haphazard creativity

Lucky or Not

A prim looking lady in thin rimmed black glasses and hair bound tightly in a neat bun looks over her clipboard at a woman sitting rigidly on a chair cradling a sleeping child in her arms, "Alright Miss, you may begin speaking when ready."

The woman looks down at her sleeping infant before closing her eyes and lets out a deep breath that made her seem older than her years.

The moment I opened the door, I could taste the bitterness of dread rising like bile in the back of my throat, the chilling air of my home melting away the gentle caressing rays of the afternoon sun.

Muffling the sound of the door behind me, I slipped off my school shoes and padded down the dimly lit hallway, the uncanny silence causing the sound of each footstep to become increasingly ear-grating. Just when I thought the silence would swallow me into its depths and strangle me, I heard hushed voices drifting from the end of the hallway.

The floorboards creaked garishly and I froze, still as a mountain unmoved by a blizzard, frozen in the action of taking a step. However, I straightened immediately when my father opened the door and pulled me abruptly into the room.

"So this was when you found out?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yes. I never saw it coming. I was, perhaps, too naive." The woman had leaned back into the chair, proceeding to shift herself to a more comfortable position. The child continues her carefree slumber, undisturbed.

"I'm what?" I yelled, eyes wide, pupils darting everywhere avoiding my parents, legs cemented to the ground, my mind blank, "But I'm fifteen!"

My mother frowned in disapproval at the tone and volume of my voice, "I was married this way as well, it's not unusual. If you would just give it a chance－"

"No! I still have school, I have my friends, a future! My future! I can't do this, please don't make me do this." Knees to the floor, it was a final, desperate attempt dissuade her. I was a sailor, frantically grasping at pieces of a shipwrecked vessel, a fruitless endeavour at prolonging life.

It was all too sudden. Just today, I was at school, talking with my friends without a single worry in the world, planning studying and shopping dates in the coming holiday. And now, I was being told to marry a man twice as old as I was and leave the country. Leave Australia. Permanently. My colourful world was fading fast, and I did not want that to happen.

That was when father stepped in. He had been listening to my mother and I since the beginning, without uttering a word, his aura of displeasure steadily growing. Now, outrage was rolling off him in thick waves, his presence and anger smothering me, "Enough is enough! I will not stand for this in my home!"

"Was this when you decided to escape?" The interviewer looked up again, anticipating the interviewee's reply.

"Not yet. It wasn't until I met the man that I decided that I needed to go."

Dressed in a sari, I sat uneasily in a chair, back straight, chin up, the model of female posture that my mother had painstakingly drilled into my head. I was finally meeting the man my parents had promised me to.

Bowing stiffly, I looked at him with a plastic smile and robotically extended my arm to shake a hand calloused and ever so slightly wrinkled with age. Turn, bow, smile, shake, repeat. Everything I did was mechanical, manufactured. Fake.

Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours, and I lost track of time.

I shifted, and my sari coiled itself around me, constricting me like a snake, eager to devour its prey. Suffocating. These clothes, these people, these decisions. This place, it was suffocating me. I was not going to let this marriage crush all my dreams. And, at that instant, behind my fake smile and calculated actions, behind my mask of enjoyment, I knew that if I wanted to continue living the life I had in Australia, I could not do this.

I was not getting married.

"Would you tell us about your escape?" The baby stirs in the woman's arms, sensing her mother's distress.

"I don't want to go into details, however, I planned that escape for weeks, but when it actually happened, I ended up completely ignoring the plan." The woman's voice dancing with a peculiar hint of fondness and slight amusement at the recollection of her memories.

The interviewer nods understandingly, jotting down quick illegible notes in apparent shorthand, "Final question. What would you say to other girls in your situation planning their escape?"

Looking out the window, the woman's eyes gleamed of an indescribable emotion as she reflected on times past. Looking down once more at her child, now wide awake and smiling happily, the woman shakes her head, "No, it has nothing to do with planning. It's all luck. I just got lucky. Although, I shouldn't have needed to run away to be able to be free. No one should. Girls should be able to live a life free from violence and coercion, without being forced into marriage."