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krikeymate · 2 years ago

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if i ever lost you i would lose myself - chapter 4/10

Chapter 4.

It’s been quiet recently.

Her father’s departure had been loud, an explosive frenzy of fury and revealed deceptions that echoed throughout the house for weeks after the event. In the aftermath, her mother has somehow never been so present, stalking the halls like an angry and vengeful wraith. Sam has never quite seen eye to eye with her mother, on so many things, but she’s never felt unloved by her before. They used to be cordial; she was even affectionate when it was just the two of them. Now every interaction ends in bitter tones and scathing words at best.

And Tara? Tara’s been so reserved lately, so silent and absent that you wouldn’t even know she was ever there. Somehow that’s the worst part, that Tara feels the need to hide, that she fears to exist in her own home. That she’s noticed the way Sam would avoid her sometimes, unable to face her, and started to do it too.

Sam feels like they’re a house full of ghosts, continuing to exist in the ruins of what was once their family, the victims of a detonation triggered by her own hand. She wishes she’d never found that diary.

- - -

Sam knows the sun above is bright and blinding, but something about the day just feels grey. Maybe it’s from the way her mother sniped at her this morning as she dared to eat breakfast. Maybe it was the way she noticed her classmates whispering about her as she picked Tara up from school, complete with pointed fingers and barely concealed gossiping. Maybe it’s caused by her sister’s solemn expression, furrowed brow and sad eyes never leaving the pavement as they walk.

Tara looks that way a lot these days. Sam’s not sure she can remember the last time she saw her smile. The world feels so much duller without it.

“Hey,” she calls, pulling at the little hand in hers. “So how was school?” Sam tries to sound more like the girl she used to be. If the way Tara continues to stare at the ground and shrug her shoulders silently is anything to go by, it wasn’t a very good impression. Sam wishes she could have her happy little sister back; she wonders if she’ll ever get herself back, or if those parts of them died with the slam of the door as Sam stormed into her mother’s bedroom their father left.

Not all of them has been lost though, Sam thinks, as she focuses on the cold fingers gripping hers. After all, Tara still reaches out her hand for Sam to hold whenever they’re together. Her sister stashes herself away sometimes, but she never tells her to go away once she’s found her. They’re still them. Sam spends the rest of the walk thinking of ways to make the sun shine again.

- - -

They come home to the overwhelming stench of bleach. It makes Sam’s eyes water, and Tara slips from her grasp to step backwards, back out the door, face wrinkling in disgust.

Their mother appears from around the corner, wearing rubber gloves and an apron, stained red. She scowls at them for dithering in the doorway, not that it takes much to trigger that these days. “Well,” she snaps, eyeing her youngest, “get inside and stop loitering with the door open.” The look on her face is one Sam knows well, her mother has been staring at Tara like that for her entire life. She’s ashamed to admit that she never knew what it meant until it was turned on her too. Disdain. Tara curls into herself, making herself even smaller under their mother’s glare.

Sam sees the twitch in the woman’s eye and the clench of her jaw and knows she needs to intervene, and fast. She can take her mother’s tantrums, but Tara shouldn’t have to.

She turns to her sister and holds her hand back out to her. “Hey, c’mon,” she calls softly. Tara finally looks up to meet her eyes, and after a moment of hesitation, takes it.

Sam uses the opportunity to yank Tara in, her smaller body smacking into her from the force, hands parting. With the doorway free, Sam nudges the door shut with her foot and bends down to grab her little sister by the armpits, heaving her into the air and onto her hip.

Tara’s eyes are wide in betrayal, shocked by the action, and Sam finds the smile she shoots her sister is more genuine than she’s been able to muster for a long while. Their mother has another special look she gets when watching Sam interact with Tara, and she wears it now, she sees from the corner of her eye. Sam fears the day that she learns what that one means.

With Tara securely in hand, Sam quickly moves past her mother and up the stairs. Bypassing Tara’s room, she heads straight for her own at the end of the hallway, as far as she can get from whatever it is her mother is doing downstairs.

Along the way, Tara decides to embrace her capture and her captor, arms hugging Sam tight and nuzzling her head under her chin. It’s a difficult position to manoeuvre around, but the idea of putting Tara down right now feels like a crime with her sister cuddling into her. She leans over to open her window, to be on the safe side, and drops their bags to the floor. She collapses backwards onto her bed, her sister clinging to her like a koala all the while.

