AN: 2 reviews out of some 300ish hits? How unfair.
She worries sometimes.
Worries about where the next meal will come from; worries about heat in winter and lice when the family they share a flat with comes down with them. She worries about having respectable clothes and shoes that don't pinch her feet on her way to work.
When they're in France for six months and her nephew spends his days chatting in French with the old woman next door she worries he'll forget he's an English boy. She hasn't enough time to dedicate to that particular worry though it comes up again when they spend eight months in Germany and again when they're in Poland.
She worries her son won't remember his father and stops herself when she can't recall the color of his eyes. She worries he doesn't laugh enough and spends too much time trying to forget what happened.
She worries her boys spend too much time alone and not enough with other children. She worries the first time she hears the cruel taunts; 'Floating bits' and 'Britshit' are some of the first things scowling women and dour men flay them with.
She worries the she no longer has a reason to hold her head high. She worries when she doesn't dare enter into a French café for fearing she'd be asked to leave. She worries when she flounders like an illiterate commoner in tongues her English childhood never prepared her for.
She worries that the worse hasn't come to pass already. She worries she can't handle anymore.
She worries when the Headmaster calls her to tell her the boys have been fighting again. But she figures English boys have nothing but fight left in them so she doesn't worry as much as she should.
Sometimes she wakes at night, heart pounding and lungs burning; mind so certain the boat left her. She worries most of all because her's was the last boat that made it out of the Isles. She still remembers the chilled dock, huddled and scared as harried officials processed names. She remembers looking back and waiting and waiting for dark waters to reveal more refuge boats and finally admitting none where coming. She remembers a tiny tug, her nephew's pale lips leaning near her ear for even back then he knew how dangerous it was to talk of strange things, "They can't come."
And she remembers the overflowing docks on British soil and wonders what happened to all those crying people. And sometimes she still dreams of desperate cries and hysterical pleading, "Please! Don't leave me behind!"
She worries she's all the boys have now and she worries she isn't enough. She's never had to stand on her own, never had to fight for her little piece of life. Her parents gave her to her husband, her husband gave her his son but now she has her sister's son and her own son to content with and she worries they'll realize one day she wasn't enough.
She worries when she can't remember what color the little house on Privet Drive used to be. She worries when she can't recall what prize-winning roses had to do with life.
Sometimes she worries. Other times she's laughing and smiling and screaming and looking and smelling and seeing because the world ended on a normal day and they're entirely too few normal days in her future not to enjoy them while she can.
Sometimes she worries…but that isn't enough.
Worries sometimes come…but that can't be all.
And in her heart two boys live because sometimes that's all she has.
