"My submissive are power, strength, bravery, and most of all they stand beside me willing in their position. You stand as strong as you kneel. Am I clear?" His words, like vows to ourselves he builds submission, not as a position under him by the po...
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Signing the visitors' sheet with a smile to Jemma, I walk towards room 357. Pushing the door open, the stale image of my Mama in a ghastly white bedgown welcomes me. Her eyes are wide open as she steers into the distance. Searching for what her mind could remember at least try to remember.
After Papa had died of lung cancer, we were alone with no income because Mama didn't have schooling. She came here from Mexico after her father married her off to mine. When he put his body into the ground in life, my mother worked as a cleaner for the rich she found herself employed by a wealthy woman.
Some of the stories she told were of this woman who lived in a house that could be a castle and from her understanding that the Miss of the home owned it alone. I think she was amazed at it all and how real something more could be.
She told me of this woman who had a wall covered in certificates and achievements that decorated the wall like a museum of achievement. She did not learn these stories from any of the encyclopedias and journals she dusted and organised. I'm sure she could barely read the titles. No, the stories and lessons came from the little boy who lived in the home, surrounded by far too many who called his young self Sir, and Mr When his mother was out in the world becoming more than a woman her son would sit in the kitchen and through the paid hours he and Mama went through his school work.
When she would return home, she would recite these stories and books to me while braiding my hair. Then one day she came home with a book. For years I didn't know what book it was because before it could even be opened in a room of the house it met the fire that kept us warm. "This is not worth bread, not sugar and not worth our pride Carman. Just because they give us pity does not mean we should take it, we are not them. Don't let them fool you."
Papa was not an evil man, no. He laughed with his belly and had me believe the hastest peak in the work was at the top of his shoulders. He also grew bitter in poverty and hardened with the calluses on his hands. Some days I felt that he was ashamed that he could not educate me, and when she had brought up that book and her knowledge, it made the failure all too real.
The night that the book fuelled our fire my mother told me the story of the girl with the knowledge of the world in her head. How the girl would drink the words like a cure to an illiterate bloodline. Then with that information, that knowledge and understanding she would choose. I always remember that story. She never finished it as she had struggled to find words, describe them like she wanted.
After that day, each time she told me a story she would ask me what I loved about the tale she told me. Each day was different. Some days she had me speak with her, while on others, she told me stories of men of war, some days of the world on fire, women in numbers uncountable in the streets. She taught me all she could retain and after each, she would ask me what I liked, what I remembered, and what I would have changed.
Years later, with the reaper's shadow in his sights, Papa shared his dying shame. Coughing through each confession that he was too proud to give me what neither of them could have, and that was education. Wishing that death was not the cause of this realization. Then he called my dear mama into the room once more, with breaths countable in his lungs, and held her hand "Forgive me for being blind to the light that you held, and the one you birthed into our child. I give you my last thank you, for being smarter than me, knowing that knowledge would be her crown. Thank you, my wife."