“You tired?” Sam asks after several minutes of unnatural stillness from Tara. She feels the smaller girl shake her head, and Sam hums in response, considering her sister. “Well, that’s too bad,” she eventually replies, “Cause I am.” Sam wiggles her way up the bed as best she can while supporting the girl on top of her. “I’m going to take a nap,” she tells her, “You can do what you want.” The way Sam’s arms wrap snugly around her sister belies her words. Not that Tara notices, still as a statue in her embrace.

Lifting her chin from Tara’s head, Sam bends her neck to look down at her sister, more than a little concerned to see the 8-year-old with a thumb in her mouth. She knows she should stop her – if mom sees, she’ll throw a fit – but Sam can’t bring herself to take away this small piece of comfort from her. Not right now.

In a moment of absurdity, Sam contemplates doing the same. She spends far too long thinking about it, and decides to run a hand through Tara’s hair to distract herself from the urge instead. She can’t entertain such childish notions anymore, Tara needs her, she needs to be the adult. The weight of her sister will do more to relieve her than any silly little self-soothing technique anyway, she knows.

After a while, Sam turns her head to check the time, only to realise two hours have passed while she had been zoned-out cuddling with Tara. With her awareness returned to her, Sam notices that her sister had fallen asleep as intended, her previously tense body now relaxed and her face serene, free from all troubles in her rest.

She slips out from underneath her, carefully repositioning Tara in the middle of the bed. Her breathing is noticeable in a way it shouldn’t be, and Sam curses herself for not paying better attention. Today, yesterday, the past few months. Tara’s spent too long alone and who knows whether she’s been keeping up with her inhaler. Sam should know, and she chastises herself for the fact she doesn’t.

Tara’s her responsibility and she’s been failing to do her duty.

The thought has her grabbing Tara’s abandoned schoolbag to rifle through it for the homework she surely has. She finds it, and more. Each item she pulls from the bag only raises her worry for her sister.

Her uneaten lunch. Several days’ worth of homework. A report card, full of D’s and F’s, dated 2 weeks ago. Letters to the parents of Tara Carpenter. Her reliever inhaler, cracked.

Sam’s thumb finds its way to her mouth after all, teeth grinding down against the soft flesh and scraping against the nail.

- - -

Family dinners were never comfortable affairs, when they happened, which was rare. They just weren’t a sit-down-and-eat kind of family. Her parents were busy and had things to do, and Sam didn’t mind. It was better that way really. She didn’t need them stressing Tara out while she was trying to get her to eat anyway.

When people discover this about her, they always react with jealousy, in awe that she gets to eat alone in her room and not be forced to make small talk with overbearing parents over the dinner table. She doesn’t bring up that there is no small talk in the times that they do, just uncomfortable mostly-silent affairs where they pretend that they’re a normal family. Sam’s known for a long time that her family isn’t quite the same as all the others.

Somehow, family dinners have only become more frequent since her father left. Sam can’t really figure out why. She’s nearly 14, she’s not some stupid little girl anymore, no longer naïve enough to believe that the reason is because her mother wants to spend time with her daughters. She’s not some heartsick woman grieving the loss of her husband and clinging to her children, no, that’s not what this is. This is about control, she’ll later realise.

Sam sits at the table cross-legged and with her head bowed, eyeing her mother between her lashes, and wondering once again what they’re doing here and why she’s doing this to them. Tara sits beside her, elbow on the table and head resting on her palm, pushing her food around her plate. She still hasn’t spoken a word, and Sam’s mind drifts back upstairs to the secrets Tara had hidden away at the bottom of her bag, and her uneaten lunch.

She wants nothing more than to pull Tara into her lap and feed her herself, as she has so many times before. But their mother is watching, waiting. She’s looking for an excuse, Sam thinks, to start an argument. It seems to be the only thing her mother knows how to do these days. Well, that and drink. And she’s definitely been drinking.

Unfortunately, she finds her hook, zeroing in on the way Tara glances at the empty chair beside her where thei- her father used to sit.

“What?” the woman snaps.

The noise is so sudden it makes Sam jump in her seat. Tara’s fork goes clattering to the floor.

