Daisy

• Megan Burnett, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2015

Daisy may as well be dead. You secretly hope she will die. Each shuddering inhalation is one too many. Her skin looks shiny and fragile like a china doll. Deep brown eyes stare blankly and you stare back. There is nothing to say, no final words of comfort. The hideous injustice of it all plunges a cold chunk of steel deep inside you. You are exhausted. It is time to go, before the inevitable.

You don’t want to look at Grandma; a woman who has selflessly, lovingly nursed her daughter to death. Your inadequacy plagues you like guilt plagues an unfaithful wife. You can’t bear to be enveloped in her endless understanding anymore, her arms like stone pillars ready to support you; the failing structure.

You blame the Mother. You imagine her as short, skin stretched taut over brittle bones, hair thin and damaged, teeth blackened and decaying. You imagine her abusing any substance she could find; so unforgivably oblivious, so completely selfish.
“Sign these papers,” and the Mother did, not realising that she was giving her daughter away to someone who might want her. Stolen from her birth mother; taken away from the fear of being attacked, being violated, being hungry.
You blame the Mother; a blind, irrational hatred for a woman you have never met: a woman whose choices killed Daisy.

You blame Daisy. Her drinking was a diseased appendage that rotted and festered. You watched as her speech slurred, her temper grew shorter and the pile of empty bottles mounted in the rubbish bin.
Daisy ran away, and Daisy came back, and you watched her smoke and you watched her drink. But Daisy would live forever.
You blame Daisy; a disgusting, ill-placed anger toward the woman you should have had more time with: a woman whose choices killed her.

Didn’t you know that Daisy was dying?
You didn’t know. You had no idea that each second Daisy lived was borrowed. You don’t see her as often as you should. Your own selfishness repulses you. She is deteriorating quickly. Her speech slurs; this time intoxicated with disease. She continues to drink. It doesn’t matter now. The hollowed, sickly carcass the real Daisy is encased in is old and withered. You try to pretend everything is normal, as people do when someone is so irreparably ill. But you look at the stranger you have known all your life and hope she cannot see the pain and horror you are trying so valiantly to contain.

She may as well be dead. It’s just a matter of waiting now. Your ears throb with the sound of breathing. The tiny, fragile woman lies bundled, hands folded beneath the sheet. She doesn’t move. She cannot speak. The room remains in blurred semi-darkness, the woman still, staring and silent. You can’t be there when she dies. You can’t bear to watch her claw at each breath one second longer.
“See you later,” you say, and you will never see her again, you liar.