Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 4- Beasts of Prey & Flowers

The flowers were lovely and best of all they were exotic. Claudia could not get over how strange they looked, like figments of a dream. How unreal the colors and strange the shapes. She circled the vase, not for the first time, appreciating them. She was both aware and unaware of what such flowers must have cost Victor.

Her mother watched from the doorway, mouth pursed. She watched her only daughter circle this gift like a kitten. Both mother and daughter seemed predatory but neither wild. They both were domestic and starched. Only their eyes roared with raw animal hunger.

Claudia became aware of her mother in an instant but pretended she was not. She finished her circle before looking up. Her mind left the flowers before she finished. Her attention fastened on her mother, Louisa.

"What is it that you desire, Mother?"

"That is no way to greet your mother."

"Hello, Mother. What is it you desire?"

Mother and daughter stalked each other even in their stillness. Their words like quiet hissing. Somehow, one would become the hunter and one the prey because this was not a battle for victory but one for mangling.

"Have a seat," the mother said. 

 The daughter was obedient. 

 "I wish to speak with you."

"Yes, Mother." Claudia crumbled but only in her demurring eyes. Her heart was in this battle without even knowing the direction. Now, she knew herself to be the prey.

"You are to be married soon," Louisa began.

"Indeed." Claudia smiled her teeth like claws. You may kill me, they said, but I shall claw your eyes out and score your skin. "My betrothed sends me such lovely gifts. Have you ever seen such flowers?"

Claudia knew the answer without seeing the snapping cold in her mother's eyes. Widowed mothers of marginal merchants were not wooed exotically.

"Some of my friends received such things," Louisa said. "They spoke of it, but I married for love. No such things were needed."

Claudia might have stumbled had she not been seated. Her mother remarked upon her first love sometimes, the words ripping from her stagnant heart. Despite the facts, Claudia had disbelieved her mother was ever young and in love. Who could love the paragon of overindulgence that roared in his drunken stupor nightly? Without warning, it occurred to Claudia that her mother was not speaking of her second husband but her first. For the first time, the barb hit home.

And she looked past the brittle mother she knew and saw the scared girl Louisa must have been. The man she loved left her into the irrevocably cold embrace of death. She was left behind with an infant daughter and a bitter heart. At least, she was allowed to love her late husband, allowed to see him in her daughter's growing face. Permitted to keep her memories close to her heart. Living, once again, in her father's house on thin charity, at least Louisa had her memories and the daughter of her love.

Louisa's father could not have been expected to support her forever. Married off while her heart was still in mourning, Louisa entered a new and loveless marriage. This marriage was to a widower Louisa did not even like and certainly not someone she could ever hope to love.

Perhaps the worst part was that her new husband claimed her daughter as his own. He was the only father Claudia remembered, the first having passed before her fifth birthday. He acted as if she was his blood. How Louisa must have hated that. She was no longer supposed to dwell on fond memories, but he robbed her of the daughter she'd had in love. Everything belonged to her new spouse, and her late husband was nothing but dust. She was left with nothing but a loveless marriage, a boy child she must care for though he was not her own, and a daughter who reminded Louisa of all she had lost.