Just an Ordinary Girl

3-Tied by Blood

All I ever wanted was to never be alone. Yet, that is all I seem to be; alone. Sometimes, people tell you you can still be in a room full of people and still be so. I have never experienced that reality. She controls what I do. Where I go. Who I am with. I feel I am her slave.

But not anymore. Not now. I'm free.

Once, a few years back, I thought my days of being an only child were at an end. That God had heard my prayers and things would be different. That I would have someone at last who understood what it was like to be alone with her. I guess that was selfish. If I ever tried to explain our relationship, people looked at me, as if I was telling stories. It was assumed by everyone, that I was merely a child with a wild imagination and she would look at me, that secret smile tugging at the corners of her mouth and I knew I would pay later for the truths I had uttered.

But God played with me. He gave me hope for a few minutes and then he toyed with me and stole it away, as quickly as it came.

I remember the day like yesterday. I walked home from school and the sun was hot and my hair stuck to the back of my neck. I turned the key in the lock and was anxious to get a drink, when screaming bellowed in the hallway from upstairs.

"Esme, come here, help me. Now!" The terror in my mother's voice, stopped me in my tracks, before rushing upstairs, wondering what was wrong.

My green eyes faced blood, covering the bathroom floor, as a small body emerged from my mothers. I was confused. Didn't babies come from cabbage patches? Apparently not!

My mouth gaped open, as tears and emotion overwhelmed my face. I stood there, transfixed not understanding exactly what I was seeing or what to do.

"Esme, get the neighbour, Mrs Green, tell her to get an ambulance. Do you understand. Go now. Please," said my mother, in gasped breaths.

"Esme, you must go now. Please. Darling. I need you do to do this for me." Her eyes for once were soft and welcoming.

My eyes twitched. She never called me Darling. I wanted to please her. I wanted to get away from the blood. My legs ran shakily out of the house to Mrs Green.

Everything then flashed in sections, the ambulance. Words were uttered that the baby had died. The shouting. The crying. I sat on the stairs as bystander, not knowing where to go, or what to do.  Watching an episode of Casualty, play out around me.

The only thing I knew, is that my brother never got a chance at life and I wanted him to be here with me now, so I wasn't alone.

As they carried my mother out on a stretcher, I saw the emptiness fill her eyes again as she passed by me. The sickness was filling her up again with every second that passed.

My parents called me Esmeralda after a relative I resembled with green eyes. Green was my colour, as envy filled my pores. All I dreamed of was having a normal life but nothing was ever like that behind my front door. I craved normality and wanted to blend in but instead I stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter what I did.

Tomorrow, the stories of my mother would have rumbled through the school gates and yet again, I would be an item of interest. I knew some things could not be helped and life is what it is, but these sort of things seemed to reoccur with a strange regularity in the course of my life.

Oh brother, I wished you had survived and could hold my hand on the stairs right now.

                                                                 -00-00-00-

As I jumped into the taxi, I turned my back on the past. I still missed the brother that was only mine for a moment, even after all these years. I felt he was stolen from me. Even though I knew truly it wasn't her fault; I still blamed her for everything. As she was the cause for everything bad in my life.

I knew she hated me. Resented me. But I didn't know why?

If you liked this chapter please do vote (please hit the star) and if you have time to comment that would mean so much to me, as your feedback inspires me and I thrive on feedback.

No part of this may be reproduced or transmitted in any forms or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission of the authors.

Many thanks, Kimberley S B Lieb