Stitched

1- Home

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

There's the same noise I've been hearing for weeks now. The house is so quiet, I can hear it clearly. I can always hear it: the constant dripping of the rain going through the hole in the roof. My room ceiling hasn't been repaired- that's why I have to get used to it. The dripping.

Mum didn't say she'd fix it explicitly- well, she never did. All she did was haul an empty beer bottle at me. Although, maybe I should've been thankful that it wasn't the chair this time. In my heart, I guess I just always hoped that one day, Mum would do something that would make up for the way she was behaving. She never did, though.

My room is filled. Not with posters or cupboards or items that most fifteen-year-olds have. No, my room is filled with fabric. Any little piece of cloth or cotton or string wool that I could find. Because I decorate my room with stories. Stories that I stitch onto any piece of fabric I can find and stick them to the wall. My room is filled with stories.

Mum said she couldn't afford to buy me anything. I'd always question that inside when she'd come home late with her hands filled with junk food and beer bottles.

The dripping continues and I decide that my bedroom door looks a little empty. So I stitch another story to cover the space. I think about the dripping that's been driving me "insane" for the past two weeks. How, in a funny way, it's actually keeping me sane. I focus on the dripping, instead of the shouting downstairs or the clamber of limbs bashing against each other.

I hold onto the rain. It keeps me sane.  I think again. That's a pretty rhyme. It's a lovely contrast between two different things. The rain is seen as a gloomy thing. Something you can't control. While sanity is something that most people have control of.

I was going to stitch it into the fabric. The words: "I hold onto the rain, oh, it keeps me sane," under a depiction of bright blue raindrops under an embroidered sun. But, a shout stops me. I hear heavy footsteps that lead up the stairs and I brace myself for impact.

"You bastard. Where have you been? I've been calling you for ages." Her face isn't as kind as it used to be. Mum used to be so pretty with big, blue eyes and wavy black hair. I used to call her a goddess.

But now Mum doesn't look like my Mum. Her eyes are faded blue framed by hallow eye bags. Her cheekbones stick out, she's frail. The saddest part about it is that I look even worse. I used to be called pretty by relatives and friends.

Now, my curly hair lies limp on my shoulders and my face doesn't glow anymore. I look like the embodiment of disappointment. Disappointment that I had the potential to be something but now look so weak and pathetic.

"I need you to pick up something for me," Mum said, although it was more of a stutter as she hiccuped through most of the words.

"What is it?" I questioned.

"Don't ask questions!" Her hand flew across my cheek, staining the side of my face an unflattering shade of red. Immediately, Mum's face sobered. She always did that...pretending to care.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry baby! You know Mummy doesn't mean to do these things, don't you?" She cried, throwing herself to her knees and forcing her hands into my lap.

The stench of beer and Walker's crisps wafted towards me as she tried to get closer. "Mummy just needs you to get a package off a lovely boy called Jack," She whispered close to my ear.

"Where will Jack be?"

Shaking, she snatched a pen from the small, crowded desk I had and painfully scratched an address into the palm of my hand.