Love & Care

Chapter 1

December 11

"Alexandra get down here." I could hear my mother yell. "Maya, Layla I need you to stay close the door behind me and be quiet. I'll come back as soon as possible. Layla look after Maya and keep her calm." I got up and slowly walked down the stairs.
"Ma'am" I stood in front of her. "You stupid girl. What took so long? Why did even get you and those other brats if your not good for anything besides making a mess and eating my food. Now go and make dinner for me and your father. Clean up afterwards. Then go to your room I don't want see your face again today."
I nodded and went to the kitchen, where I started preparing dinner. Just something easy. Noodles with tomato sauce and some chicken for my parents. I need to fix something for my sisters and me to without them noticing.
After I finished the cooking I set the table and put the two pans on the table.
While I was alone I started fixing portions for me and my sister's as my the door opened and my dad came in.
Fuck I only had two plates ready and I could hear my parents coming towards the kitchen.
I took the two plates and left the kitchen trough one of the exits only a few seconds before they came in.
Up in our room Layla was playing with Maya.
"Hey Guys. Dinners ready." I put the two plates down.
"What about you? Aren't you hungry?" Layla looked worried.
"I am absolutely fine Layla. Just eat. Okay?" I told her. She glanced concerned at me but nodded and started to eat. Maya had already started and was enjoying the food.
"I have to work tomorrow after school. So I won't be able to get you guys until 5pm. Lay can you get Maya from her kindergarden after you are finished. I'll come and get you after I am finished and than will go home together." They nodded still chewing. Damn I am hungry.
"Do you have to finish homework?" She shook her head no and continued to eat. "Classtests?" Again a no.
"Fine I have to work on some stuff so I'll start doing my homework now. If you need anything tell me. I love you guys." I got up and sat down at my working desk and got my books out.
English, Math and some Music homework. That was all I had to do.
With a small sigh I started working on my math homework. Only a few small equations this should go pretty fast.
"Lex we are finished. Can you please bring me to bed." I looked at the four year old child next to me.
"Of course Maya." I pulled her up and spun her around making her giggle.
"Let's get you ready for bed darlin'" I pulled her towards the drawer with her Pyjamas and helped her to put one on.
"Well I think someone still needs to brush her teeth am I right?" She grinned at me and together with Layla and I we walked to the bathroom.
We tried to be as quiet as possible to not make our parents mad and on the way to the bathroom and the time being in the bathroom we achieved this goal, but on the way back we had a slight problem. Our dad was in the hallway.
"Go to our room. Now." I told my sisters and positioned myself in front of them. While they hurried to get into our room he came towards me.
He clearly was drunk.
"Why did we even have you? You and your sisters only cost us money we don't get anything back from it. You don't earn money, all you do is complain." The other two we're safe now.
I felt stinging pain on my cheek. "Look at me when I am talking to you." My dad had slapped me.
"I am sorry sir. I didn't mean to disrespect you."
"Well you did. You are so useless and pathetic. I wonder why you didn't kill yourself already."
Don't cry. You can't show weakness. He hit me again and again. After what felt like eternity but in reality was only a few minutes he left me and walked downstairs.
Most of my body burned. He put so much force behind his slaps that it felt like I was being his punching bag to let out all his aggressions. Well basically I was.
I limped towards our room and as soon as I closed the door I saw both my sisters curled up against each other in Layla's bed fast asleep.
Well at least I didn't have to worry about them. I sat down on my working table and started the music homework. Math was finished.
It took my in total 2 hours to finish music and English Homework.
Around midnight I finally went to bed after being awake for almost 20 hours.
With a groan I turned around and turned of the alarm clock.
5am. Five hours of sleep. But hey it was one more than the night before. I got up and started to get dressed before trying to wake Maya and Layla up.
"Maya, Lay you've got to wake up. We've got to get ready for the new day."
