Title: The Squirrel Princess
Summary: Why would Summer feed the skinny squirrel?
Rating: G - Blah! This is so sappy! I'm sorry for this.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Notes: It started out as a drabble and ended up as a short vignette. I blame this on the terrible cold I've been fighting for a week. It won't let me sleep and as a result I've been writing to try to tire myself out.
Feedback: Always appreciated. It makes me a better writer...I hope. Thanks to those who faithfully reply and to everyone who has ever replied. It does make a
difference.
________
In the third grade her parents got a divorce. Her mother moved out and her father hired a nanny, Camila.
Summer was their rag-doll to be pulled by the arms and ripped at the seams a little more each time another custody dispute broke out. Her mother wanted more
money and her father just wanted her to suffer.
Camila would always pick up the pieces in her light, sensitive, Spanish way.
Summer loved the cool touch of her brown fingers as she bathed her and marvelled at the wonderful richness of her skin.
She could tell Camila anything. All she had to do was look into her bright black eyes and pour out her heart.
Camila didn't live in their home and she had six bambinos of her own, but Summer always felt her love.
Every night she'd tuck Summer into bed and whisper in broken English, 'go'nigh', Amata,' their secret code. Summer would plead with her eyes for
her to stay. Estacionamiento.
It was Camila that told her the story of the squirrel princess who lost her family and lived alone in a big tree all by herself. And no one was there when she
cried for her mommy at night either, but it was okay because the squirrel princess was brave and smart and had the power to grant wishes.
After that Summer would search trees and brush for the magical squirrel that granted wishes.
The tricky thing about the squirrel princess was that she was so small and fragile and no one ever saw her cry, but Summer knew she did. Summer knew she
was afraid and alone.
So when she saw the little skinny squirrel get cheated by the big fat squirrel in the playground at school, she knew it was the squirrel princess and she had an
obligation to fulfill. She wanted that wish too.
What she didn't tell anyone was that she was going to ask the squirrel princess to make Camila her mother, madre; to give her brown skin, the name
Amata and a weathered accent.
Camila would pack her an extra piece of bread and some nuts for the rodent she'd nicknamed Jasmine.
She even read back then; great adventure stories of pirates and damsels and little winged fairyland creatures. She believed in magic too.
She wanted that wish so bad and she waited patiently day after day for it to come true. What she got instead was five minutes to say goodbye, a new, expensive
young mother and a Barbie-doll mansion. After that, there were a string of care-takers with white, pale skin that didn't give a damn what she did and never
bathed her in that soft, caring way Camila used to.
Summer stopped reading silly kid stories after that. She stopped feeding Jasmine, left her own lunch at home and began to count calories Her step-mother
introduced her to Cosmo, eating disorders, the two o'clock cocktail and cucumber masks.
The squirrel princess was make-believe. It was just a story told to a lonesome little girl who only had one person who cared enough to tell it to her. It was
just a story.
Stay.
Mother.
Amata.
Her lovable child.
________
end.