Slave of the North

I Am Not Your Mother!

Marilyn's POV

" Marilyn!"

" Marilyn!"

Marilyn heard the voice call from the room. She knew that it was no one else but her step mother.

" Marilyn!!!" The voice called again but this time in a louder and angrier tone than the previous time.

" I'm coming!" She shouted as she stood up from the stool immediately, dropping the knife on the floor beside the potatoes she was peeling for dinner for everyone and rushed into the room to meet her stepmother before she lashed out in fierce anger at her delay.

The potatoes weren't a large quantity at all, it was barely enough for their family of five but she was thankful. Thankful at least that they had little to feed on. Just last week, she heard of a poor widow down the street who lost her son to hunger and there have been many others like that, plenty of sad and horrid cases of starvation and penury in town.

" Are you dumb as well as stupid?" Her step mother yelled immediately as she came in through the doorway.

" Mother, I'm sorry for not coming sooner an...." Marilyn was apologising but she wasn't given enough chance to do more explanation on why she had allowed her stepmother to call her more than once before she walked into the dark tiny room that was scarcely filled with light.

" I am not your mother!" The woman yelled, throwing a stick at her. She hated it when Marilyn called her that.

She had to dodge the stick thrown to her by the angry woman who always took delight in physically hurting her as a punishment. Fortunately, she swerved just in time causing the object to hit the wall instead of her.

"Your father is sick " the older woman said and pointed towards the door that led to the other room that was mapped out to be the bedroom. There was a curtain hanging on the door and its look was very disastrous. Anyone entering there for the first time would be able to tell that the old curtain had been overused and now wore a degrading look as a result of being patched and overpatched in countless places.

Marilyn had promised herself to change it last week but the little money she saved up to get a new material for it was stolen in the same house. She knew it was no one else but her older step sister, Kate whom her stepmother had bear for her first husband who took it even after she had denied taking anything.

" That man is going to die soon and I am so tired of all of this. This useless life of being stuck with a deadman. He vomited again!" She screamed at Marilyn causing the young girl to shake in fright. She hadn't expected her to shout to that extent and get so worked up after all, she was the one who had been doing most of the care taking job coupled with having to do the other strenuous and never ending house chores while also working to earn for the family too.

She had taken the burden of working as a labourer, earning a very tiny measly wage to help her family while her step sister who was older than her with three good years did basically nothing.

Lazy Kate just always sleeps and wakes up all day to meet an already prepared food not caring how or where it came about.

" He vomited again and that room stinks.. Gosh!" Marilyn heard a voice say from beside her. It was Kate. She sat on a chair close to the window and was doing nothing as usual.

" That man is way past dead" she added and Marilyn felt very angry that moment, she was tempted to give her a very dirty and resounding slap on that cheek of hers but she knew it was going to be the end of her. Her stepmother was going to basically kill her.

" He's not a dead man" she says simply to both women who hated her with every part of them and went into the room to check her father.

The man was laying frail and almost lifeless on the bed.

" Sister!" She heard six year old Millie, her youngest step sister call her. She ran over to hug her. Her stepmother had the girl for her father who now laid very ill on the bed almost on the verge of death. He seemed to be in a deep sleep as he was not conscious of all that was happening at the moment. She feared sadly that like her mother, he might also sleep and never wake up again. The thought scared her.

" How's he?" She asked the girl. Millie was the only one apart from her father that she could say was genuinely concerned about her.

" His body is still hot." Millie says as she walks over to meet her father. She placed her hands on his forehead and called on her big sis to check him out too.

Marilyn did the same too and she saw that his condition was truly worsening. What was going to happen? She didn't want to lose her father too. It would not be so fair on her. They could have taken him to the clinic downtown but they wouldn't accept a patient without pay and they were very poor now and had barely to fend even for themselves not to talk of spending some unplanned medical expenses. How was he going to get his medicines? She kept asking.

She stood up immediately and walked to the table in a corner of the room, bent down, lifted the table up and checked under the rug to see if she had any of her savings still available there so that they could use it to get him some drugs but it was not there. It was missing!

" Not again" she muttered wearily under her breath. Almost every single time they keep doing this.