AN UNWELCOME PRESENT

~Jemima Steele  Pov

....Her mother's home, eleven years ago from now.

Well, this was how it all started from eleven years ago. I do not exactly recall many details about the night that I was born from what my mother always told me. But I do remember that she had described it as a rather stormy evening with the rain hitting the windows so loudly that one would not have even been able to hear their own thoughts. She had always had this distant expression pressed onto her face whenever she told me about it as if she was immersed in that memory and kind of hesitant to return from. And I wondered why.

I never knew who my father was. My single mother never bothered to tell me and I never bothered to ask either because I was smart enough to know that it was a forbidden subject. My mother never talked about him. She always refrained from conversations that would lead to talking about him.

My mother was not the ideal type of loving mother. She was a sharp witted and stubborn woman who always looked at me with eyes that spelled pity. She never gazed at me with any form of affectionate love like other mothers did with their children. And I did not blame her because I was not like other children.

I was different.

I was born with strange abilities, like an extraordinary kind of strength and night vision. I could make my nails extend to a claws whenever I liked and could make my teeth morph into sharp canines like that of a dog. My abilities were uncanny but they did not actually surprise me mother who tried to teach me how to control them. She told me to be discreet with all of it so I tried to hide her abilities and blend in with the others.

But the more I suppressed them, they tended to wax stronger.

I became an outcast because of this. All the children did not want to play with me because I could morph into an inflictor of injury anytime. As I grew further, I became alone, perpetual loneliness wrapping around me like a thick fog. So I learn to take refuge in the silence of my room and in the depths of novels.

My mother was affected by me, adversely. I could tell that she hated the fact that she had a child like me. She was sometimes insulted and called the mother of an outcast and it hurt her. She would come home and stare me down, telling me just how much of an unwanted burden I was to her. She even once told me that she regretted the decision to have me.

When I was ten, I realized why I was always able to pinpoint how a person felt. It was because I could smell their emotions. I knew when they were happy or excited. I could also equally sense their sorrow or pain, their anger or their confusion. I attempted to disregard it but like my other abilities, it was something that stuck inside of me.

After my eleventh birthday, I had a feeling that my mother was fed up and totally done with me. She made secret calls in the night and even rented a car. She gave me the cold shoulder for about a week until that evening that I would never forget

It was an evening that I would always remember.

She had woken me up from a sweet peaceful nap and asked me to prepare a suitcase in a stern and resolute voice. She had asked me to pack every single thing that I owned because I would not be coming back to that house. And I had wondered where on earth we were going.

"Are we moving houses?" I remembered asking her.

"Go upstairs and do as I say!" She had yelled at me. I realized then that it would be very unwise to argue. So I had gone to my room and hastily arranged my things into a suitcase with trembling hands and a heart that was beating heart in nervousness.

"I am done ma," I said as I appeared in the living room with everything that I owned, as if it was a lot. She had stood in the doorway while drumming her fingers on the door frame as if attempting to maintain her calm composure.

"Take it to the car and sit. I am coming." I was scared to ask about our destination, even though I wanted to know.

"Yes ma," I whispered as I dragged my suitcase to the car. She locked up the house and was soon back. She slipped into the driver's seat and started the ignition while I gathered the courage to speak what was on my mind.

"Ma, where are we headed?" I said in an almost inaudible voice.

"It would do you good to remain silent," she had snapped at me while clutching the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity. She drove out of the yard and unto the road. She kept her eyes on the road the entire time, not once looking at me and I had a feeling that she was about to sell me off somewhere, plus the fact that I could smell her guilt. I could not bear to ask her if my suspicion was true. I could not bear to ask her if she was tired of me.  All that I could do was to sit still in the car and pray with my eleven year old mind that things would later be alright.

We traveled for what seemed like hours with the only sound in the car being the light pitter patter of rain hitting the closed windows. I had fallen asleep sometime after and later woken up to see that my mother was still driving late into the night. I had wondered once again where we were headed but did not have the guts to ask. So I had gone back to sleep, spending the entire night in the cramped front seat of her rented car, bundled in a thin sweater and clutching myself as if I was the only thing that mattered and I was.