Mandy

• Emily Cheeseman, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2010

-“Freddie, if you don’t put down that knife, you won’t be able to go to Jeremiah’s birthday this weekend. I’m serious!” Mandy yelled at her son who was pointing a breadknife at Mr Spud Lucy’s favourite soft toy. Lucy sat whimpering in the corner while Freddie ran around the kitchen making airplane noises and aiming the blade in various directions. The kitchen was a total mess; the dirty dishes were stacked up as high as the roof, the children’s pens and paper were strewn all over the floor and the dog had left muddy poor-prints all over her nice clean rug. As Mandy frowned so did the rest of her face. She looked at herself in the reflection of a freshly cleaned pan and thought ‘I didn’t always use to look like this’. It all started with the first few weeks after Adelaide was born – her eldest daughter – she had always had the dream of growing up, marrying the business man then living out the rest of her days as a house-wife and a child carer. This job is a whole lot harder than most people think! Some people could say Mandy ended up exactly where she wanted to be, but looking at her face and features now, some would beg to differ. The endless nights where she would lay awake listening to the sounds of Adelaide’s cries and when she didn’t make a peep Mandy always had to rush over to her room to make sure she was still breathing. The countless times where the bills were so big and uncontrollable forcing them to re-mortgage the house. The yelling and screaming, the cries and wines that drove Mandy to her tipping point. That is what had made the many lines on her forehead appear, that is what made her have multiple chins – from carrying and never losing her baby weight – what made her hair start thinning from her children yanking it out. On the other hand it is also what made her eyes crinkle at the sides from smiling adoringly so often, it was also what made each movement she made worth something. She adored her children...and hated them at the same time. ‘Actually’, Mandy realised, ‘I could never hate my children, I love them too much’.