A Short Story
Look out there. It’s raining again. 3 days solid, nothing but rain, wet drops falling from the sky. There might even be a reason for all of this rain. But I guess no one is really meant to know. It’s a secret of the skies. Written By Emily Kay
I went and looked through my old photo albums this morning, whilst mum was out. I guess I’ve become to scared to look at them with anyone else. I’m not exactly sure as to why I am either. Maybe I prefer the privacy. Maybe I just don’t want people to see me cry. Harsh reality, that’s what it is. I just couldn’t help myself by looking through them. Maybe, behind the old happy faces and ice-creamed noses, there was a meaning to everything, a reason for what we do.
I couldn’t find any photos of today. I would ask mum, but she would just turn me away. I know, if I pester her, she’ll just explode. Go mad, ballistic. I know why as well. I suppose she has a perfectly good reason to.
But, back on the subject, I found one of my brother and me. He was eleven at the time, I was five. We were born two days apart, nearly five years between us. He was holding me as we posed for a photo in front of a playground climbing frame. Thinking about it, he was the only one who understood. Maybe it’s in the stars, some people used to reply to my anecdotes of my childhood. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much to me when he went.
I kept the picture in my worn jacket pocket when I found it, keeping it for myself. If mum found it, she’d break down. But she never looks at these photographs any more. Not the old ones…the really old ones, which had my brother in them and had gone slightly yellow at the corners where they’ve been held. But then again, she never really looks at any of the photos with any of us in. She seems to like the glossy magazine photos a lot better. Perhaps they dictated a better life to her through the fame of someone else. Maybe she uses their stories of such luck as her own, hoping that one day, she’ll be famous, have a loving husband and the perfect 2.4 children complete with dog. When I think of perfect, the urge to throw up nearly reaches breaking point.
I think sometimes, if things weren’t meant to be the way they were, then maybe we’ll all be not only better off, but happy too. My mother thinks nothing like this. She blames everyone else for anything like my brother and my father. She even blamed dad when he left. But he wasn’t to blame, for we drove him away. As for my brother, I say what happened was God’s will. But sometimes I wish my mother would realise things like that.
I almost wanted to scream at her the other day, the silence between us killing me. We don’t really talk to each other any more. She feels there’s no reason, and well, I just can’t believe, or begin to imagine some of the things she could be thinking. I wanted to shout at her, scream in her ear, ‘Look at me! I’m your daughter! You have me!’ Maybe then she would get the point.
