It was with age that Zelda came to terms. The little things, for some reason or another were more apparent. The extra burntness of her egg. The quick, painful tug with a comb. The way mother fumbled on names and affection. A foil to father's carefully planned hugs and praises.
She fought. Mother did. Her sister and she were all just a means to an end. The trap of life that binded dad splendidly to mother's womb. There was no love for the swell of her belly. Months, she went without aknowleding the tightening of pants. The unpleasantly swollen breasts that bided their reminder with wet shirts. She could ignore the pains of moving room to room, or the sudden urge to piss herself when she woke from sleep. Pregnancy would be just another milestone, disgustingly, she would have to bear.
Father told her once of a time when her mother sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back slightly at a creeping sense of nausea. Father knelt between her legs, hands resting on her naked belly as they groped for the human inside. Dad smiled a lot, so she liked to imagine he was grinning as he did this. His hands searching, looking for her through the veil of flesh. Grinning. Pleased.
Then Dad said he felt a thump and a bump. A kick. An elbow. Whatever it was, it was proof. A sign of life inside his woman. He laughed so different from himself, hopping on each knee and looking up at Linda with the eyes of heaven that laughed in her face. Mocked her for the situation she herded into on a hasty decision a few months before.
Look what you have done. Look at this man. He grovels like any other dim, brainless wasteland scrap. You've impregnated with native trash. A defective. Are you that paranoid that the plan would not work? You had to be three steps ahead. The first pregnancy was not enough.
The organism is alive. Feeding on you. Feel it take your strength. Feel it squirm inside you. Now, look in his eyes. Now feel it again move. It mocks you as well.
You're just the frame for what is within you.
A shot startled her back in reality. This thing was fighting her. I am here to stay it said with its kicks. I will be born and you will care for me and how my life began by chance you have incidentally ended yours.
Mother fought the need to hold her belly. Succeeding in just shaking with the urge to tear it open.
When the father craned his neck to kiss her lips, he tasted salt.
It switches from Zelda's thoughts to Linda's suddenly so I hope it isn't too confusing.
I read this to my Nana. What she got from this was that Linda was used to being this gorgeous Show girl. She was used to having a body men loved, a personality that oozed glamour and attractiveness. Pregnancy is obviously a huge change to a woman's body. Your hormones kick in overdrive. Your body does odd things. Heartburn. Leaking nips. Back pain.
I'm a terrible person. I should have made her a mother whom yearned for motherhood. Longed for a growing belly and a child's love. That would never had worked here. Linda, middle child of five sisters, has possessed goals that had never even mentioned children. She married her first husband, a farmer, when she was twenty-three. Expected.
She robbed him blind, fled to the next caravan out of California. The life of a housewife was unacceptable.
She's spontaneous. Possessive. Alluring in her younger years. She understands the role she plays and milks it for everything it's worth. In this case, it's sex. She uses her figure as a weapon. It empowers her in ways that drive men crazy. No matter how broken it seems, no matter how down on her caps she is, she always has something to fall back on. She doesn't ever have to depend on anyone but herself, and that is what drives her ambitions.
At least from my first chapter, we all know that her luck, regardless of her charisma and charm, finally runs out. She corners her fate in one direction. Stuck in a Vegas brothel, running off is out of the question. Then her messiah walks through the front door after a year of dissecting, calculating a scheme for escape. A man. Young. Naive. Easily manipulated with a pretty smile. A Greenhorn in the eyes of the Wasteland.
She had planned to play him like her first husband. Some flirting. A quick tumble, paid of course. Express some desire to leave this place of exploitation. It worked. But at what cost? She acts the part as his doting lover, several visits later and he's paying for her freedom. They travel, and she's eventually considering her scenario of retreat. But the man is harder to trick than most. Now that she acts as his, he no longer focuses on what she has given him. She's skeptical. Unfamiliar with genuine affection. If he gives a kiss she unbuttons his belt. If he touches her waist they're on the ground. He's still a man, and when she jumps at him he still falls. But the looks of surprise are unconvincing. The goofiness that surrounds him is phony.
That's when she realizes just how desolate the wasteland is. Surrounded by sand and gravel. No soul in sight. Alone with the man that calls her names like love and honey, and the worst has to be Lindy, which he came up with out of the blue. The man who takes her slow and amorous, murmering lovely things like how the shadows bring out the blue in her eyes instead of how tight she is. It's this show of infatuation that scares the living daylights out of her. She's paranoid. And sadly she can't even fathom why he's like this.
Impulsive, the first idea glows in comparison to the rest. So she takes her chance. *Poof* Pregnant and depressed.
Eh, Linda eventually understands the simple emotion of love and not lust. Evident when she longs for her husband both in bedroom and for comfort. Though it might be too late. I always try to take the persona of my characters, and Linda, being the complete opposite in most aspects to myself, was surprisingly easy to write. I guess what I find enticing to her character is how she views herself. She thinks she is independent, acting like a champion of her own fate, when actually she still depends on the insatiable libido of others to achieve and maintain her own goals.
Her relationships in every part of life are strained at best. Daughter, sister, lover, wife, and mother. Only one of which she has successfully conquered. I'm sure you can guess which. The rest are mere names. Titles given to a woman who has tried to fit in, find her part, in the unforgiving Man's world she was born in.
So ends my long tale of a fairly insignifigant woman. As a mother, slightly higher up, but that's it. Arriving in few scenes as a background character and will remain that way. This is what happens when you dwelve too much in every aspect of a story.
Enjoy?