There are these times when I feel like I could be living someone else's life, instead of my own. There are these moments; moments when I'd see someone doing something, or witness some odd non-realistic activity put into pursue, and I'd think; I could do that. I could be amazing.
Ever experienced those dreams that express that idea? I have; so many times over that those dreams have become so ridiculous that I can't even think of doing them for real. I have these dreams of riding horses in some nearby forest, on a long bricked path through the trees. I've dreamed of fighting in a sword fight; fighting with some tall and dark haired stranger whose face I can never remember. Most of all, I dream of having parents. The memory is never clear but the vague idea of how they used to look has always haunted my dreams.
It was a long time ago; since I had last seen them. I remember being eight years old when they abandoned me; leaving me alone in a cold and broken tool shed in someone's back yard with nothing but the clothes on my back, a silver pendant and an odd little gold ring encrusted with a small orange gem. The pendant was small, but rather detailed. It was a sword on a waxing crescent moon.
Ironically, the home owners were away for a week at that time and only found me snooping around sometime after returning.
The memory of my parents is too specific; meaning there's very little to remember. My mother had long blond hair – almost silver – tied back and coiled into a bun or a braid. The memory of her tells me she was tall and fit. My father was tall, strong and muscular – so says my memory. He too had long hair, dark and wavy, almost always tied back. That's all I remember. I can imagine faces that look somewhat similar to my own; but the smaller details, not so much. I don't remember their ages, their eye colours, nor do I remember what their voices sound like. I can't even remember if there are similarities between them and me; my long dark spiralled mess of hair, oval face, bright hazel eyes and lips that make look like I'm constantly pouting. Did one of them have a lot of freckles, like I do? Which one of them gave me my odd little nose?
Foster houses tend to encourage orphans to forget their pasts. It helps to heal the hurt of being abandoned, or so they told me. It never helped me. If anything, it taught me that I'm better off alone; taking care of myself and depending on no one.
Pretoria is crowded place; one filled with cities that are teaming with overcrowded life. I don't really like it here, but this is where I've been my whole life. Crime and noise is a constant problem and people don't seem to care. Well, they try, I guess. People smile and nod as they walk by, but it never seems to be enough. Christians preach the good word in churches and Jehovah's witnesses knock on everyone's doors to provide news on the grace of God. Teenagers roam the public areas in groups. Girls wear so many varieties of tight fitting jeans, colourful coats and hats. Boys wear their baggy jeans and many of them wear it below their backsides too. People walk their dogs all over the place. On occasion; I'd see stray pets. When you are in trouble, no one really trusts the world enough to help you. Crime has made us all scared, despite the beauty of the neighborhoods and city infrastructure. If someone is hurt or mugged, no one really stops to help in the case they be hurt too.
I've been alone for fifteen years and I like it that way. I keep no close relations with anyone for that very same reason. I only have one friend and even that isn't the most solid of relations. Linda Swan is my work colleague more than my friend; but she has invited me to her farm several times. She's a 35 year old blond woman with an obesity problem. She's very bubbly and has a good family of her own. Her daughter is nine now, so she tells me.
My name is Zelena Galen. I am twenty-three years old and I am a teacher; a grade three English teacher. Linda teaches high schoolers in our school and runs the after school archery club. It was actually her that introduced me to weapon sports. Clay Pigeon shooting and archery mostly; I didn't get to do it often but I enjoyed it a lot. I picked up on it rather quickly when trying it out and I had to admit that I loved it. Weapons fascinate me in a way I'll probably never understand.
I ran my comb through the ends of my hair to rid my curls of knots. I left it to fall loosely down to my waist and then moved away from the mirror.
It was just after six in the morning, Friday morning in the middle of June. My daily routine usually began with getting ready for work and then making some breakfast and coffee. I'd usually make myself some scrambled eggs and toast, but I wasn't really hungry this morning. I settled for just coffee.
I sat down at the kitchen counter and slowly sipped at my coffee. I never liked it hot. I preferred it warm and bitter without sugar and a little bit of cold milk. I used to love sugar in my coffee, but it tended to be far too sweet and that sometimes made me sick.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I looked at the front door of my apartment and then put my mug down on the counter. Who would be here at six in the morning? If it was the landlord, I'd probably end up closing the door in his face. There were so many times that he claimed that I hadn't paid my rent when I had already sent the cheque in three days ago. If he was continuing this habit today, I wasn't in the mood for it.
I stepped over to the door, turned the lock and opened it up. Standing behind the door was...no one.
I furrowed my eyebrows. No kid in the world would get up this early to play ding-dong-ditch. Ever.
I stepped through the door, into the corridor and looked around for a sign of anyone. The corridor was empty of people except for me. The only sign of movement were two dark skinned women walking along the road through the view of the corridor window.
Odd. Maybe I was a lot more tired than I had thought. I could have sworn I heard a knock.
