A girl who grows up with a strange power - not knowing what she can do, she stumbles through her life to finally find out! And how...
Mad!! I’ll go stark raving mad!
If they keep me confined like this, I’ll die of not breathing fresh air. God! It’s so awful to be in mourning when I am finally well and truly rid of him. I feel like I must run out and play, sing, dance for joy – do all those things that I’ve wanted to do; but I just cannot. Not now anyway. All this energy will have to wait as it has for all these years.
But first I must convince them that this grieving widow has come to terms with her husband’s death. And that too in the arms of his mistress!! That I am not so much inconsolable with grief that I have to be left alone in my all consuming sadness.
The gloom of this place is compelling me to forget my guilt and see the sunshine outside the picture window of my room.
To see the garden. To see all my rose bushes bloom again. During my mourning all of them had, for no accountable reason, wilted away.
As for me – I didn’t know. All the guilt that had bottled up inside me found its way into my brandy bottle. That maybe it was me who had driven him into her arms. That it was maybe my fault for being so cold and rigid that he sought passion elsewhere. And that it was finally me who had even begrudged him that happiness, that I wished his death upon him.
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I don’t know for sure, but ever since I was young enough to remember, I remember being told repeatedly not to show my volatile temper. Not to look at people in their eyes, because it made them uncomfortable. They all thought that I was a malicious child. Forever destroying all that I had ever been given. My toys, my books, clothes, even pets. I couldn’t help that! I myself wanted to know what was happening, but no one told me. No one would help me. They all told me to shut up and mind my manners. Nobody wanted anything to do with me.
Me – I was the menace maker…the destroyer.
No one really cared except Malibaba.
He worked in our house. Ever since I could walk out, I had walked in our garden and its lawns situated in the backyard. There I would walk about among the trees, and the flowers and the bees, and I felt safe. I never felt this way even in my bed. I wished and wished that I could sleep in the lawn. But they would inadvertently pick me up and put me to sleep in that big scary bed.
Now Malibaba…he understood me. Never asked me to control my temper. He looked me straight in the eye when he spoke to me. He taught me all I know about roses.
"All roses have thorns," he used to tell me, "and if you want the roses, then you must take the thorns along with them. Because, without the thorns, the roses would not only lose their splendour, but also their attraction."
He was a strange one. He always understood me. No one else seemed to do so.
I still remember. I was thirteen when she came to our house. She was Malibaba’s granddaughter. Always bright and gay, always laughing. She had smiling eyes. Malibaba told me that she had arrived for the holidays. She was younger to me so I could play with her. I told Malibaba that I would play with her if she would play with me. I knew that soon, she would go away just like all my other friends had. So I was not taking any chances. All of them had said that I was a bit strange. No doubt, I thought that she would feel the same way.
Too soon, and somehow too late, I found that she would never leave my side. She loved me for all it was worth and she never thought that I was strange. She too had a strange habit of staring me in the eye as she spoke. I was hooked too. What could I do? I envied her smiling eyes and wished that mine could be like hers as well.
She stayed on for that holiday and she went off when her school began. I didn’t want her to leave. But she had to go. Her parents back home were waiting for her. Reluctantly, I agreed. What was I to do anyway?
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Read the rest of the story at http://www.geocities.com/madghare under the "Tall Tales" section.
The fortunate inherit riches, prestige, positive notoriety. Those not so lucky bear legacies filled with poverty, infamy or, worse yet, the unhinged insanity and murderous urges of their ancestors.
