Acacia (2506, on Shadow)

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Something different this time. I guess people's childhoods and pasts were on my mind. But anyway, hope you had a good day at work, Jesi :)

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She walks right inside without taking her shoes off – a thing she never used to do – through the kitchen with the sink full of dishes, past the living room that looked nice six months ago, and into the room where she used to sleep with her husband. When she had one.
She shuts the door very quietly, sits down on the soft mattress and begins to cry.
She cries often now, although never when the children can see. Marcus would weep too, climb onto her lap and suck on his thumb, blue-eyed and angelic and sad for Mummy. Ayla would stamp off to shout at the cattle, red-faced and uncertain.
What do you do with a girl who doesn’t know how to cry? Acacia doesn’t know the answer to that any more than she knows what to do with a boy who won’t do much else.
She looks down at her hands – folded on her lap just as properly as they ought to be – sees the calouses on the palms and despairs.
Oh she knows it could be worse. Barret isn’t gone for good – she’s not a war widow, not yet. She’ll have him back just as soon as there’s been Unification, just as soon as the Alliance has done with him.
She can’t help it: she seethes. Wives of high-ranking military men should be patriotic, she knows, but since when does the state have a better right to her husband than she does? They need him for the war, and she can have him when they’re done, but she needs him now, and besides, when will the war end? Six months he’s been gone, and no sign of a good solid leave in sight.
The Alliance sets up a vid session once a month, sure as clockwork. She puts her hair up the way he likes it, rubs cream onto her rough cheeks so he won’t see how sun-hardened they’ve become. She tries to soften her eyes, too, but she worries that he sees the accusation in them.
“Cacy,” he said, the last time, “I know you didn’t marry me for this, Bao bei. I never meant it to happen.”
It’s rare, this quiet tenderness. New. Her husband has always been loud and boisterous. She never felt smothered by him, just protected. She doesn’t know how to respond to his apologies.
So she’d smiled and shaken her head, told him she was perfectly capable of running the ranch, and besides, the farm-hands, those young men from across town, they were helping so much…
They steal from her, she knows, but what can she say? A woman alone like this, she can count herself lucky they don’t do more. And Barret would be murderous if he knew, but how could he help from there? She won’t make him feel powerless.
And so she is up before the sun, pumping water to fill the troughs for the cattle, mixing their food, herding them into the fields and back to the barn before the children are awake. She walks into town, her skirts gray to the knee with mud and dust, buys what she can afford and carries it home in time to cook breakfast.
Ayla helps, as much as a twelve-year-old girl can do, but the work is endless.
Acacia sees her out the window now, ordering the farm-hands about with an ease that impresses even them. It breaks her heart to watch this girl, this daughter of hers with the boy-short hair and deep-down vulnerability, try to fill the shoes her father left empty.
Quite literally, in fact. Ayla is wearing heavy boots that reach her knees, has stuffed socks inside the toes, does not seem to mind the weight of them. Acacia doesn’t know where she found Barret’s old boots.
“Give them their good feed tonight,” the girl’s saying, her clear voice drifting through the open window. “And don’t let me catch you skimming off the top the way you were last week. Gan mang! How much time you think we’ve got?”
There’s a twang of rim-speech to her voice that Acacia doesn’t think should be there. She tries to teach her children to speak right, but she even finds herself slipping into common speech sometimes these days.
The burly young men march off, grinning at each other.
Does the girl see she’s being humoured? Acacia doubts it. Ayla is squaring her shoulders and walking towards Marcus now, who has been sitting on a nearby fence watching the proceedings with wide eyes. She holds out her hand, says something to him that their mother can’t hear, and helps the little boy climb down.
They are coming back to the house. Acacia pulls out her handkerchief, pats away the tears and composes herself. He will come back, her husband. The state will give him back, and he will come home and he will marvel at the children, and he will not see the new lines on her face or the gray in her hair. They will make up for the time stolen from them, and this will only be a bad memory. It will be alright.
She listens to the muffled voices of the children, and then, impossibly, the noise of the pump and a splash of water in the sink.
The dishes, she thinks. My children are washing the dishes.
She should get up – the work is endless and she is behind – but instead she sits, listening to her children. Marcus is talking loudly, exclaiming that he doesn’t understand why Mummy isn’t here, but she’ll be so happy when she sees the flowers he found.
It will be alright, Acacia thinks, but it doesn’t ring true.
Berret was right say she wasn’t meant for this. She twists the ring on her finger and reminds herself things she can’t quite believe anymore: how much she loves her husband, and how much better things will be when the war is over and he comes back.
Sometime later, there is a knock on the door, and she stands up, smoothing her skirts and shaking away her gloom. They mustn’t see she’s been crying.
There is a knock again, polite and nearly quiet. Acacia opens the door, a smile ready for Marcus and his flowers, and has to adjust her expression for Ayla. The smile slips for a moment, and she knows her daughter sees it. Sees it, as she sees everything, but does not understand that it did not slip out of disappointment but out of surprise.
We don’t understand each other, my daughter and I, she thinks, and spontaneously pulls the girl into a hug.
“Xie xie, Ayla. You worked hard today, love.”
The girl is stiff for a moment, but softens into her arms with something like a sigh.
Too hard, Acacia thinks, but does not say. You worked too hard, my darling girl.
Something is burning in the other room, and Marcus is beginning to shout, but they stand for a moment, each drawing strength from the other.
It will be alright, Acacia thinks again, and this time she nearly believes it.