Excerpt From My Unfinished, Untitled Might Not Be Finished Story

It's a bit too long for me to be putting on blogger, but well I got bored with seeing it on my screen and decided to post anyway. I don't think much of it. But I figured if I practised maybe one day I could become really, truly good at this fiction stuff.

I checked my watch, “brrrr,” time for me to be getting back home; mum would no doubt throw a fit if I showed up late, as she was wont to do lately. Sometimes I was almost certain that she was not my real mum.

 Once she had flogged me so bad, I had been almost certain I would lose all motor activity in my limbs, all over a pot of stew. It had been so bad I had almost run away.

 Punctuating each blow had been, “get out of my house,” “go and look for your real mother.” Those words said repeatedly had broken my little twelve-year-old heart. Maybe she had adopted me. 

I was sure of it.

I looked nothing like my younger siblings. Yemu and RuramaI, were chubby with meat on their bones I had nothing. Yemu’s skin especially, shone with a prepubescent light that I could only hope to get from a bottle. A resounding blow to my back brought my thoughts, which were wont to wonder back to the present. That shriek.

“Go and find your real mother,” 

Had cut me deeper than the belt she was using. I made up my mind to run away, after the next blow I would leave. My own mother would not hit me like this. Each blow seemed tailored to cut through my skin, but the bone right under protected me.

With snort on my nose I turned and fled, mama was relentless. She came after me like the hounds of hell. Her belt licking at my feet as I sort to open the kitchen door, to get away from this woman, I called mama who was not mine. Wrenching the door open, I bolted out only to be stayed by my daddy’s beer softened belly.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

I suppose I saw this as an opportunity to tell daddy what a monster mama was. I shrieked even more, almost hysterically this time,

 “mama’s hitting me.” I sobbed. 

“Why, what had you done?” I never needed to do anything.

How could I explain to him that it was because I had not properly browned the meat.That mama hated unbrowned meat. That it had started with,

“How do you expect me to eat this disgusting looking food?”

i had ignored her.

“I am talking to you, come here”

“Get away from my television, how dare you continue watching when I am talking to you,” she had shrieked almost beside herself with rage.

I had got up then, fear rounding my already overlarge eyes, I knew what was coming next. It always did when she was agitated, Irritated or even sometimes, I was sure the very site of me Inspired a deep dark rage.

I went and stood a little way away from her, out of harm’s way, In case she wanted to start something. She held the offending pot in her right hand. Which was a relief because, that was the hand she used.

“Look, look at what you have done, you stupid child.” 

She shoved the cracked black pot in my face. I moved to see. Very much aware of the fact that I was damned If I did, damned If I did not. That is when the first blow came; from that safe left hand I had always, thought was Incapable of eliciting such pain. It came repeatedly; In between, she managed to put the offending pot down.

“Rura! Rura! Go and get your father’s brown belt,”

Rura came timidly, her lips quivering. My heart went out to her, mama was quite scary when she yelled.

“I don’t know where It Is mama,”

“Ha putseke! It’s on the hook behind the door!” 

During all this, blows had continued to rain down on me, and I stubbornly held my tears inside. I would not show her how much her blows hurt me; I would keep it to myself., my resolve did not last for long.

She broke me.

Daddy had told her off for it of course. Too weak to sit smugly and eye her with open malice as I usually did after these capers, for they were many. I dragged my broken bones- for I was sure she had broken both my arm and my leg- to the room I shared with Yemu and Rura.

There were clothes everywhere and too weak to shove them off the bed I crawled under the covers with the stack of clothes on top. They’re weight didn’t bother me; they afforded me protection from that woman, for that was what she was to me at this moment. My detestation for her went beyond what any 12 year old had any right to feel, but I did.

I slept then, with the warm timbre of my daddy’s voice in my ear and my last thought had been that, tomorrow I would not talk to her.