TCOTNK 1 Circle Breaker

Two bulging shopping bags on either side of her trembling knees. Flaring nostrils above a tightened mouth. No flames but it wasn’t far off. A fiery child.

Index

- If a cable is faulty, creaking or broken, cut it -

Circle Breaker

The ending came sooner than expected. Monday morning, not even ten. Charlotte stood on the doorstep with the door locked behind her. Runny streaks of kohl on her flushed cheeks. Two bulging shopping bags on either side of her trembling knees. Flaring nostrils above a tightened mouth. No flames but it wasn’t far off. A fiery child. Impulsive. Act first and think later, and in the midst of impending frustrations, saying something that... well, you get it. On my island she would be called headstrong. Sixteen, fierce eyes in a storm-cloud of black curly hair. Wild and annoying, as she described it herself.

“Don’t you dare come near me with those scissors!" she exclaimed at the age of four. Her index finger pointing, like a gun, at her temple. 

“I will, I  will...,” she uttered, clenching her teeth, trying to find the exact words she didn’t wish to say. Those were not easy to find and soon there was no need to finish the sentence because her mother retreated, like a snail into her house. Leaving the youngest to her own devices.

The girl wore out brushes and her mother's patience. Her resistance against any imposed conformity, the unruly hairstyle being just one of many, seemed inexhaustible. If studied through squeezed eyes you’d see an aura of wild scratches surrounding an indecipherable word. Vibrant with nameless colours, applicable to both her looks and her personality.

"Clean up my room? Everything is where it's supposed to be, Mom!" The last word so derisive that Yuna shrank and literally lost several ounces of substance due to the sharp truth in the voice of the child who couldn't possibly be her child. Nobody she wished to know had hair like that.

Years before Charlotte pulled the door shut behind her, she had stopped trying to subjugate her locks, and discovered it was best left as it grew. 

Charlotte was the last of a sizeable brood. All daughters. All flown the nest. Neatly and well in advance announced and planned. The next sister up was twenty-three and pregnant with her first child. The eldest had died when Charlotte was still a toddler. The other four now were so consumed by parent-teacher meetings, competitive children's parties, paving their lawn from fence to doorstep, rushing to roll out their yoga mats, dieting attempts, avoiding E-numbers, vacation plans, couples therapy, and everything that seeped through social media about scandals, elections and other disasters that they had no time for the sister who didn't fit into their little world. And 'aunt Charlotte' had no interest in the horde of screen zombies from the clan who claimed grandma Janine's love, time, and energy. 

Just as Charlotte would rather not be called Charlotte, Yuna called herself Janine. Ja Nein, as Charlotte growled the name, clicking her heels with fascist flair. Yes, no. Indecisive between refusal and surrender. Stuck in the middle between on and off. Not the kind of middle Char shall settle for.

In turn, Mom didn't accept any of the name changes her youngest invented for herself every few weeks and stubbornly kept calling her by her hated baptismal name. 

The girl was a strange bird in that cage. An odd one out. A hind leg. A changeling. Due to the age difference, she was, in fact, an only child, an incorrectly addressed addition to an already completed family. A wild, indeterminate creature that qualified for various diagnoses with capital letter abbreviations and accompanying psychopharmaceuticals, if it weren't for the fact that she exhausted her mother with stubbornness, endless questions, and well-timed oases of sweet attention, causing the repeatedly sent lengthy forms to end up as craft paper and cheerful drawings of princesses, dragons, and unicorns. And... if you didn't bother Charlotte, she would let herself be ignored. A workable compromise.

Yuna was not a weak parent; she was just tired. At the worn-out end of a toiling path of obligations, both inner and outer, the complete contrast in the nature of her last offspring with the rest of her world didn't make things any better. Despite her experience as a nurturer and a shelf full of books on the skill, Charlotte remained an unsolvable problem. Therefore, alongside guilt and sadness, Yuna felt deep relief on the day of the breakup. She stood in the kitchen, her hands in the cooling dishwater. It seemed as if only her ears were still functioning, attuned to sounds of return from outside the front door where she knew her youngest was waiting to be stopped. Yuna did nothing. Her body petrified and numb. The last poisonous sentence from her tempestuous daughter resonating in her chest. The soft tissue of her inner space tarnished. No chamois, brush, vacuum cleaner, or scouring pad would have any effect on it.

Charlotte didn't come back. Not even after the entire house had been scrubbed, mopped, dusted, and vacuumed, and the chaotic room was finally completely in order. All outward traces erased.

---

Chapter 2 Sowing The Seeds