Emma Unsinkable

Father's Boots

April 11, 1912

"Emma, we are about to board the Titanic, please try and look even a small bit respectable, would you?" My mother continued on, fixing the hat that sat on her head for the seventh time. Ida Shrader owned only one hat, seven dresses, and two pairs of shoes, and she still managed to look even more presentable than the first class woman that stood beside her. I couldn't help but admire my mother's beauty, her long brown hair and oval face. Her olive skin looked as if it were made only to be perfect and clear, her plump and full lips also the envy of many women who saw her. Her eyes were not just brown; they were dark almonds that had been roasted and dipped into golden honey, then mixed and swirled together to create a dark brown with golden streaks that mixed into it, only to then be made into the eyes my mother would wear. One could blame our scarcity of food, but her thin figure never faltered, nor did the large breast size, which is what I supposed earned her so many customers. 

Yes, my mother was a prostitute. A rather popular one at that. It is not as if I am proud, I'm not, I find it disgusting to sell your body to greedy hands and dirty faces, but the money she lured in every night payed for our meals the next day. 

"Mother, please, if anything I look like the queen," I replied, flashing her a grin. She didn't return it, but merely sighed, her lips parting as if she wanted to say something more, but quickly shutting before the words could spill out. 

 "Just..do promise me you won't wear those ratty boots during the complete voyage," She said quickly, turning away so her back was the only thing that faced me. 

While standing in that large crowd, I never imagined I could feel any smaller than I did when standing next to or around the tall men and beautiful women, but the words that left my mothers lips shrunk me down to what seemed to be the size of a weed, and I had to expertly dodge every falling foot in fear I'd be crushed. The color flushed from my face, my eyes falling to the over-sized boots on my small feet, a new hole in the toe of it revealing my stocking covered feet. They were my father's shoes, the only thing that survived the carriage accident he had died in two years earlier. The only thing left of him, seeing as my mother burned everything else. It felt as though I had been dragged through town and nailed upon a cross to be spat on and laughed at. There were few things I liked about my mother, and her incapability to be even remotely motherly to her only daughter was not something that fell into the category. Swallowing harshly, I picked up the heavy trunk that sat on the ground beside my feet, avoiding the sight of Ida Shrader all together, "If we don't board now we're going to miss our chance." I spoke loud enough for her to hear, pushing past her and a few other by-standers, the boots on my feet clunking around as I walked. 

There she was, inches from me, the Titanic. It had been a once in a lifetime chance to board the magnificent ship, and I was more than glad that it was my mother and I that received that chance. My mother's line of work had never been an issue for me; of course I detested it, but it hardly concerned me how my mother earned her money. At least I was being fed. She had told me many times not to speak to her or anyone of her work- especially my dear older sister Clara who, at the time, had just recently wed her husband Horatio Lyndon and left our home in Newcastle for a new life in America. 

The Titanic truly did live up to her name; she was huge. Beautiful, even. So beautiful I was afraid to touch her, in fear that she may shatter underneath my fingertips. Everything on her was perfect, right down to the people on board. I was a third-class passenger, but for the first time in my life, I felt as if I had all of the money in the world. I felt as if I was a first-class girl, who could tame her mess of brown curls, and had the body of a woman, not a fifteen year old girl. I felt- 

"'Scuse me, miss?" 

I felt interrupted, "Yes?" I said, turning to face the deeper, huskier male voice that spoke beside me, placing a smile onto my face. The boy looked as if he were older than me, myself being only fifteen, his dark colored skin standing out against the sea of pale faces that surrounded us, myself earning distasteful looks from a few other higher classed men and women that passed us. I enjoyed the effect he had already.