Her sister gawks at their mother wide-eyed as she addresses her. “What are you staring at, hmm?” She leans forward, pinning Tara with her stare. “Thinking about your father? Wondering where daddy is?” There’s something so bitter in her tone that it has Sam’s hand slipping from the table to rest on Tara’s thigh. She’s not certain where their mother is going, but she knows it’s nowhere good.

“Well, he’s not coming back,” she says decisively, cupping her wine glass. “I mean, why would he, it’s not like he had a reason to stay.” Tara’s hand finds Sam’s, and she watches as her sister averts her eyes, holding back tears under her mother’s scrutiny. Not for the first time, Sam wishes Tara wasn’t so smart, that she wasn’t able to decipher the hidden meaning behind their mother's words.

“Guess he just didn’t love you, no surprise he left,” the woman finishes, draining her glass.

Sam’s on her feet in an instant, her chair falling behind her as Tara bolts from her own and out of the room.

“HOW DARE YOU,” Sam shouts, voice breaking under the depth of emotion she feels welling inside of her. How could she? How could she say something like that, how could she even try to place any of the blame for this situation at Tara’s feet? Her fists shake, digging into the wood of the table as she leans forward. “Don’t you Dare speak to Tara like that again!”

The woman just stares back at her impassively before rolling her eyes. “God,” she scoffs, “Tara this, Tara that, all you ever do is talk about that girl. It’s like you’re obsessed.” With every word, Sam feels her vision narrowing. “The world doesn’t revolve around her, for all that you seem to think it does. Tara-”

“Keep her name out of your fucking mouth,” Sam snarls, slamming her hands down on the table with a heavy thud.

There’s a moment of silence, then Christina’s lip begins to twitch. “There she is,” she murmurs. “You have your father’s eyes, you know?” She leans forward to place a hand over Sam’s, “and his passion.”

Sam flinches back, almost missing the “if only it wasn’t so misplaced” muttered under her breath. “I’m nothing like him!” Sam declares, horrified by the comparison. The very thought that she could be anything like that monster has her feeling nauseous.

Her mother just laughs, refilling her glass. “I used to think that too.” It sounds like a confession. “But I see it now.” Sam doesn’t want to hear this. “Billy was obsessive too.” I’m not- “Obsessed with Sidney fucking Prescott.” That’s- “She was all he could think about, all he could talk about.” Stop- “Everything revolved around her.” It’s not the same! “We all know how that turned out.”

Sam turns and runs.

- - -

Sam’s relieved to find her mother gone in the morning.

She left an envelope of money on the table with the remains of last night’s dinner, and a note saying she’ll be back in two weeks. The part of Sam that stayed awake most of the night comforting her little sister as she cried in her arms hopes she doesn’t come back at all.

She hates herself for thinking such an awful thing. She hates herself for how much she doesn’t hate the thought of it.

Sam busies herself cleaning the room as she thinks about damage control.

Call off school. Inhaler. Water. Food. Shower.

Tara’s awake by the time she heads upstairs, a plate of lightly buttered toast in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

Sam’s never found anything that hurts her as much as the way Tara looks right now. Pale, sweaty, eyes red and puffy and surrounded by dark circles, with tear stains on her cheeks. She looks the very picture of misery, and it breaks Sam’s heart. She knows that her sister isn’t going to like what comes next, but it has to be done.

She reaches for the inhaler on her bedside table, exchanging it for the plate, not missing the way Tara scrunches her nose up at the sight of food. As she sits on the edge of the bed again, Sam’s struck by the thought that her sister looks more like an animal – shoulders hunched and shying away from her presence – than a person. She feels the fractures in her chest grow ever wider.

“Hey, c’mon,” she calls, shaking the inhaler. Unfortunately, her sister doesn’t feel inclined to come.

Dragging the girl and forcing her into her lap feels like a real betrayal, with all the memories of her mother’s rough hands leaving bruises on her sister’s skin. She doesn’t want to be like her. She doesn’t want to be like him.

Tara’s struggling doesn’t give her any choice but to hold her down.

She calms, eventually, the loosening of her lungs a reminder that Sam is here to help not hurt. Sam makes sure to praise her – there we are sweetheart, good job, it’s alright – as Tara relaxes back against her chest. She needs to make up for all the things she’s told when Sam’s not around. She can’t take them away, they can’t be erased, but she hopes she can drown them out, dilute every lie until only the truth remains.

Her sister turns her head and mumbles into her neck. It’s meaningless, more noises than words, but Sam understands all the same, reaching behind her to pick up the abandoned water bottle.