While Maya got up almost immediately Layla took a little longer but soon both of them got up and started getting ready for the day. Maya walked towards me, she still rubbed her eyes. "Lex I'm tired. I don't want to go out today." I smiled at her cuteness. "You're cute baby, but you've got to get ready. Don't you want to go to Kindergarten, you've got music class today." She beamed and ran as fast she could towards the closet. Layla laughed silently and started getting dressed.
Maya walked towards me. She had already put on her pullover and her jeans. "Can you help me please? I can't close it." She pointed to the button of her pants.
"Of course baby." I kissed her forehead and closed her pants for her.
She smiled.
"I'll get us something to eat." Layla nodded and picked Maya up. "Come on let me do your hair." My youngest sister giggled while Layla tickeld her side.
I opened the door and went to the kitchen as quiet as possible.
In the kitchen I started making sandwiches.
In total I made six. Two with cheese, one with ham and three with Nutella.
Maya was the only one of us who eat meat. So the ham one was for her. The Nutella ones were for lunch in school.
I put the Nutella ones in to lunch boxes and went upstairs to my sisters.
"There you go. Lunchbox and Breakfast." I handed them the food and we all ate in silence.
It was like every morning.
"Are you done? We should go brush our teeth and then leave for school." With a sigh Layla got up and went to the bathroom in silence. When she came back I brought Maya to the bathroom and made sure she was ready before I brought her back to our room. "Put on your shoes and jackets already. As soon as your done wait outside for me." I said to Layla before walking to the bathroom myself and quickly doing my morning routine of washing my face, brushing my teeth and using the toilet before going back to our room.
My sisters were already outside when I left the house.
To get to our schools we had to walk. Maya was a bubbly ray of sunshine. She was telling us about what she wanted to do today and about music class and when she didn't know what to say anymore she started singing.
After twenty minutes we reached the school of my youngest sister.
"Bye Maya, have a really nice day. Remember that Layla will fetch you after school." I kissed her head and watched together with Layla as she walked into the building.
Five minutes later we reached Layla's school and as mine was right next to it also mine. "Bye Lay. Have a nice day. I love you." We hugged and she went into the building.
I entered my school building and walked to my English class.
Luckily my English teacher was already there.
"Good morning Alexandra. You can sit down if you want to."
I nodded and smiled.
I sat down for the next ten minutes my classmates walked in and I waited.
The class took 60 minutes time. Time spend on discussing poetry of the modern artists. I actually have to say that I enjoyed it.
"Your homework is on page 95 number 3 and 5 please write a coherent text." I quickly wrote down the tasks before exiting to my math class.
Math was boring. As always. We were doing some kind of equations. Not that I really understood what I was doing.
After the class I quickly exited into the break. I sat down in the library and started doing my English homework. I had twenty minutes of break so I could possibly finish number 3) maybe start number 5).
The bell rang and I sighed while packing my bags.
The last class before I had to go to work was music class.
"Class were starting a project today. All of you will perform a song next week. You can sing what you want. If you want you can practice now."
That was typical for him. He never did real lessons always giving us projects and self learning stuff.
I got my geography stuff out and started finishing them as I already knew what I was going to perform.
At the end of the class I had finished most my homework. I was finished for the day so I left school and walked to the small cafe near the school.
My colleague Angie was waiting for me.
"There you are. I really need to go now. Can you take over?" I nodded and not a minute later she was out of the door.
The cafe wasn't as full as usually around this time, but there was a family of three sitting around one of the tables. They were drinking hot cacao and eating cakes.
At one of the other tables a man was sitting and drinking coffee while eating a sandwich.
And at the last table a tall blonde was sitting. She was drinking tea and eating a muffin.
She looked up as she felt me looking at her and smiled.
I started doing some of the dishes and cleaning up a bit.
"Hey we would like to pay." The man that was sitting with the family stood at the counter and smiled at me.
I quickly put in the money amount in the checkout.
"12.3$" he handed me 15£ "Keep the change." "Thank you so much sir."
I put the tip in my tip jar and watched as the family left. As soon as they left the cafe, I started cleaning the tables.
The man that had been sitting there alone went up to me and asked me to pay.
