The Sanctuary

CHAPTER TEN

There is many a night where I would remember my mother. The sting of my mother’s hand on my cheek. The crazed look in her eye as she would throw the nearest pot at my head. The speckle of spit that would froth at my mother’s mouth, as she would scream to the point of turning red, fury emanating from her entire being.

I remembered the pang in my chest as I willed most nights, for my mother to be kind to me. To smile at me, to hold me. To maybe pat my head, the way my father would after a long day in the fields.

Other nights, I wished that I would just disappear. Maybe then, my mother might smile at my father again. Might look at him, the way my father spoke about in that wistful tone, remembering memories that seemed too far away to be real. He spoke of their wedding day; she was dressed in a long yellow summer dress with flowers adorning her hair. Her smile was radiant, my father would say sadly. I would imagine that day, and a warm feeling would spread around my chest, through my body, making my toes tingle with something akin to glee.

I would beg my father for more stories about their wedding. About the days before I was even born. I wanted to know about happiness, about family, about love. I wanted to know my mother for more than the hate filled angry person she had become. I wanted to know if I could bring my mother back.

But then my mother vanished. It happened when I was just six years old. My mother had woken up, as she did every morning at the crack of dawn. She had stepped outside our humble abode, and fed the chickens. She dug through her cleaning supplies to find a twig broom, and dusted the porch. She had cooked some oats for breakfast and warmed up some water in the kettle over the fire.

My mother’s routine was regular, but her attitude was different. I knew deep in my bones, something was off. My father was hacking away at the corn stalks in the fields, so he didn’t notice it. But I knew.

My mother mumbled something about going into town to sell some of the herbs she had collected, and had walked out of the door with nothing in her hands. I wanted so badly to follow her, to call out for my father to come back. There was something wrong with Mother, I yearned to scream. But my father had warned me to never leave the house without a parent accompanying me. Under no circumstances.

So I had waited anxiously at the door, fiddling with my torn dress. I only owned two, but the torn one was my favourite. It was ripped along the hem, but the tatters only served my imagination – I was instead, a princess with a dress with many petticoats.  My parents were the King and Queen, who doted on me just as much as they doted on each other. I had a horse I would name Lilac, after my favourite flower.

When my father finally came home for dinner, as the sun began to set, there was no food on the table, no mother to greet. Instead I jumped to my feet, squabbling that my Mother had just left, no word, no warning. There was something wrong with her, I insisted. Something so very wrong.

What they found out later, shook me so strongly to the core that I could feel myself close up, my blood go icy. And then the next few months were such hell, there was no escaping it.

I was with Madame Widow by the end of that very year.