Simply Tragic

Chapter 2: Haunting pasts

Haunting pasts.

Without the gentle whisper to a heart, a conscience dies.

***

''Hush now child, it'll be well," Kayla said consolatory, fighting tears that welled her eyes. She understood cruelty all too well. There was an indignant expression plastered on her face as Lexie stared at her confused, hoping to hear something more, mayhap fortitude, she got neither.

This hadn't been the first complaint, she'd oftentimes been grieved about experiencing contempt. Pauper, rubbished with condescending remarks: of being fatherless, having brown skin, holding a distinctive accent. It upset Kayla who'd bought the lie that discrimination had slowly been phased out, buried beneath ancient graves over the years, how naive of her.

"Why again did they say that?" She vented while Lexie observed her quietly. She'd not wished for her to have such a hard time fitting in that school two years down her timeline. Lexie had after all qualified to get into the renowned—well performed school on merit.

But for days as such, when her daughter came to her sad, misery abounded like chasms, like lesions in her soul, those she hid well beneath old scars that ripped open reliving past wounds. She regretted that she'd opted not to pull her out of her high school before the term resumed. This horror gripped Kayla, birthing a fear and hurt that was all too surreal to bear. It shouldn't have come to this at all, she sobbed within her soul.

"Mother?" Lexie called puzzled by her silence. Kayla shuddered recalling her subjugation to the reasons her daughter was teased on, cluelessness of her father's whereabouts.

"Mom are you even listening?" Lexie groused, looping her arms aggravated.

"Of course," Kayla responded rubbing her eyelids.

School was almost infeasible for Lexie, if anything the major concept she managed to grasp was that social classes, much as they were castigated, still thrived. In order to seem serene with her daughter's gaze on her, she painstakingly wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. However, it wasn't just that, these unfolded her gruesome past, the very she had tried to bury for sanity's sake. She'd never once imagined they'd resurface until-

"You! Yes you in the green floral dress, why so tensed? I swear your heart beat is just as loud from here." Nobody dared look up on account of their lives, not even with the sentry's blatant, overbearing voice. Kayla panicked instantaneously losing balance from where she'd knelt, her fingers dug into the mud. A deep fear overshadowed, rendering her a nervous wreck amidst the frantic crowd. Petrified that she'd drawn much attention to herself, she steadied her posture her heart pulsing heavily, pounding in her ears.

"I dare not move...I..." she mumbled just as strong arms rested on her shoulder yanking her up from the earth effortlessly as if she was paper. She gasped, helplessly kicking her scrawny legs into the wind.

"You're coming with me you broken beautiful!" The sentry's handyman blasted in her drums, she nearly threw up in her throat aware what this entailed,. "I'm damned, done for." She wailed.

Her breathing was laborious, reality snapped back in split seconds, she opened her eyes wide, ghastly.

***

"But you know...Kimberly had my back. Mom...MOM!" Lexie yelled nudging her hand breaking the trance she seemed drenched in. ''Wow, you've got to be kidding me! Again? This is...great, just...perfect!" She grumbled.

Kayla had only gotten a piecemeal of what Lexie had been ranting about. "Honey, I'm sorry." She muttered.

''Don't honey me, I mean really mom?" She threw her arms in the air and stormed out of the room.

''I'm really sorry." Kayla sighed, cupping her face in her palms.

"Lexie, L...wait!'' She rushed after her yelling an apology but there wasn't any response, her breathing heavy and unsteady. Lexie knew so little, she deduced, perhaps she should learn some bits of me, my story, maybe she'll understand. Still, the memory irked her.

It was both saddening and difficult over how she'd ever come around revealing to Lexie what her past truly entailed, all she'd gone through. Her reasons for being so disconnected, disconcerted and disoriented most times. It pained and worried her altogether, the demise it had brought upon their relationship.

Yet, that remained a story for another day.

***

A/N:

[The words in Italics are Kayla's memories/ flashback of her past.]

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