Femme Fatale.

08

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"I'm not and I'll thank you to mind your own business," her mother says  flatly.

Carla watches her like a hawk. She longs to shake her, slap her, perhaps lock her in an asylum for surely her mother is insane!

"I haven't the faintest idea why you won't just face the truth and give up, Mother. You have us, we should be enough." Carla grits her teeth.

"If you cannot help me, support me, in this then get on with your life, daughter."

"Dear God. For God's sake, don't do this to yourself! You are only hurting your body and your mind with this constant hoping and disappointment." Carla weeps,the wealth of pity for her mother, who won't let go, won't allow herself to desert the hope for having another child, is too much even for her own phlegmatic calm. "It's not worth it, Mother."

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Songs for the chapter:
i. Gentleman - Sia
ii. 1 + 1 - Sia

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Father is coming home for his leave of six months and for a warm welcome to him, Mother commissions a most extravagant gift. When she has purchased it and set it up in their bedroom, she beckons Shawn and me and says we can come see it. We ran up the stairs, Mother ahead of us, so that she can fling open the door and see our faces.

It is a most astounding sight: a little fountain made of silver inlaid with gold. At the foot of the fountain is three naked women, also wrought of silver and from their tears spouts springs of more water.

"My God," says Shawn, truly awed. "How much did it cost you, mother?"

"Oh the gold is fake," Mother says idly. "But it doesn't show does it? Oh it's so very grand, isn't it?"

"Grand." I don't add: "But vilely ugly," for I didn't want to hurt her feelings though I can tell from Shawn's stunned expression that he thinks the same.

"I thought the ripple of water would be soothing. We will keep it here in our bedroom," Mother says. She goes closer to the little edifice and touches it. "It is wrought very fine."

"Fertile women gushing water," I say looking at the three gleaming statues.

Mother smiles at me. "An omen," she says. "A wish."

"But why Mother, you don't still want another child," Shawn says grimly. "Oh my God, you do. Do you, Mother?"

"I can not give up so easily," Mother says. She has been "looking" for this other child for over a year now.

"Well, any signs yet, Mother," I say, smiling encouragingly at her.

"Not yet," she says. "But it's bound to happen soon."

"Amen," Shawn and I say together, devout as priests. "Amen."

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In the middle of the month Mother comes to me discussing the signs that tell a woman that she  has conceived and I flinch at the topic but let her go on for I love her dearly and her happiness is of far more importance to me than my own comfort.

We count the days of her courses and she is due within the week. She is already determined to be sick in the mornings and unable to eat the fat off the meat though she knows it is too early to know.