Dawning

• Greta Cook, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2022

She knew 13x6 did not equal 136, yet she had written it again. She gripped the red ballpoint pen in her hand, nostrils flaring slightly as she tried to remain resolute to the task at hand… her gaze wandered to the suitcase- again. Was she making a mistake? Not just in 8th-grade maths but in this choice? The suitcase which she fought her mind to forget, sat waiting next to the looming, cherry-wood, grandfather clock, adjacent to where she lounged on her grey couch. She felt a pulse beginning to grind against her temples as she grated her teeth at the sound of the clock's incessant ticking. Her breathing uneasy, she felt her tightly ravelled nerves fraying. Yes, as her children would say, “she was losing it”. Deeply exhaling once again, she pulled her focus to the scrawl of numbers, so like her own and couldn’t help but wonder where the time went. It felt like just last week, that she had been the one wearing maroon pleated frocks, adjusting her saunter to swerve between the crowds in the narrow corridors of Bayview Prep.

Her eyes hazed as she watched Sophie, fidget with the straps of her new, bright, kaleidoscopic training bra, already frustrated. She remembered the hot sticky days when she too had clawed at her own bra, no longer experiencing the hype of it being new. She recalled how she despised restlessly sitting in the bluetack-stained rooms, staring at the off-centred board with lazily wiped-off letters staining it. All she had imagined in those excruciating moments was the warm embrace of her mother. She had counted down the minutes each day until the hand reached exactly fourteen-past three (and 30 seconds on their dodgy classroom clock) before she was released to charge home to her Pa, whilst praying to spot her mother’s purple suitcase by their villa door. The disappointment each afternoon stopped aching after her 13th birthday- when reality dawned on her. Mentions of the woman she once called ‘mum’ stopped feeling like her heart was being churned and beaten like a scrap of linen in the washing machine.

“Are you going to wallow all day that you can’t multiply 13x6, or do it properly?”

She blinked up at Sophie, recoiling at the clipped words her daughter spat at her since she had announced her work trip that afternoon. She set down her pen and glanced from Sophie’s hostile glare, which had an undercurrent of betrayal, to Annie who still itched at her bra, yet whose face also contorted with pain. Her daughters- the most important thing to her- clenched their jaws and pleadingly glanced back. It was then she made her decision. She strode to the suitcase, pulling out the 3-month ticket to Japan bought by her work and tore it confidently into strips.

It was seconds after she had whispered “family stays together,” that she found herself barrelled to the carpet, surprised but contentedly cradling her two teary but smiling teenagers to her chest.