Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Five
Felecia just barely had time to push the jarred and cheese cloth wrapped parcels into her bag before her mother began bothering the foyer with a fresh set of sobs.
Mother was pretty, predictable, delicate, and oblivious, and all in that order. The woman who clutched at her handkerchief while pacing back and forth didn’t need to be considered or worried over. She was her own, one woman worry machine. A departure of her last remaining child from the house would require far more time for her to focus on and get over than the actual event or the circumstances involved.
Stepping into that foyer wouldn’t solve any of Felecia’s dilemmas. Crossing over that tiled surface would do nothing but allow the woman who pushed her out into the world do that one, last required check up to make herself feel better once and for all. Her brothers first left the house out of duty, one never came back, lost at sea with her husband. The other became a wasteful drunkard who took liberties with a passenger aboard one of the family’s ships. He killed himself before the ship returned to port. On all occasions mother was there to wish them all goodbye on their final voyage and now it seemed it was Felecia’s turn.
There would be the embrace, too tight and clingy for Felecia’s tastes, then the flood of tears of course. The testaments to how hard motherhood always was and how she had tried and tried to raise good and forthright children were sure to follow.
Those first few steps across the tiles were resigned but oddly hopeful. This was it. Mother would hold onto her and cry and fuss and maybe that was the final show. Nana was always quick to belittle and demean her only surviving spawn, but she was also altogether too willing to give into mother’s wishes and petty impulses. “Mother dear, she’s learned, I swear it. Haven’t you, Felecia! You’ll be good now, won’t you?”
Perhaps a bit too articulate and on the nose but surely mother would have some last appealing words to offer to the old woman who held court over all who lived at Rotary house. Something, anything at all that would end this absurdity? No one threw a twelve-year-old girl out of her only home and out into the cold. Surely not over a singular outburst, no matter how right it was and felt.
Felecia walked across the tiles into the foyer proper, listening to her mother sob and preparing herself for a confrontation of self-aggrandized grief. Instead, the only thing that awaited Felecia was a sudden vicious look and the perfectly placed maternal slap.
The blow wasn’t hard, barely a head turner, but it was the first time anyone had ever dared to slap Felecia. The girl was caught by surprise and therefore she was entirely unprepared to deal with the sudden flood of guilt and shame that came with that blow. There is a special spell cast by female members of the tribe who dare to slap their acknowledged lessors. The lessons learned from those moments is however rarely the ones exactly meant to be learned, and this was no exception.
One moment Felecia was being slapped by the most kindly and ineffectual woman she had ever known and the next she was being yanked into the position of being hugged and held by that same person who was putting on a very different and very fake face for the first time.
“Mother won’t budge and I have to survive in this place. I’m sorry Felecia, but this is how it has to be. Avoid the groundskeeper and his boy, ignore the simple folk in their huts down by the stables, our line has given rise to many who figure themselves special now. All I can do is work on her slow and hope you haven’t been bred to lesser stock between. Keep your heart pure and your legs closed, my girl!”