Anastasia | ✔︎ published

01 : Anastasia

I was prepared to become a woman as a little girl. Childhood was seen just vanishing before my eyes without ever giving me a chance to stop it. That's what happens when you rid someone of love, and you open the doors to darkness without them ever realizing that there can be color. I want to say that I blame my mother, but the only way I could do that was to also blame her mother and then the mother of her mother.

The heat that escalated through my body only seemed to grow as I tried to ignore it. The longer I tossed and turned, the more that heat prickled my skin in a fit. A sigh escaped my lips as I just laid there in a pit of my sweat, hoping that it wasn't affecting Alex as much as it was affecting me.

"Nana," my sister called out from the other side of the room, "Mum didn't pay the electricity bill again, did she?"

"Stay here, I'll go figure out," I whispered to her before getting up from the mattress. We weren't fortunate enough to own anything to lift our bed from off of the ground. We were lucky enough to just simply have a mattress. Even if we did have to get up from the floor every day, It didn't matter because I was grateful. It still beat the things we had to go through in Australia.

I walked out of our room and straight to my mothers. Softly knocking on the door, I let out a groan. It seemed as if long moments passed before the door opened to reveal some random man wearing absolutely nothing. He had a small towel to cover up his man-area, but other than that, he was naked.

"Uh, your ma's pretty occupied, sweetie," the man spoke with a hint of a New York accent. His cornrow braids going down the back of his head, and the cigarette that sat perched at the corner of his mouth added to his whole bad-boy appeal. What irritated me most was the fact that he talked to me as if I were twelve. I narrowed my eyes at him before propping my hand on my hip.

"I need to speak to my mom," I told him as sternly as possible. The stench of the room littered my nostrils. It didn't help that there was no electricity to help ventilate the area. He let out a groan of annoyance right before closing the door. Seconds later, my mom appeared in all her glory with an irritated expression clear on her face. She began typing the strings to her robe as she narrowed her eyes at me.

"What the hell do you want, Nana?" She asked. Based on the slur of her wording I knew she was high. I just didn't know what she could've gotten high from this time. Could it have been meth, crack, weed? It was almost as if she couldn't survive without a high pushing her to live until the day that it's the thing that kills her.

"It's hot. Did you forget to pay the electricity again?" I asked her. She let out a sigh before closing the door. When she came out again, she was wearing an annoyed expression. This time, she walked all the way out of the room and made sure to shut the door behind her.

"What do you think I'm doing right now? I didn't have the money, okay? He's going to pay me for a good time that way I can feed you girls and cut back on our electricity," She spoke, her words coming off almost unrecognizable. Shaking my head, I grabbed onto her hand.

"You did have the money. I made sure I gave you my whole check. That was $700! Don't tell me that you spent it all just for a high!" I angrily seethed at her, "Mum, I don't get why you're selling your body for money when you could have it if only you just had your priorities straight."

She narrowed her eyes into little slits. I could smell how angry she had become in just those few seconds. "You are twenty years old. You don't like the way we live, then leave!"

"You know that I don't have the proper documents to be on my own, yet. Once I do, I'm taking Alex because I could never leave her here with you. I don't trust the way you are when there are drugs in your system. She's only seventeen, and knowing you, you'd sell her just to get high. You used to a great mother. Now, you deserve to go to hell," I told her on the brick of tears.