Building Futures- The Book PT 2

She awoke to the sound of laughter in the bedroom. She had fallen asleep on the couch, the book still somehow held tight in her hands across her chest. She yawned and stretched and looked around her humble home. Humble and relatively small, it was still a castle in her own estimation. Compared to what she lived in before. Compared to what she had grown up in. Nothing more than tiny mud huts, suitable for animals, but not humans. Dirt floor. No windows. Just an opening where a door should be.

She was beyond thankful for her new home. Sometimes it still seemed like a dream and she half expected to wake up and find herself back in the mud hut. Find her two boys huddled together for warmth on the hard dirt. No pillows. Just a single ragged blanket made from grain sacks she had acquired in the daily search for food. Food, or anything of value that she could trade for food.

That was the daily challenge each day back then. Feed her two hungry boys; and on a good day, feed herself. 

Now, as she looked around her home, those days somehow seemed to be an impossible reality. How had they even survived? She thought about that very thing as she stood and peeked into the room where her two boys were whispering and laughing. It was just barely dawn and light was leaking in under her east-facing door. She padded to the door and opened it, a gentle breeze hitting her in the face, carrying the pungent scent of cows in a nearby field.

She lit a fire and poured water into a large kettle.  As usual, at least nowadays, porridge was on the menu. She poured water into the pot from the rusty, tin can. It was the last of it and either she or the boys would be hiking to the community well to replenish their water supply. Probably after school. School? She still hadn’t gotten used to her boys going to school. And a good one at that. Already, the older boy could read to her from the book. That after just one year in a school where they actually learned something. But she also felt guilt that they had rarely gone to school before. It had just been too hard to make it happen. They were usually sick or hungry. Quite often, both sick and hungry. 

Now, they were never hungry. Well, beyond the fact that young boys always seem to be hungry. They were well fed and healthy. She had watched their cheeks become full and healthy. Watched their eyes come to life with that sparkle that reflected their overall well-being. So much had changed for her little family. 

But the memory of the way it was before wasn’t far from the surface in her memory. The way it was before the book.

She stood and poked her head in the door, calling her boys by name and telling them to get dressed and wash themselves. Breakfast would be ready soon and then she would walk them to school.

She sat down on an overturned bucket and stoked the fire underneath the pot with the same charred stick she had been using for a week. She watched as the flames licked the bottom of the pot and curled hungrily towards the sky in search of oxygen. And that’s when her mind drifted back again. Picking up where her thoughts had left off the night before. Back to her childhood with her widowed mother. Her father gone and dead on a road somewhere. 

If life had been hard for her and her mother when her father was alive, it was nothing compared to life after he was gone. She could almost feel the desperation even now, so many years removed. She could almost still hear her mother crying at night. Almost feel the hunger that she had felt every day. 

She can still remember the day, not even one year after her father had died, that her mother joined him wherever he was. It had been a heart attack, she was told. Sudden and violent. And then she was alone. She thinks she was thirteen when that happened, but she is not entirely sure even now. A bad age for a girl to become abandoned by her parents for any reason. Too old to be a child in the eyes of most, and too young to really make it on her own.

She had ended up at her uncle’s house some miles away from her home. Ended up eating the scraps they didn’t want each day. Ended up fetching water, cooking and cleaning. Being beaten when she didn’t do it exactly right. She had slept most nights with her back against the wall and her knees pulled to her chest. Petrified of her drunken uncle. Ignored by her aunt. Tormented by their two daughters who regularly kicked her and spat on her, all the while calling her bad names. 

She remembers her aunt and uncle arguing at night. Arguing about her. Her uncle wanted her gone and knew some men that were interested. Her aunt had been appalled at his suggestion, reminding him that she was too young. He had vehemently disagreed and told her aunt that he would wait, but not for long. The burden, he had said, was just too much and the day he missed a meal would be the last day his sister’s child would be there.

That had gone on for several months. And then one night, under the cover of a loud storm, she had run away into the darkness. Where she would go, she really hadn’t known and she really hadn’t cared. Her destination was anywhere but where she was. Death from the unknown was better than the awful life she was living. 

And so, she had run into the night, the sideways drops of rain, driven by strong winds, pelting her face without mercy. She had run for what seemed an eternity, until breathless and weak, she had collapsed on the ground under an old, twisted tree. There she had laid sobbing. Free, but alone. Nowhere to go, but somehow relieved. She missed her mother. Even her drunken father. Simply missed knowing that they were there. 

She had awakened the next morning and realized that she knew where she was. She was not far from her old home, in between there and a small village to the east. She remembers now that feeling she had at that moment. The sudden realization that she had no idea what to do. She had looked west, towards the small, scattered farms and her old home. Familiar territory, but territory that held nothing for her. She had looked to the east, towards the village. There were kiosks there. Food. People that might help her. A tiny bit of hope. Back then, before the book, a tiny bit of hope was double what she currently had. And so, she had nodded her head in decision and walked straight east, into the blinding sun. – To be continued.