Chapter 6 : Thanksgiving from a grateful heart
I don't think I've ever been quite so happy in my life.
Jo March leaned back, a soft smile gracing her face, quite unlike the great grin that often stretched from ear to ear. She felt warm, full, at thoroughly at peace.
She stretched languidly, back rubbing against Marmee's chair from where she was curled up in her favourite corner, placidly surveying all that she was proud to call home.
Meg was sitting on the stair case, bonnet ribbons hanging haphazardly over her sweet heart shaped face. Demi was on her lap, and Meg was frustratedly trying to shove a spoon of peas down her stubborn protégé's large mouth, which on the occasion was sealed shut as he squinched his eyes and hummed one continuous note.
He's as tone deaf as….as me!
It was proving to be thoroughly too much for Meg, who was attempting to pry his lips apart with her own fingers.
Demi promptly coughed up whatever mashed peas he had been storing in the little space between teeth and upper lip in to his mother's lap, who sat, stunned in to stupefied silence as she stared at her son, before laughing at her little angel who had just spit up veggie on her new patterned linen skirt. Demi, who had been only waiting for the impending scolding, did not see the funny side at all, but if his mother wanted to laugh instead of punish, all the better! Demi started cackling away too, and mother held son on the stair way, covered in green peas.
Jo laughed.
Meg's such a mother. She's so busy with the two brats now, she can't be bothered two pence about her hair or her hems. Bless her.
Daisy was sitting on the edge of the dining table, face to face with Amy, decked out in her favourite blue velvet for the party. Daisy was sitting down, patiently, and quite enjoying the attention given, as the pretty artist curled Daisy's smooth brown locks in to a pile of wayward curls above her right ear.
She looks like a unicorn with a dysfunctional horn.
Daisy was quite the opposite from her naughty half, and was complacently stuffing her face with blueberries, plump cheeks smeared with glistening blue.
From Jo's comfortable spot, she glimpsed through the full length mirror in the hall, dearest Hannah, trying to get past the gargantuan Laurie who filled up the kitchen door with his lanky frame and insisted on relieving the feisty woman of her dishload of plates before allowing her to pass.
Hannah swatted Laurie's rear with the end of her apron and Laurie yelped, before grasping his posterior. He threw an offended look at Hannah, who was roaring herself hysterical, and proceeded to snitch Hannah's white cap, which had lost all it's starch since morning.
Shuffle ensued, in which Hannah lost all dignity and hopped from one foot to the other as Laurie pranced like a drunken faun, waving the cap over his curly temple.
The cap was suffering more every minute, and quickly became a crumpled ball in Laurie's fist, which provoked a sonorous bellow from Hannah.
Jo collapsed in to silent laughter at their antics. Her eyes softened at Laurie, dear Laurie, behaving like a madman in the kitchen.
He's such a bad boy. Marmee's always telling him to behave.
At the thought of dear Marmee, Jo was drawn to Marmee's head, brown and grey and silver and many other colours, hair drawn up severely, which graced a gentle face entirely at odds with the stiff bun. She leaned against the china cupboard, talking to John who listened intently, before picking up Marmee's tiny hand and kissing the back of it fondly.
I'll never get used to sharing Meg with another, but I'm glad of John. Meg's so happy with him, and life would be so dull without the brats.
Jo stared downed at her thin, slender fingers which fiddled together and she hugged her knees.
She was silent a moment, and leaned the smooth expanse of her forehead on the rough fabric of her homespun, smiling in to the cotton.
Then she lifted her chin, the sharp, defined, distinctive chin that Laurie always joked could sink the Titanic with. She looked upwards at the ceiling, looked past the plaster, past the wooden floor and red carpeting, past the fireplace on the upper floor, past the scratched and tired wooden desk that creaked under the weight of a multitude of scripts, past the roof which was badly in need of retiling, and up in to the dark ink of the sky, dotted with the sparkles of stars, where she imagined heaven to be.
Thank you, God. I…I can't thank you enough. But thank you, anyway.
I want to laugh. I first wrote this thing at 14, then i got tired fast (like the bum i am), took a year off, then wrote another chapter or two, which i followed up with a ANOTHER year of doing nothing. i am thoroughly ashamed of myself.
anyway. D i promise to give an update as soon as possible.