In Thee My Art

I: That Talk Again

"Have you ever thought about getting married?"

The sentence yelled out from her mother's lips, causing her to cough hard. She extended her right arm to reach a cup of tea on the table, taking a sip of it to reduce the cough that hurts her chest and her throat.

The question was out of sudden, and Frederica didn't have an answer to it yet. Maybe not even tomorrow. Instead of receiving help from her dear father, Hansen Biancardi, Frederica received another blow from him.

"Nearly forty and didn't have anyone. Never even once in love with a man. Tell me, are you a lesbian?" Hansen asked, causing another shock to her body.

"W—wait, what?!"

Frederica replied. Never once she thought that they would think that way. Does she look like someone who loves a woman or what? Frederica laughed at it, the questions asked at her.

Marriage and love, two things she never had in her mind all this time. Only work and career, two things that she cared about the most.

"We need a grandchild," Anastasia said to her, and her husband followed with a nod. "Why should it be me?" she whined. Hansen rolled his eyes upon hearing his second child's words "Because you are the eldest in the family! Aren't you tired of seeing everyone around you getting married and taking their child? Maybe even seeing one of them becoming a grandmother already?" he implored. Frederica Esther Biancardi shook her head in disagreement.

She never thought about it once due to her past experiences, seeing her friends crying and even dying from being heartbroken.

It was scary for her; how love and feelings that was developed in the heart could change someone profoundly. "You can ask Varsha, not me. My career is at its peak now. I dare you not to touch it in any way, mama, papa," she coaxed.

Hansen sighed. She never thought that her daughter, Frederica, could be so strong opposing the idea of marriage. "Should we set you up with someone else, then?" Hansen proposed, and the silence starts to linger in the room.

"Come on, pa!" Frederica let her laugh out, as she thought her father was only joking around, to insist her on getting married as soon as possible. Nevertheless, things may not be how they wanted her to be. "Do you think this is the nineteenth or eighteenth century where you could marry your daughter without her consent? I'm nearly forty, able to decide things for myself, and is capable of doing anything sanely, soberly," she said.

She stood up from the sofa and drank her tea till the last drop. She was putting it back on the table before she smiled at both of her parents.

"No. My answer is no to any questions you've asked me since I sat down on this chair. Thank you," she concluded. Frederica walked back to the front door, wanting to go back to her own home and avoiding that topic that was asked at her again and again, all the time.

"Time to go before things get worst.." she mumbled.

to be continued.