“Yeah, not many, but this one they say has been here for over a thousand years now. That’s why they made the path around it. It would be a shame to cut it down when this was its home first.”
Just the thought makes me sad, and my fingers itch.
I take a deep breath in through my nose and hold it before slowly blowing it out through my mouth in hopes of pushing off the emotions that threaten to hit me like a tidal wave.
It doesn’t happen often, not anymore, not since…
No, there hasn’t been anything I enjoyed or beautiful enough to capture in that prison I called a home. It was suffocating, a constant reminder of what once was, memories on every wall in every room, taunting me.
Auntie had forced me to continue with my training and studies after Jordan died.
I had to perform at his funeral…
Everyone said it was hauntingly beautiful, and maybe it was, but I knew better; it wasn’t to honor him, it was to torture me.
And it had worked. Auntie knew just how to get to us.
Jordan wasn’t as docile as I. After he outgrew Auntie, he got bold, and pretty soon it was taking her more to keep him under control, until she found the perfect weapon.
Me.
I became the target whenever he stepped out of line or didn’t do well. It had been terrible, but eventually we got better at being exactly what she wanted. Even still, the damage was done. My thighs and stomach would forever carry her marks.
I wrap my arms around my torso and once again thank the steam in the shower this morning for keeping that part of me that I hate so much but hold on to so tightly from anyone else.
It might sound crazy, but it’s the last part of Jordan that I have. Well, that, my necklace, and a few pictures.
Anything recent I’d been able to scrape together had been destroyed when Auntie smashed my camera and laptop to pieces.
I wasn’t allowed to use cloud storage; Auntie hated all the ‘new-age tech,’ as she called it. So when she took a hammer to them, every picture I had of me and Jordan from the last eight years disappeared with them.
She told me I knew better as she smashed them. Said it was a valuable lesson I needed to learn, that they were distractions anyway.
‘I would thank her someday,’ she’d said.
I cried, not when she smashed them, but that was why she’d smashed them, as a punishment.
No, I’d long run out of tears at that point. I’d cried at Jordan’s funeral when she forced me to stand and play for six hours without a break and without faltering.
And I had, but I’d dare to shed a tear, and being human, well, that just wouldn’t do for Auntie.
If we weren’t perfect, we were useless; it’s what she’d told us over and over for as long as I could remember. The reason I studied so hard and learned everything I could and why Jordan was so good at sports.
We had to be.
We were a direct reflection of her, and she took more pride in herself than anything else in the world.
I’d thought the part of me that craved creativity, an outlet, had died when she smashed that camera, but standing here looking at this beautiful tree that’s withstood hundreds of years in the harsh elements and who knows what else…
I feel inspired.
That’s dangerous.
She’d told me I knew better, and she was right, then and now.
If it’s too good to be true, oftentimes that’s exactly what it is, so why is this the one lesson I can’t seem to learn?
I’d mapped out my escape and nailed down the timeline, down to the last class. The school also gave me an allowance of sorts as a scholarship student, and if I put away nearly every cent, I might just have a shot to get away.
