Gabriella is a five foot four inch
tall Hispanic woman of Mexican background who has raised not only two younger
brothers, but three boys and dealt with a husband who never left adolescence
and left her shortly after the birth of her third son. She is a woman with skin
that looks at home in the sun, a deep golden brown with freckles that touch her
forehead and parts of her nose. Her abuela
used to call them ‘kisses from god’s angels’, and her hair that had been an
envious shine of obsidian has faded to a colorless white. It’s what some would
call nappy today, treated to a style that’s familiar in a bun as tight as she
can make it to keep it out of her face. She’s wearing a simple outfit for the
heat of the day, a long skirt that’s seen its weight of years with an old
floral pattern that might once have been vibrant colored but looked well washed
and faded to near oblivion and a blowing short sleeve top that covered her
higher than most ladies would have done in the day. Her feet are bare, a rare
sign for the older woman who always wore proper clothing, with a folded
oriental painted fan in her hand. The day has worn on her, with a house full of
visiting family including the recent addition of her youngest niece and the
eldest niece with her husband and children but the heart is light with the
sound of children’s laughter’s, and consequently, squeals. The fan moves back
and forth lazily, offering little reprieve from the heat of the massive sun
setting over the desert sky and the wood worn from years of repetitive movement
beneath the rocking chair the woman sits in creaks as it moves. She is happy,
but she is tired, and her children and nieces will be leaving her soon to
return to life and there is much she wished to discuss with the eldest niece
before tomorrow’s sun stole them away. The conversation that had existed
between the two women was almost the companionable silence, but anxiety in the
voice drew the old woman’s reflection to the woman sitting adjacent to her.
“Such is the way of children, mija, they are born and before you can
turn around they have grown and are holding babes of their own. It is the way
it was always intended to be.”
Charity is an equal five foot five
inch tall Hispanic woman of Mexican background, the niece of Gabriella. She is
paler than her Aunt, but still golden than most of the people she has seen in
her line of work and the flesh that isn’t riddled with various scars (up and
down both arms, beneath the nape of neck and some near her throat that trailed
down covered by various patterns of black ink that would turn into a
twin-dragon, spiraling down beneath the curve of her butt over her shoulder).
She was once a cook for a ‘pirate ship’, and a thief, but now she has found
life as a mother and of all things - a teacher of younger children. She has
dark hair that is long and curly, a sign almost of the mixed blood that marks
her different from most of the tell-tale genetics of her cousins and Uncle,
with eyes that match the shade of her aunt’s and always seem to be looking
around all at once. In contrast to the old woman, she has difficulty sitting
still or for that matter in a normal position. She’s sitting sideways of the
older woman in the rocker next to her, only she is upside-down with fingers
laced across her lower abdomen which is growing well with her second child, and
presses out underneath the shirt that has topped forward from her position. A
pair of brightly colored leggings hugs a form that is well curved and shaped
for her height, swollen both from weight gain from having a second child and
the normal weight of a life lead a bit softer than it had been previously and a
long white shirt with various stains vaguely shaped like tiny fingerprints and
a little bit of a bigger hand decorated parts of the shirt like stark food
finger-paints.
Her face isn’t even red from the
movement, and her feet – both bare wiggle nervously against the edge of the
wood, curling and curving along the top of the older chair that primarily
smelled of her Uncle. Like old cigars and desert air, something almost dry and
floral at the same time but tinged with hints of car oil and beer. Charity is
the type of woman who exists in a forever-happy world, where nothing negative
happens for long because she simply refuses to see it or pushes it away
including her own emotions.
While this has made her survivable
through some of the things she’s lived through, it’s caused complications as a
mother. Her youngest had issues, as proven by the screaming from the inside of
the dilapidated old house that had raised now three generations of people in it
and the almost patient sound of the adoptive older sister. The desire to go be
the mother to the child screaming, and the knowledge that her Aunt had reminded
her that three cousins, an uncle, a husband, and her younger sister should be
more than enough to handle two children. Even one like Faith, a hyperactive
troublemaker with a smile that would charm the devil and her older sister that
stood out stark compared to the others around her. They were due to leave out
tomorrow, after the children woke up and this was the last night she was going
to be able to see and spend time with her Aunt until they could somehow manage
to escape life long enough to travel out.
“I know
tía,” Charity’s toes stopped their
worming, pausing in their curl as she shifted her back with a soft wince at the
rocker and turned her gaze back on the older woman. “But Jun is different than
the other children. I don’t know if she should be going into school yet.”
Her face shifted just enough in a
different form of uncomfortable. Jun had been an orphan in the home that Charity
had cooked at when they first settled in their new home planet that had taken
in the children who lost parents to the war, or had been grievously injured in
it. Jun had lost both parents in some kind of fire that had left her left side
permanently scarred including the sight in that eye. She’d been bald when she’d
come to Mei, with hair to her chin when Charity and Aiden had first adopted
her. It was long enough to braid back now, and they never saw the big ugly red
scars but the heart of gold that beat beneath that girl’s chest that reminded
them both of how they had both once been Orphans themselves.
Gabriella’s gaze slid unseeing past
Charity for a moment, the fan never stilling in the casual flick of her wrist
back and forth in time with the groaning rock of the wood beneath the chair.
The moment of attention gone was only for a second, almost impossible to catch
as she turned a smile on her niece that changed the wrinkles on her face.
Gabriella always looked so old for
her age to Charity, like the weight of the world had simply rested on her
shoulders for entirely too long but she never complained about that weight.
