Daughters of the House

We were in a neighborhood of former thieves, and there was something that said we had moved up in the world. In the Neverland of the New US, we ceased to think about the past. We have now leased a shop.

We are in Britain, the land where everyone does as they want. We were not tired, we were not old, we were odd. The oddities of life shattered us, made us what we did not want to be. I especially did not ask to be born.

"You know it all born too early and should never have been."

"Why, mummy?" asked Z. I closed my ears, did not ask to be told the nitty-gritty dirty secrets.

Having satisfied her with my secrets, Mother moved on to do her chores, humming like a bird.

I had small hopes and did not exist as yet. That is what the con man had said. He is an important man who will make or break us, so be nice to him. I became his shadow in order to bring in some money. He said, "Get lost. "

He hated followers.

"Who told you to become a toad?"

"I did nothing wrong, did I, Mummy?"

"It was you, was it ?" He snarled, and we all cringed in fear. I, too, but pretended not to see.

He and she went to have sex. It was a game I played, how many times they did it in front of us, and how many times they went to the next room.

It played on my head as if the knocks and the knocking shop were the same.

Smaller than I hoped for, and then it was new life.

"Look what you've done." She would come out battered and bruised.

"Telling tall tales, and to him, I set you up to do that, and you always win."

"I did not."

"Yes, she did, Mum, she is a snide, conniving bitch."

"Shut up, Z."

"You got everything, you will end up in hell."

"And you monster, where will you end up?"

"Not in this dirt," sniffled Z and went to paint painstakingly. I was ever so pleasant to her. Set her up with some sandwiches and milk. She was a shew, but she did not mean it. I did not know how much she meant it.

"Thank you," She mumbled. Being nice was a great effort, but she learnt early to be polite, which took less effort and got what she wanted without doing it herself.

Her homework done, she went to enjoy music and settled in for her afternoon nap.

"She will be someone," Mother hoped and prayed.

B laughed so much she settled on her own demons with me. Mother had taken against B and said she would become a whore. I said no, Mother, but she insisted.

Z and B were not identical just spiritual in identity. They both wanted the same things. They split themselves to get what they wanted, used it, discarded it, and went to smile about the whole experience even at the nappy stage. I did not know much, but I knew it was not healthy.

We were told to leave because we had no bathroom or kitchen on the top floor. I am going to build these and make them better when we ask if we could come back. He sadly said no.

I had been moaning, and so had mother. So we would have become homeless and been deported.

Dad borrowed money and we went to live in a shop.

"This place is where we learned everything from sex to misdeeds, and as we have gotten better at sex, we sold everything to keep the place," said the former owner.

A woman worn out with the effort, she could sleep for years, she said.

She looked at me so intently, "Do you cook?"

I could not reply because I was too shy. I was but a child. But looked older. And they all laughed.

I did not know why they had because they did not say anything amusing.

Something strange about all this? It looked good, we could run and run in the cafe. The upstairs had three rooms. And there was the garden with an outside toilet. The walls were green.

"Food and whoring are one, so if you have no stomach for that, then don't bring yourself over and don't waste the time of the good gentlefolk." She added, and we concurred that we would not do that.

"They come to entertain themselves. Our customers are Gods. I have not lost one since starting."

"What a thing to say in front of the kids," Mother exploded.

I flew into a rage, but Mother told me to calm down.

"We must live somewhere,"

"Yes, of course, we must we will leave as soon as we find somewhere else." The parents said.

"We will be the best cooks, so the men will not want anything but food," B said, hopefully looking at me.

"But, mother." I shouted, "What is this place?"

The other two were running around happily, they found out places, rooms, and the downstairs had an enclosed garden.

"More room here. So we can play and do homework," sighed Z. She did not want to understand what the woman had told us. It was useless information to her. She selected what she wanted and did the deeds to keep it.

"Don't ruin this. We will destroy you if you do." There was a moment of silence. Like a piece of us had died.

It was wiped and dismissed; we have turned over a new leaf. We are not us.

Cook, clean, make, and do.

Instead of being with mother all the time, we had others come and go and leave smiles or stuff. But then they left and became families, and many were nice or nasty. I learnt to call them the trade-offs. Money for food. They were pleasant to us all.

"Nice cafe," they all said.

Respected and respectable. The car is here to prove our point. Someone painted the car white, and it was useless. Dad had only become deranged and quarreled with him. We did not know who he was. But perhaps it was Abdul.

In England in the 1970s. Abdul was still a young man, and he was the centre of a ring of villains. We all heard it was him because he had done a dirty on us and everyone else in the neighbourhood.

"We had to impress the cats of the neighborhood."

No one English gentry thought us good enough to speak to, but when we were children, we were told we had promise, and they were kind.

Told us stories and made us feel less fear. I do not see it now as fear, but it was something called fearful anticipatory and evil.

"We will earn soon,"

Mother cried in pain all the time, not her little girl. She meant Z. B. was already trash, but not Z. She had hopes for Z. She might become a teacher and become not soiled goods. She had ambitions for her Z to become someone, make something of herself.

All the hags kept on saying This is a respectable neighborhood, we do not want the police coming.

"Why should the police come?" I said without guile.

"Have some more of that fudge," Z said.

Some of the neighbours were kind. Eventually, we did not interest them anymore.

We found ourselves at home with the neighbors who knew where we were because they had been there too. "Come out and say it?"

