-
2 years ago
I am the Sheep. Leila is my Shepherd.
After reading Leila’s original writing, i decided to post mine. Got a A- for it, so yeah… if you don’t think it’s worth a A-, FUCK YOU, cos Ms. Rupchand thought it did! :D
Original writing
25th of November 1999. This date is imprinted in my memory: I was 8years old.
My eyes began to sting as I heard the front door slam. My vision blurred as the tears filled up in my eyes. My head began to spin. Was I hearing right? My daddy was gone. Just like that. I was his special little girl and he’s just gone and left me here?
“Go to your room!!!” my mother bellowed as she grabbed the half drank bottle of brandy. “where’s daddy gone, mummy?” I asked, trying to hold back my tears, just in case he only went to the pub, like he always does when he has an argument with my mum.
“Thelma, I said go to your room!” without even answering her back, I shifted slowly to my room.
The smell of fresh car oil smacked me across the face, as I walked through the corridor. My fathers daily smell. He was a mechanic. He always picked me up after school and took me to the garage. “princess”- that’s what he called me.
I dropped to the floor as I thought of my life without my daddy. The tears came rushing down my cheek like a non- stop waterfall.
I dug my half-bitten nails into the carpet and wept quietly to myself as I heard my mother bad-mouthing my dad on the phone to someone.
I sat there as I dreamily gazed at the ceiling, and just reminisced on the days my daddy made me smile and feel special.
After Fifteen minutes, I tried to get up and walk to my room but I had cried all the energy out of my body, so I helplessly crawled to the door, I pushed the door open and crawled over to my bed. As I climbed onto my bed, I noticed the packet of hair bands he had bought me the day before.
I sat on my bed jus thinking. Why me? Why does it have to be my daddy to go? Doesn’t he love me anymore? Doesn’t he love mummy anymore? Is this all my fault?
So many questions whirling around in my head, not enough answers. My head hit the pillow and I fell asleep…..
MEMORIES AND DREAMS HAUNTED MY RESTLESS SLEEP.
“ Charles, is that you?”
“ Wah ya want, man?!” my father shouts back to my mother, as he drunkenly walked through the front door. The intense smell of alcohol invaded the fresh smell of jerk chicken in our compacted two
bedroom council flat.
My mother smelt the alcohol as soon as my dad entered the house. This is when the argument started. I hate the arguments.
“ How the hell you gon’ come into MY house, drenched in alcohol, up to your eyeballs with weed, and think I’m going to be ok with it?!”
At this point, my mother had stepped up to my father’s face, waving a butcher knife in the air, after being distracted from cutting the vegetables.
“Ease mi up, nah” my father replied in a calm voice. “woman, yuh love fi hackle mi!” my father began to laugh uncontrollably as he said that and pushed my mother out of the way, Walking towards the sitting room.
“ Charles, don’t you dare come with that talk der! Me and you are not on same level to be talking to me like that, you better know that or jus pack up your bags and lef!”
This was a usual routine for them, the arguing, the fights. Everyday. Every single day. I sometimes thought to myself, If I could just have one wish, I would make my mum and dad happy together. Talk to each other. Love each other.
After a few minutes, my father rustled through a blue plastic bag and singled out a can of beer. My mother glared at him with a deep hatred look, I could tell what that look meant. If my father opened that can of beer and drank it, all hell would break lose. “clink” the sound of a fresh can of Stella’s beer echoed around the room. As the ice cold drink slivered down my father’s throat, my mothers hand slowly raised to the air and connected nicely with my father’s left cheek.
“what the bumbaclart you doin’ woman?!, how you gon hit me like that? you damn fool! mi nah gon tek that from you, you hear? This is the last time, you gon’ touch me like that woman!”
my dad jumped up from his seat Like an insect had been crawling down his leg and punched my mother in the face. This is the worst fight I had witnessed them have. I might as well not have been there.
I was not even acknowledged. My mother and father, hitting each other like preys fighting over their last Bit of food, and little old me, sitting in the corner of the room, watching my family falling apart.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I ran over to where the chaos was, and I flipped. Screaming and crying for peace and quiet, hitting both my mum and dad, begging them to stop. “Please stop”. “please…….” I climbed on my dad’s back, using all my strength to pull him away. It didn’t work. Nothing worked.
Is this what you would call a stable family lifestyle?
An eight year old child, screaming and crying trying to break up a fight between her own mother and father?
I backed away. I didn’t want to risk getting hurt. I couldn’t go to school the next day with a bruise. The questions they would ask.
“AHHHH!” my father screamed in agony. What had just happened? Was it me?
Blood trickled down my dad’s face as my mother bashed him round the head with an wooden African statue. The irony escaped me at the time; This statue represents peace in Ghana, not anymore. This was the statue that showed the peace in my house was completely broken.
A loud eruption occurred when my father’s body collided with the wooden floor. I shrieked in horror as I saw my father lying on the floor. No movement. Nothing.
I turned to face my mother, a swirl of anger flooded my eyes. “ how could you do this to him?!” I cried. I ran over to my mother and began hammering her in the stomach.
My mother stood there in shock. Shaking like a leaf.
What had she done? Was my daddy dead?
I looked down at my father, somehow the room seemed darker. Lonelier. Quieter.
My dad woke up. Oh my god. The relief I felt. My mother was in her room when he got up. I don’t know what she must have been feeling. I know how I felt though. Hatred. I hated my mother, she could have killed my father that night…
“are you ok daddy?” I said in a shaky voice.
The blood on my father’s face, had dried up and had turned a dark red/ black colour, like a rotten, shrivelled up tomato colour.
And kill
He struggled to his feet and dizzily walked out of the room. Oh no, where was he going? Was he going to retaliate and kill my mother? I couldn’t let him do that. I ran after him. “daddy, where you going?” “don’t worry, mi yout, don’t worry” he responded.
He walked into the room where my mother was sitting on her bed, staring into space. I wonder what she was thinking. Was she feeling guilty? Was she happy?
My mother bounced off the bed, as she saw my father enter the room. Her face looked like all the blood had been drained from her face, she looked like she had aged twenty years over the past thirty minutes.
“ Charles, are you feeling alright, do u need to go to the hospital?”
My mother looked sincerely into my father’s eyes.
“don’t talk to me, nah.” that’s all my father said. No shouting, no cursing, just them five words. I will never forget that sentence ‘don’t talk to me, nah’. it was the last thing my daddy ever said in this house.
My father picked up his jewellery from his side cupboard and walked out.
He’s soft lips kissed me on my forehead, and hugged me so tight. Then left. My daddy was gone.
The tears flowed down my cheeks uncontrollably, my mother stormed past me towards the kitchen. Not even trying to call my father back. Was this it? Was my family torn apart?
“mummy, where’s daddy going?” I cautiously asked.
Go to your room!!!” my mother bellowed as she grabbed the half drank bottle of brandy. “where’s daddy gone, mummy?”
A rush of energy hit my body. Where am I? what happened?
I woke up on my bed. My eyes were red, my head was in a trance. Re-living the worst two hours of my life. I rushed off the bed, was it all a dream? Was my daddy still here?
I ran from my bedroom to the sitting room, to find my mother with the brandy bottle in her hand, sleeping in the chair.
No sign of daddy.
He was really gone! Notes
Following