"Sure one moment sir." I put the cleaning things away and walked over to the checkout.
"You had a large coffee and a turkey sandwich right?" He nodded.
"That be 4.2$" he handed me a five dollar bill and left. Yey I got quite a lot of tips today.
I looked over to the blonde woman she was smiling at me again.
I continued to clean a bit before sitting down at one of the tables I got some of my school work out. Math. I still didn't get what to do but I had to finish the homework and luckily my boss was pretty chill about me doing my homework here.
After twenty minutes I groaned and closed my books with a sigh.
I heard a laugh and looked over to the only other person in the cafe. The blonde woman was walking towards me.
"Can I help you miss?" I got up. "No it's alright darling. I wanted to see if I can help you. I'm Taylor. What's your name?"
I was flabbergasted. This stranger wanted to help me. Me?
"Ähm um I am Alexandra."
"Well Alexandra. Can I help you with your homework?"
"Uhm no miss I am really okay. You don't need to help me. No need to be bothered. Are you sure I can't help you with something?"
"Call me Taylor darling. And I want to help you so I'm gonna sit down and you're gonna show me what you're working on and I'll help you."
She sat down and I sighed. "Miss.." she looked at me "ähm Taylor you don't need to help me." She just ignored me and looked at my notes. "Ah I know this." She started to explain how to do the math.
And somehow I got it and was finally able to solve this.
"Thank you so much Taylor." She smiled at me. "You're very welcome Alexandra."
"Well I've got to go now but I really hope that I'll see you again soon." I nodded and we walked to the cash register.
"So that be 3.9$" She smiled and handed me a 20$ bill. "See you soon Alexandra." She smiled and walked out before I could give her the change. Did this woman really just give me really free turtoring and over 15 dollar tips.
What a strange woman.
For the next four hours I cleaned a bit and sold food to the customers. In total I made a little 30 dollar tips which is really much considering I didn't have that many customers.
Maybe I could take Maya clothes shopping tomorrow she needed a jacket for the winter. It was getting pretty cold and she grew so much that she needed a new one. Layla probably needed a new one to. I sighed.
How was I supposed to support both of them.
I walked outside of the cafe and locked the door. It was a walk of fiveteen minutes to my house but I still need to get my sisters from the park so I'd walk totally 25 minutes. It was getting dark and it was cold so I started rubbing my arms and walking faster. I was only wearing a sweatshirt and my t-shirt underneath.
As I reached the park I saw Maya sitting on the swings and Layla pushing her.
"Hey guys." Maya jumped from the swing and ran towards from me.
"Lexi." She jumped in my arms. "I missed you today."
"Missed you too baby." Than I hugged Layla. " How was your day?" She asked me.
"Quite good I made quite a lot of tips, so maybe Maya and I can go buy her a jacket tomorrow."
Layla nodded smiling. "That's good."
"What about your day?" "It was good I got an B on an english homework. So that was good and I finished most of my homework for the next days during lunch break and the breaks." Layla explained while Maya was running ahead she was a bundle of joy and happiness.
"When we're home you take Maya straight upstairs and I'll fix dinner. After dinner I'll take her to the bathroom so she can take a shower. You can do the rest of your homework during that time. Afterwards you go take a shower while I bring her to bed and do my homework okay?" Layla nodded.
We we're almost home so I took Maya at one of my hands and soon as we saw out house coming closer, Layla took her other hand.
I opened the door and listened carefully. No sounds. Maybe they were out. I went inside my sisters following and yes they weren't there.
Still Layla took Maya upstairs while I cooked us all dinner. Rice and some vegetables. I took the plates upstairs and we ate together. Maya was talking about her music class and that she played on a ukulele and that she really wants one so she can practice a lot more.
After dinner and Maya took a shower I put her to bed and luckily she fell asleep rather quickly.
I sat down and finished most of my homework before going to take a shower myself. When I reenterd the room Layla was already asleep.
I locked the door behind me and looked at the clock.
Midnight. Oh well 6 hours of sleep is better than nothing.
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2755 Words