"Out of what?"

"Your decency."

"There isn't a place for such behavior."

Mother disliked the whole community.

I bridled at the thought and did not want anyone to know about us or me. Her leg had become painful, and she had sores and an ulcer. She just was not the same; she hated cooking.

Parents were bored. Sometimes violence can be enticing, even exciting.

"Nag because nagging is good for lust."

"The thoughts kept on running, even racing towards what and when it would happen. Bringing happiness to hundreds.

Mother was not going to let on. Father sat down, bored. It was the house that made us that way. Safe, nobody can hurt one at home, could they?

I was bored, and nothing happened but to the other members of the family; if anything good happened, it was usually them.

I pulled like a horse. I was the main cook. Mother was groaning upstairs, having fallen not well. She had been in bed for a number of months; luckily, I had left school.

"If you disagree with us, you are cast outside into the big, weird world."

School was calling back, learning I wanted to read and write and have a life.

"You're the sap from my life," She would say.

The whole thing started as a bet between two men, and the bet became so huge because it would make one rich and the other poor.

"You know, we were the items that they bet on. I was a game? Father?"

"Yes, he did the first round of the dice."

"He bets that we would not stay more than six months, and the other guy bets less."

If we lost, then we were turned out onto the streets.

"Call girls."

I drift now, back then I had hope, enthusiasm, and some future.

When we moved into the shop, I was ten, and there was hardly enough money to feed a cat. We lived as paupers.

"I have rich relatives," Mother groaned, "They should help us heal me. They should,"

"Mother, it seems I am the only one you've got, so help me do this."

I was not scared. For I did not know how hard living within one's means was.

"There is nothing at the moment."

My youth is the only thing standing between us and the streets.

"Those were now too small and in need of something like paint."

That dad lived in opulence and comfort was a disaster for me, which I did not see. I wanted no amount of unhappiness because of Dad.

"I bought some more land." He said.

"Oh, the lord and master."

"Land is where the landed live."

"If you agree with me, then I will feed you until you die, and then your own will never suffer or want for anything."

"I am a man of my word."

You see, there were moments when I did not know whether to laugh or sadly leave.

The job lot said Do as one is told, and it will be alright because they know what they are doing.

"You have Joe's lot." I, as poor Joe did, did all the little jobs until they piled high and made me a outsider. No one has a crumb of affection for me.

I did not mind. I was pretty excited. I had not been anything but loved, and now to be an outsider without love meant I was going to experience something more.

My father was running a sect? I did not know what to do.

It is in the mid-1990s. In the discomfort of our little home, which saw such decay that it mattered not at all if the mice joined in.

The sofa had fallen onto the floor with the cushion tipping us as we tried to sit akimbo to read. Our familiar selves now sought the comforts of the superior television as they seemed to be eating out of the house and talking nonstop.

Too many TV adverts said we were destitute of nothing. Wanted for nothing, and we did not work hard or were working too hard.

According to everyone.

I was unemployed, so I did not work. No wage packet and a packed house in the cafe wanting food. There is nothing that a labor force made up of wretchedness won't do.

"You must learn to cook better."

"I am."

"Is being a whore working?"

"That is real work pays best."

"What are you reading?"

"Never you mind."

I did not want to become a whore.

I did not want that.

They all laughed.

Wandered around the house with a book and told them fairly what to make of me as if the world was on fire, trying to mark the essence of what matters to a woman, we ended up deciding it was the mattress.

Mother told me off for being such a puff pastry. I did not own up to the fact of working as a pastry maid.

I tied myself into knots and told mother to knot up too.

Some people, I thought, as the wealthy family said, I was a mistake.

K man's uncle proposed, and it is illegal, but one more credit into the marriage pocket.

"Nothing made sense. What he's doing proposing to a toad like you?" Mother asked.

"He is an honest millionaire," she added.

I had tears in my eyes. He has gloss and glamour, but proposing, he was my Father.

The cafe was taking business, and there were regulars who came and had cooked breakfast. I did it in the frying pan. The toast, they said, was excellent.

I started at sixteen and continued.

After several toasts each and many cups of tea with their fry-ups, they would leave for work.

I was young and energetic and loved to cook.

Sad life is just that.

Many years and yearnings later, the siblings told me a bare-faced lie.

"You know your boyfriend?"

"He tried to have sex with us."

Their evil faces told me it was not true.

They had stunk the place up with their orgies.

Now every girl has a sweetheart, even I. The wonderful thing was that he forgot me and left with another woman. I ceased to matter once he saw her, and the eventual thoughts and feelings added to my failure.

Does the thought make me sick? Of course, it does, but there was influence and wealth, and I had nothing. Life is about letting go, and then the hens would speak.

Beasts set upon me in such intensity of passion that they leaped up and ran away with my soulmate. He was now part of the damned; he was no more the man I loved so very much.

Humans have such a raw ordeal that the ones who have plenty get more.

His empty chair stared into oblivion, tossing me asunder and making me this humble waif.

"Now you are the whore." a woman said. Which woman? She tried to rape me.

There was a woman who had come in and stayed. She just would not leave.

"Impossible,"

Even I was shocked.

Knightsbridge, and then I shuddered.

I could picture myself semi-nude, welcoming visitors.

No time to explain, I have so many dishes to prepare, and the menu is forever expanding.