Today? Today it seemed like maybe it wasn’t as heavy. That face change, that
subtle shift that turned her lips upwards and brought light into those tired
eyes as the ever burning torch.
“Mija, who is more afraid of it happening? You or her?”
The question caused Charity to
pause, rolling now in the chair as the gravity of this planet began to feel
like that metaphorical ball, and her back screamed protest as she finally
righted herself. Her balance was changing but she made it look almost easeful
as her feet finally touched the ground for the first time since the beginning
of that conversation. Inside, the crying turned into a squeal of delight and a
shrill ‘mine!’ broke the silence between the two on the porch. Charity’s lips
twitched of their own accord as that gaze dropped to the arm of the chair and
she pulled at a splinter that needed to be resealed. “I don’t think that she
understands what the word fear means.”
“Oh mija,” Gabriella laughed at that, but it was a soft sound, reminded
Charity more of the cry of strings than the soft push of air through reeds like
it normally sounded. She turned her gaze back to the older woman whose face was
contorted up into laughter that was almost an overreaction to the simple
wording, but she gave her best game smile in return. Catching her breath,
Gabriella paused her rocking to knuckle the moisture out of the corner of her
eye. “I am certain that she not only
knows it, but has been a close friend of it for years. But since she has become
both a Carmichael and a Barstow, I think that she has learned that fear has
many faces and none of them are as terrifying as the ones that everyone else
sees. She knows what true fear is, and she has experienced things that some of
those children will hopefully never know and she has come out with a smile that
speaks nothing of the evil she’s endured. I do not believe that she fears them
because she is as strong as her Madre.”
Charity didn’t know when the
rocking stopped, or when the old woman had managed to walk as a stalking cat to
her side, but she felt the warm press of a dry hand against her cheek and was
captured in the wrinkle’s that could likely be counted up to every memory that
boys had given her. To the times that the twin’s stole the sheriff’s car (who
happened to be their uncle) for a late night romp, or the fact that her eldest,
Dante was the spitting image of her deceased brother who had sired Charity and,
along with his wife and her mother, attempted to sell her to the slavers when
life became too hard. Dante however, with his dark serious eyes and quiet
demeanor, was a man who knew the bond of family that had been given to him by
Gabriella. They had thought her dead gone as a baby and had never knew of the
existence of her sister Nerissa until their paths crossed. As wide and expanse
as the ‘verse was, they had found each other. In a few short years Gabriella
had healed some part of her that she never realized she had been missing, and
cradled in that palm touch on her cheek now she felt it swell within her.
Charity felt tears prick her eyes,
but unlike the ones of laughter in Gabriella’s soft she caught them before they
hit that palm, bringing a hand up to wrap her fingers around it and squeezed it
gently but turned her gaze back up to Gabriella. The light didn’t seem to touch
the shadows on the pale of the hair, dancing and casting shadows on the face
cast in that outline. The sound of feet coming near the door broke the moment,
another squeal as an exasperated male voice tried to explain to the curly
haired child that her mama was taking some time out on the porch. The irritated
response was a dissatisfied toddler, not so easily distracted by the tolerant
tones of her father’s warm voice or logic when sleep tickled the feet that
hadn’t stopped moving since they’d touched down that morning.
Gabriella smiled down at her. “We
all learn how to deal with our fear, and some of us learn that there is so
little we can really do but accept that God has a plan for us all and a place
for it. You cannot protect the ones you love forever, eventually they need to
learn how to walk without your hand. Sometimes they look back, often times they
go off running without ever looking back. It is difficult, as a mother, to let
these things take their natural course. Let her go, mija, and you will be surprised.”
Charity’s frown was pronounced, and
there was no way to collectively box up the negativity into its perfect little
package and tuck it away like she wanted to. There was absolutely no space, nothing that
could contain the sharp moment that caused the flurry of movement of the babe
inside of her womb reacting to that shift in heartbeat. Reaching a hand down to
rub at her abdomen, Charity looked back up at Gabriella as she moved back
towards her rocker, fan folded again as the sweat collected in beads along her
brow and slid down her face as the unforgiving heat decided to give them the
tiniest of breezes which did little more than stir up the dust that had
collected once more on the recently swept porch. The irritated grumbles of the
toddler inside weren’t breaking now, and there was little time left before the
demands of Faith would need to be met. Jun would have brushed her hair and
teeth by now, sitting by her Daddy as long as she could for it to be carefully
braided (though Charity would end up redoing the braid later).
Gabriella’s sigh caught her ears,
drawing Charity out of the thoughts as she began to rise from the chair and
offered her a smile that didn’t quite reach those eyes. “I’ve never been good
at giving up. I’ve never known how to simply stop… it’s the only way I’ve had to survive.”
Gabriella reached again for Charity
as she walked by, fan and hand limp in her lap. Charity glanced down at the
hand on her arm, strong like steel and yet just as soft as her daughter’s flesh
had been after she’d been born. It was no longer dry, but collected with the
moisture of the heat as her face had. “Now you learn, mija, that there is more to life than survival. Now you begin to
learn how to live.”
Another impatient squeal drew
Charity’s attention to the shifting screen door enough to distract from the new
feeling bubbling up within that she didn’t quite understand what to do with.
Squeezing Gabriella’s hand, she kissed the top of her head. “Te amo, tia. I need to go put Faith to
bed.”
Gabriella’s nod was the last thing
she saw as she walked inside.
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