my throbbing cheek, tears spluttering from my eyes almost immediately.
I could taste it, the metallic tang of blood in my mouth as my face burned.
“I didn’t save you from that monster…” She grabbed my hand, nails digging into my skin. “…just so you can keep running into the arms of men. You want to run away, right?”
Her hold tightened, nails drawing blood. “You want to leave, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t running,” I choked, the migraine I had felt earlier, returning. “I wasn’t trying to leave–”
“Lies!” She shoved me backward, and I stumbled, catching myself before hitting the edge of my tiny, worn-out vanity. “You and your father are bloody liars. You always lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“They always leave, you know?” She paced around, voice rising. “Girls like you. Stupid, weak girls. Men take one look and think they own you. And you foolish girl, so na?ve, you keep letting them.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I didn’t.” I really had no clue anymore what I was denying. I just knew my heart was wrenching, and my head was about to split in halves.
Her gaze snapped to me, crazed and burning.
“He is rich,” she said flatly. “I could tell. I saw it. The cars, the clothes. The name. Men like that are powerful. They don’t look at girls like you unless they want something.”
She turned suddenly and snatched my tablet off the table.
“No, no, no, no.” I lunged forward, but it was too late. She had already slammed the device against the wall, the crack loud and final.
Something inside me split.
“You think this is talent?!” she screamed, grabbing my laptop. “You think this will save you? That it will make you independent? That you won’t need me anymore?”
I shook my head, hot tears blurring my vision. “M-mother, please stop. Please.”
She brought the laptop to the floor, bringing her heels to it, once, twice…violently.
My heart shattered.
“Everything you do…“ Her breathing was hard, uneven. “…is you preparing to abandon me.”
This was her truth, not mine.
She grabbed my phone next, fingers white-knuckled. “You talk to him through this, right? You show him your little drawings, imagining a future where he rescues you from your evil mother, right?”
“I’ve never asked him for anything,” I sobbed, my body trembling, pain curling tight in my chest as I struggled to breathe. “I didn’t ask him for anything. I didn’t–”
She charged towards me, striking me again, harder this time.
“I have been so lenient with you. Letting you do whatever you wanted. Not anymore. You don’t get a future.” She raised my phone mid-air. “Not with him. Not with anyone.”
The phone shattered when it hit the wall across from me.
“You stay here,” she finished. “Where I can see you. Where I can stop you from becoming like him.”
She was talking about my father.
“As from today henceforth, you are not allowed to think for yourself, make decision on your own, or think about men. You will not draw again in this house or write your silly little poems that makes you think stupid thoughts.” She was breathing so hard, face flushed with fury.
“You don’t need a dream, Beth Fraser. What you need is Mother. And Mother will always be here for you. Mother is the only one who knows what is best for you. Mother is the only one who loves you without condition. Mother is the only one who cares. Do you get that?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t speak, as a ringing echoed in my ears, the world spinning around me.
“Answer me!” she roared. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes.” My head bobbed, tears spluttering down my cheeks.
My body shook as the sound of my door being slammed shut rattled the walls, the pictures on the wall tilting.
I slid down to the floor, arms wrapped tightly around myself, surrounded by glass and shattered screens. Surrounded by the truth that suffocated me.
Mother wasn’t afraid of me turning out like my father.
She was afraid of me being free.
She wanted me to be stuck with her forever.
She wanted to control me.
She wanted a puppet.