Page 8 of A Sixpence For Your Shoe

“Mom, I told you to leave the windows open. It gets stuffy in here.”

“Misha - where were you I was so worried?” She hurries through to the kitchen in her grey pajama pants and an old T-shirt.

“I worked late and stayed over at a friend’s place in the city. It was too dark to come home alone.”

“I told you to message me when - oh wow, you did well last night.” She says, eyeing the shopping.

“I did. But they had to let me go. They paid me out a nice amount, though, so it will keep us going until I find something new.”

“Oh no, Misha. Did you get fired again?” She sighs loudly, her face strained with worry.

I laugh and pull her into a hug. The soft scent of rose perfume and the cigarette she sneakily had while hanging halfway out of the tiny living room window last night wafts over me.

“Are you smoking again?” I throw her a stern look.

“Did you get fired again?” She shoots back at me.

“So - how about some breakfast then?” I grin.

I sit on the high kitchen chair, unpacking the shopping, while mom puts the groceries where they belong. She is beautiful for her age. She has always been beautiful. I don’t know why she never found someone new after my dad died. She has long dark hair and bright green eyes just like me. She is petite as well and if she could stop frowning for more than two minutes, she would have a beautiful smile.

She deserves to be loved. Every time I bring it up with her, she lectures me all over again about how terrible men are. Iknowhow terrible my dad was. A drunken, violent asshole. A lazy, selfish idiot who refused to work and beat the hell out of my mom every time she didn’t fetch his beer fast enough. But just because he was an asshole doesn’t meanallmen are assholes - although I’ve met a few really special ones myself.

My mom was only with my dad because she thought she owed him her life. He saved her you see, after her exbeforehim left her for dead. Some douchebag who she doesn’t like to talk about. But what I don’t understand is that she was madly in love with that douchebag - and it wasn’t a relationship that could happen in reality. Life wouldn’t let them be together. I think he was married. So instead of breaking up with her - he killed her. Well, he tried.

It’s strange, but I get the feeling shestillloves him. Or she fears him. Who can tell the difference?

Anyway - my father pulled her unconscious from the car that she was trapped in, the one her ex pushed off a bridge expecting her to drown in - it took her months to recover from what her ex did to her to render her unconscious in that car - and my father, the asshole, stayed by her side - and they got married and had me. But then a few months after I was born my dad started showing his true colors and didn’t stop until the day he died. I hate my father, and I hate the man who tried to kill my mother before him. Why do they think they can get away with these things? Why do they treat women, beautiful, precious women like my mother - as though they were toys to be discarded and abused?

Mom was so depressed she used to take sleeping tablets every night just to escape her life.

It broke me to watch her so lost inside herself.

While I was growing up, I often begged my mom to leave him.

I used to cry myself to sleep.

I hated him.

I hated her for staying with him and making me watch the things he did to her.

And then one day, when he decided, in a drunken sloppy mess - to crawl into my bed and touch me in ways I was not willing to accept - I killed him.

I was fifteen.

I made it look like he fell down the stairs.

The cops asked a lot of questions considering the bruises on my body from fighting him off and my skin beneath his fingernails. But they never managed to pin it on me.

And my mother was very careful about not asking me things she didn’t want to know.

Mom is a very gentle person. Maybe I could call her fragile - but would a fragile person survive the things she’s seen and experienced?

She doesn’t have it in her to do some of the things that it takes to live in this world. Although she is strong, and she’s been through a lot - I have to survive for both of us. She needs me more than I need her. even though I need her a great deal.

I take care of both of us.

I pull out two breakfast bowls and fill them with strawberry flavored instant oats, and mom hands me the milk and sugar, flicking the kettle on as she moves around.

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