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❁ུ۪۪
Fragments of dawn seeped through the thin slit between Marjorie's curtains, the light waking her from a dreamless sleep. Her thoughts melded into a sharp blade of courage, for she was no longer fearful of fighting for what she wanted. Her mother could not stop her. Her mother would not stop her.
Sunday morning had arrived abruptly, and although the idea of it had been flitting around her mind for half of the week, it still sent surges of elation through her veins. You see, it marked the start of a new chapter in both her and Heinrich's lives, as they had decided they wanted to move in together.
She shrugged on her white blouse, adjusting the frilly collar around her neck before sliding into her traditional Edwardian skirt, which ended just before her ankles, modest and snug. Her house was emptied of noise, silent spare the friction of her shoelaces as she tied them tightly. Marjorie plaited her hair practically, the golden-brown braid matching the color of her skirt. She added a light rouge to her cheeks, her eyes flitting to the circles forming underneath her lower eyelids. They had grown as she worked later into the evenings, chipping away her sleep.
Marjorie's bedroom door opened with a creak that she could've sworn had never been so loud before. Cringing at the sound, she maneuvered towards the main exit on the tips of her toes, heart pounding on her ribs like a desperate prisoner on his cell bars.
"And where do you think you're going?" asked a voice from behind her. As she whipped her head around, Marjorie sighed in dismay as she saw her mother standing in the hallway, her figure stout and crude, like a bit of pottery sculpted by a child.
"Out," Marjorie said, shrugging her shoulders. Nothing could force her to be endowed to the woman who took away everything that made her, her. Sure, her father had hit her more than just once—oh, the disciplinary norms of the times—but her mother had done more than just physical damage. She had masked her intentions and beliefs under a layer of syrupy voices and solacing words. Her mother had never been trying to soothe her, no, she had been engraving the idea that Marjorie had little worth from the very beginning. It was a repulsive thing for her to realize, and she struggled to grasp the thought that her mother had been the cause of such self-depreciating thoughts.
The woman's eyes were cold, and yet they seemed to blaze with impossibly passive anger that sent a surge of fear up Marjorie's spine, infecting her with a poison that made her feel as though she would surely collapse. "At this hour?" she asked, her staunch, unwavering tone somehow making Marjorie's stomach clench, twisting it and turning it until it was bruised wit worry and she was ready to retch. "And don't," Ethel began, holding up a finger, "don't try telling me you're going to work. That isn't your uniform, is it?"
Petrified, Marjorie spoke without moving, afraid that she would shatter like thin glass if she made one wrong move. "Why does it matter to you? I'm an adult, and I'm not your little child anymore," she said, concealing the quivering unease with a thick layer of sourness. She wanted her words to be her weapon as well, for if they were not then she could never reign victorious in the constant spiteful quarrels with her mother.
