Chapter 1
Love me so very much, but there was nobody to share that love with. Only siblings who always were there wanted food and love too.
They sort of sucked me dry. I was only ten years old, and they asked me to be grown up. I did not resent them thought it was a sin.
I gave them food, and stuff became so stuffy with them. I was the grown-up until their rage went and swallowed the whole thing up.
The relationship went berserk because they said I was never their family, mum, or sister. I was someone who just did.
The worker, the doer, and B always said had no sense where money was concerned. Disliked money, did not I? Did not worship the money angle.
Spite sent them into desperate acts of bizarre rotten behavior.
They saw me as less than human. Almost like an animal. A docile pet. As a slave, something less than themselves.
Oh, B and Z, what ails me you don't want to understand.
You may ask and then refuse to listen as if the strangest sounds from another land have gotten into your heads.
I denied you nothing that I could have given you, and you deny me even the sounds of your voices as if the very sound from me makes you mad. Insanity runs in the family because of the ill wind called robbery and spite that is the ruination of many relationships.
It is as if the whole family barter their way out of the love and warmth, and they come across as people who do that as a part of living or earning extra income.
When we were in Cyprus, these lovely children were groomed into being those types, and they learned how to rob to gain and to look right and seek and trash simultaneously.
You see, finders, keepers, and all that is what they believe in, and if a woman is deserted, then they are the finders and the keepers.
A woman like me, unloved, they said must be easy prey, and so they leaped to the conclusion that they could rob me after using my labors.
After all, their mother never lied to them about such matters, and I had no real family of my own.
So their ownership was assured with me as the keeper of the house until they kept on coming until mum died, and then they set out to demolish me and the house until they came looking at every nook and corner to see what was their own.
These are the facts. This is why and reason deserted me. I, who had always thought that I was, if not loved, valued, went disappointed and set myself on the showcase seeking justice.
Nothing in this world makes more sense than when a woman with nothing has inherited something. Well, you see, it was my labors. But your name was not on the deeds? It was. I paid off the sums owing I made it possible for them to live in that house.
They have their own homes. Why come and try to evict me from mine?
Love is crashed.
Love died.
Love becomes faith in society and law because humans are fragile and want stuff they should never be allowed near.
How do we need the law to protect us from people who trespass against us?
Faith is out, and then faith comes back.
The rooted becomes rootless for a time when it comes to fruit. Because the root returns, what is that? Life moves and crawls and never ceases to be—a giving spring.
Lover came back, then love came. Why, what has happened? From the unloved comes the loved.
My fat slobby skin smoothed down and became just like a younger version of the self that I was to become.
My full promise came back from the well of desires, and dream time also came back. My aches and pains ceased to matter.
The nightmares began to recede as if the hairline was not the only one to go.
Someone's house is sacred to them, makes them a person, and without that, what can one do?
"It was our parent's home, and you are not family,"
"Go away."
"You are a thief."
"You are a murderer."
"Pot calling the kettle black."
Mothers came and went eventually, and even dad died. What became of them and us? We are now no longer speaking as if the whole stuffy nonsense has died.
They cannot pay me back because food is expensive, and they sort of dine alone without me. They were asking no longer to know me.
Sibling rage is the key to suffering because childcare is essential. We are well behaved we are so very kind to those we need.
Hurtful words and worse evil eyes seek me out no longer.
"You should have died because mummy promised me the house and everything else." Z, in particular, is distressed.
"You should just leave," I say, and they have to.
My besotted self went because the whole thing hung with the balance of the money I found to fund the lawyer to give me a name to the deeds.
After the father signed the act, he sadly said he did not have the means to pay for the solicitor, and if I did, then the name on the deed was mine.
As soon as we do not need them anymore, we kick them from our lives and say no more. We had enough.
Mother was a woman dependent on others. She sort of told me she needed full-time care and was so sorry, but I had to cater for the whole job she was doing as I was a full-time carer.
As this was her duty, so it should be mine. I was not stupid just did not like people to be hungry. I just sort of took over the role of the mum. I am not the mother.
She told us, and she meant it. Because she wasn't, what becomes of ashes and dust is the truth. What became of the whole family is now we are scattered because we dislike being in the same house together.
We cannot be in the same house together. We are housed in different households suffering or happy in isolation because being together brings violence and mayhem.
I am the violent woman who had come from a violent situation and was feared all the time as if the movement of my arm sent them scuttling over to the other side of the room, taking refuge from me. Did I get to thinking why?
As if they had been told something I had done and did not know about. They sometimes shook as if I had harmed them. I, the gentlest woman in the house, was feared. Why?
Did not know.
I did not know.
I could never know about the past. The image of me that I saw as harmless as a joke and the impression that they saw was very different. They saw me as someone who had done something very wrong to them and their family.
One point of view is very different from another person's. What they feel is rage towards me. As if they have been expecting a treat and the sweets have been denied them.
I constantly asked what it had been and done, and they sadly shook their heads. I did not want to know and realized they said always make us a cup of tea with some cake, and we forget all about it.
That the tea and the cake took over an hour and that they had no idea that included washing up as well made me mad sometimes.
But I did not want not to have the warmth of family. They were like a little glow in the cold, and I had nobody else to make the tea and the cakes.
I wondered if my movements were coordinated and showed to be gentle and obedient. I was almost past thirty when I realized that it was not me but them.
How to subdue someone was to show them to be different, challenging, and absurd, and they do what they can to rob that woman or man of dignity and self-respect.
"Cast a vote, and she dies."
"Cast your votes now."
Love is that it is about casting the kill vote?
"Yes, the mother, we did right, we did ever so right, we enjoy the spoils of our war, and we made the world watertight."
The woman called the mother looked startled at the venom in their skin-tight eyes and sat down straighter than ever before. She was not the mother she never was.
She was slightly afraid of the fact. Why she did not say, she never said it right. Zeks sent a shiver down the mouse as she spilled the only goodness she had.
