An Overprotective Mother

An Inescapable Nightmare

"Tania? Come on now, girl, wake up." A man's worried voice intruded into the dark and Tania's eyes fluttered open. The face in front of her was blurry, undefined, but familiar.

"Uncle Lawrence, is that you?" She struggled to sit up and found she was in her bedroom. "What happened?"

Maybe it had all been a nightmare. Maybe there hadn't been an explosion in the mine. She looked up at her father's younger brother and saw despair twist his features.

Her face scrunched up, twisted like his, but she looked away. Peace settled over her as she did so, and she pushed away any thought that wanted to intrude into her sleepy mind.

"Well, now, I came out of the mine and you fainted, honey. I guess, well, I guess you thought I was your daddy." He sat down on a dainty chair that had appeared at the side of her bed, a big man too big for the delicate white chair, but it didn't matter.

Tania stared at the chair blankly before she realized it was from her younger sisters' room. It was a chair they played on. Thoughts drifted through her mind, swept around by something she didn't want to remember, not yet.

"What happened to me? How did I end up in here?"

"I brought you in. Your momma, well, she's in her bedroom, Tania. Hazel's with the youngins." Lawrence's face, swiped to get rid of most of the coal dust, was still dirty despite his efforts to clean up. Tania saw a black streak, just beside his left ear as he turned to face the window.

"Hazel's with my sisters? Why?" Her voice was scratchy, it hurt to talk since her throat was so dry. She needed water. She pushed herself up from the bed to sit up on the side. Her head swam as her hair fell around her face. Her nose felt raw and her eyes were puffy, she could feel it.  "What's going on Uncle Lawrence?"

She didn't really want to know, she wanted to go downstairs, pretend everything was just fine, and that her world hadn't just turned upside down. She got up and walked towards the door, but pain lanced across her lower abdomen, deep pain that nearly dropped her to her knees.

"Oh no, I was afraid of this." She heard Lawrence mutter, but she didn't pay attention. She was too busy gritting her teeth while her left hand gripped at the doorframe. 

"Uncle Lawrence...," she gasped and turned to look at the man. He was handsome, with green eyes and tanned skin, just like her daddy, but his nose was a little wider than her dad's and he was leaner. "What's happening?"

"I think you're about to have your baby, Tania. Come on now, you get back in that bed, and I'll go get Hazel." He guided her back to the bed with pressure on her back, and Tania followed obediently.

The pain consumed her, made it nearly impossible to walk, but she made it back to the bed. Lawrence helped her to settle back down on the bed and get her legs up before he all but ran from the room screaming for his wife, Hazel.

Tanie tried to breathe through the pain, a technique she'd learned a long time ago. Breathe through the anger, breathe through the hurt, breathe through the pain. She groaned, alone in the room, as excruciating waves of pain swept over her.

She knew there was something else she had to remember, knew there was some grief she needed to push away, but at the moment, all she really needed to do was breathe.

She focused on that as the wave of agony began to ebb, and the ability to breathe naturally came back to her. She focused on the outside world again, left the quiet place where she'd focused all of her energy, and looked at reality. She'd curled up on the bed, and her muscles felt tense. She made herself relax and sat up. The pain was gone, but there was a sensation in her, something that said that pain would be back.

"Uncle Lawrence?" She stood up and called out to him, but he didn't answer. She left the bed, and noticed for the first time that she had on a pink night dress and a blue bed jacket. Hadn't she had on a blue polyester dress before?

Best not to think about it, she thought as she left the bedroom and went into the hallway. The girls were in their room, all asleep in the bed, and her mother was in her room too, she found out when she walked by.

Her mother's face, ravaged by grief, looked up at Tania as she walked by. "Trust you to make a show of yourself on a day like today. Get out of my sight, girl. I've had about all of you I can take."

Tanie rushed away, to the stairs. She heard her grandmother, in her bedroom, she had the radio on softly. She thought about going in there, but Uncle Lawrence had said she was about to have her babies. She wanted to know what he meant.

The doctor said she had a while before the baby came, babies as far as she was concerned. This must be something else. She walked down the stairs and heard Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Hazel as she made it halfway down.

"I don't think she remembers, Hazel. She's, I don't know, there ain't something right about her."

"Oh hush, Lawrence. It's bad enough the way her mother treats her, don't you start." Hazel, always no-nonsense but fair, scolded her husband. "Go get the car ready, I've called the hospital. I'm sure they're all busy now that they're bringing bodies and the injured up, but they'll have to squeeze her in between all those men."

"Fine. But I'm not telling her if she doesn't remember. We'll just let her get through this, and then she can be told." Uncle Lawrence wasn't a bad man, just a miner without much education. He knew right from wrong, and love and hate. He was a good, Christian man, that listened to his very wise wife. That didn't mean he liked anything to do with emotions and women's matters. Like most men, Tania thought with a tilt to her lips.

She wasn't sure what he was talking about, but it didn't matter. They took her seriously, at least.

"Tania, come in here honey, let me have a look at you." Aunt Hazel called out, and Tania went into the kitchen where Hazel sat with a cup of coffee. The coffee was in a mint green cup with a white interior, the body short and round, made of glass. Her mother had pined for those cups for ages before her father had gone down to the company store and bought them for her.

Meg, of course, had chastised Tania's father for the purchase, but she didn't take them back.

"I'm fine, Aunt Hazel, I'm not sure what Uncle Lawrence is fussing about." Tania sat down at the table and clasped her hands together in her lap.

"Lawrence has five children, Tania, he knows a woman in the midst of her time, believe me." Aunt Hazel gave Tania a wink and stood up. "I'll go pack you a bag while Lawrence gets the car. Don't you worry, none, girl. You'll soon be home with your baby safe and sound."

Tania stared after the woman, positive that something was wrong. She knew something had happened, but the last thing she remembered was getting a letter from Stan. What had happened in the time since then?