She tilts her sister’s chin up from behind and helps her drink. “That’s it, well done, you’re being such a good girl for me.” They get through half the bottle before Tara begins to fuss.

Then comes what is always the hardest part of their routine. Sam doesn’t pretend to know why Tara won’t eat; she just knows that the advice of if you leave her long enough, she’ll get hungry doesn’t work for her sister. She’s not like other people, she’s special, and she needs special help. Help that her parents have never bothered to seek. No one wants to acknowledge it in the way they do her asthma, they’ll call her a little strange and pretend that’s all there is to it. Sam knows better, but she always does when it comes to her sister. It’s like she’s the only one who cares.

It takes Sam half an hour to coax her sister into eating. Tara manages half a slice before she’s head-over-toilet with Sam at her back. “It’s ok,” Sam coos, “I’ve got you babygirl, I’ve got you.” Against her wishes, Sam finds the words she wants to say choking in her throat, as tears begin to fall from her eyes. It hurts to see her like this. It hurts to have to do this alone.

Tara cries into the porcelain, and Sam cries into Tara.

#/mp #Scream #Sam Carpenter #Tara Carpenter #i'm so happy with this one #IIELYIWLM tag #my writing tag

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inkskinned · 4 months ago

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the tradwife movement is the same as it has always been - back in the kitchen, back to breeding - it just has better branding.

when i was younger, i hated pink. i was not like other girls. this is now something i'm embarrassed of - this was not me being a "girl's girl."

but it was expressing something many of us felt at the time: i literally wasn't what girlhood was supposed to be. this is a hard thing to explain, but you know when you're not performing girlhood correctly. it isn't as easy as "i liked x when girls liked y" - because there were other girls that liked x, too - but i never figured out exactly the correct way to like x, or to be interested in y.

now there is the divine feminine. this is the same rhetoric it has always been: women are biologically driven to like pink and ribbons and submitting to our husbands.

the problem is that the patriarchy found a better PR team. because yes, actually, i want every woman to have the choice to be a homemaker. i also want her taken seriously for her legitimate home-making labor. i want her to be recognized as also having a job, just unpaid. i want men to have this opportunity, too.

but it is no longer "i made this choice and I love it." instead it is a sixteen-paragraph rant about how selfish it is that my generation isn't having kids. instead it's long videos about how if you feed your children processed foods, you're going to kill them. instead it is "this is what womanhood is supposed to be. i feel bad for any other choices you're making."

the shame spiral is just prettier. it is large houses devoid of personality. it is the implication: if you don't have this, you aren't happy. the solid, everlasting assurance: women are actually supposed to be submitting. this is the default. this is the natural state of things. all other attempts inflict suffering.

but you can no longer say i'm not like other girls. you can no longer reject this image completely. you cannot find it revolting, even if you know that the underbelly is toxic and festering. sure, it is the same repackaged patriarchy. but the internet does not have shades of grey. you should support and reward other women! your disgust is actually internalized misogyny. not because you are seeing a vision of yourself the way they're trying to train you to be. not because you feel her ghost pass within an inch of your earlobe. not because your father will eventually ask you - why can't you be like her?

because they figured out how to make it beautiful: women will sell other women on this idea, and we will find the singular loophole in feminism. sure, she's shaming you in most of her videos. sure, she implies that a different life is obscene. but she just wants you to be happy! you'd be happier if you were listening!

and the whole time you're sitting there thinking: i'd actually just be happier if i had that kind of money.

#spilled ink #writeblr #warm up #this is an incredibly difficult idea to express #but i basically keep watching the same timelooped interaction:#someone makes tradwife content where she's like ''i think it's SO sad when ppl don't have kids EW''#and then the response is ''... go fuck yourself? i think ur life is miserable and bad ?"#and instead of being like ''oh we are all under capitalism huh''#the response is like ''you CANT say that. she made a CHOICE. she is ALLOWED to have KIDS and be HAPPY #unlike YOU who is UNHAPPY bc you don't have KIDS.''#like .... these are people who will throw the first stone. and then when you lob one back #they ask why you're so violent. they tell you that you're a bad activist.#and you're like. PARDON????? you implied being a woman meant i need to submit to my husband???#and they're like - well it's just my belief. so what if i'm invalidating your entire identity.

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