On A Monday Morning

• Sonia Lal, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2010

Its 5am on a Monday morning; time to go to work. I don’t brush my teeth, change my clothes or eat my breakfast because I don’t have a toothbrush or another pair of clothes and there’s no food in the house.
I quietly step out of the room so as not to wake up my seven brothers and sisters who are all younger than me. As I walk along the dust filled path something stings my left foot. I turn my foot over and see a piece of glass protruding from my big toe. The pain is excruciating, but I ignore it, close my eyes and pull the glass out. Blood comes gushing out, but I continue walking towards the mill where I work 10 hours a day for seven days, sewing jeans. I get paid 5 rupees a day.
?
It’s 3:30pm and I’m home from work. With the 5 rupees I earned today I bought a cup of water and some rice. The rest of the food I found among the scraps lying in our street.
Just as we are about to eat my youngest brother Raj, who is 2 years old, suddenly starts crying. I look up at the rest of my siblings; we all know what to do. Everyone gives all their food to me and I begin feeding Raj.
After a while Raj and a few of the others fall asleep. This means it’s time for my second job. My two brothers Rohan and Jai, my sister Anjali and I head out into the streets looking for anything we might be able to sell at the markets an hour’s walk from here, but after searching for what seems like hours we find nothing.
When we get back home Rohan, Jai and Anjali fall asleep, but I stay awake. It’s dark and soon my eyes begin to close as well and suddenly I am standing in an enormous palace made out of gold and encrusted with diamonds on the edges. My brothers and sisters and I have just finished having breakfast and I am so full that I don’t think I could ever eat again. Raj never cried.
All of us run up the stairs, Raj smiling as I hold him, to my parents massive suite. My father is the King and my mother his Queen. We run onto their bed and they awake in fright, but after realising that it is only us they start laughing with us. There we all were. One big happy family.
?
My eyes flutter open. My brothers and sisters are lying on the cold floor still sleeping. We’re in no palace, but an old shack with no door. I haven’t had breakfast and I know my parents are dead. I know that I am a 15 year old girl living in the slums of India with her seven brothers and sisters’; barley surviving.
It’s 5am on a Tuesday morning’ time to go to work.