I breathed in deeply and then went back inside my apartment. At least it was Friday. I could take a nap later, when I get back home from work.
I closed the door and walked back to the kitchen counter. I sat back in my seat and continued to drink my coffee.
"So there's a large difference to the characters in this book, isn't there?" I said. "The stork is teaching the fox a lesson, isn't he?"
"Yes," the classroom hummed.
I waved the thin book above my head for them all to see.
"What do you think about this one?" I then asked.
Several hands rose up.
I picked the smallest girl sitting in the front row. When I pointed at her, she lowered her hand and said, "I think the Fox was just trying to be funny. Maybe the stork took it too seriously."
I smiled.
"Perhaps," I said. "You don't think the fox is sly?"
She shook her head.
"No," she said. "Maybe he was hoping to break the ice with a joke."
"I never thought about it that way before," I said.
I pointed to a boy sitting in the second row. He lowered his hand and then breathed in to speak.
"The stork was a little impolite," he said. "My mom tells me that two wrongs don't make a right."
"She's right," I said. "It doesn't. For whatever reason, the world seems to like wild animals who play tricks on one another."
He laughed.
"That's silly Miss Galen," he said.
"You're right," I agreed. I put the book down on my desk and then walked over to the large bookshelf behind my desk. "That's it for this book. We're going to be moving on to another book now, going up to more than fifty pages this time. I also want all of you to read up to about five pages today. This one has less pictures in it too."
A chorus of aww filled my class.
"Sorry about that, kids," I said. "If it were up to me, I'd let you read books with only pictures, but it's not really reading."
"What book are we getting next?"
"Our next book is Alice in Wonderland," I said as I slipped one of my copies out of the bookshelf. "I'm sure most of you have watched all the Disney movies of Alice in Wonderland. The book version is actually called Alice's adventures in Wonderland.
"Now this book has a lot of big words in it, which is why we are going to go through it together. We'll be reading it in class, but I want you all to read at home too. If you get stuck with the tricky words, take your pencil and underline them. When we read in class, we'll write the words down in your workbooks with their definitions so that you can look back and remember them, as well as understand what they mean."
They seemed to follow what my instructions were. These kids were rather bright.
I looked at the clock on the wall behind my desk. It was almost one o clock.
"Okay, the day is nearly over," I said to them. "Please put your readers on my desk in a neat pile and then line up for the next one."
Almost all at once, they jumped up and rushed to beat one another to my desk. They smacked the books down in a semi-untidy pile and began to line up before me. One at a time, I took the Alice in Wonderland books out of the bookshelf and gave it to them.
"Pack them away nicely and then get ready to go home," I said aloud. When all twenty-one kids had a book, I sat down behind my desk. The kids packed up their books and stationary. They put their chairs on top of their desks and then cleaned up the pieces of papers on the floor.
The school bell rang through the classroom at exactly one o clock. The kids left calmly but quickly, leaving me to finally be alone in silence. With the children gone, I took out this morning's spelling test and began to mark them. I went through them rather quickly; finishing off the last test at half past one with the satisfaction that none of them failed their tests and more than half achieved seventy percent or more.
I put the tests back into their file and then put them away in the storeroom. With that done, I tidied up the reading books and then put them back into the bookshelf where they belong.
As my last duty for the day, I had to mark the children's English work books to make sure their homework was up to date. It didn't take me too long to do the marking. It kept me busy until after two o clock. By half past two, I finished marking the last book and then left it on top of the neat pile on the corner of my desk.
It was time for me to go home. I packet up my handbag, locked my classroom and then walked home. I didn't have a car and my apartment wasn't far from the school. On average, it usually took me fifteen minutes to walk to and from work.
Back at home, I only just put my handbag and keys down on the kitchen counter when there was a knock at the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I breathed in deeply and then turned back to the door. I reached out quickly, turned the knob and pulled the door opened. I wouldn't lie; half of me was expecting no one to be there, just like this morning, but that wasn't the case this time.
Standing outside my door was a rather unusually dressed man. He did not look familiar to me, so I had no intention of inviting him inside. However, this stranger left me with a bit of a knot in my throat. He was handsome; very, very handsome with a particularly interesting appearance. He had clean cut black hair and a pair of bright brown eyes. His beard stubble was dark and short and he had a rather odd ring through his right ear. He was dressed in a black tailed leather coat – almost like a duster – a white button-up shirt that was tucked into dark well-fitting trousers and pulled the look off with a pair of polished black boots. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties. Twenty-five or twenty-six at most.
To go with his strange look, he had a matching expression. The second he looked down at me after I opened the door, it was as if my very presence astonished him.
"Zelena," he breathed, his full lips turning into a soft smile I picked up on what seemed to be a Scotish accent. "It really is ye'."
He stepped forwards quickly, lifting his arms up as to embrace me. As quickly as possible, I stepped back and put my hand out against his chest to keep him back.
That was rather odd; I didn't know this man. Did he know me?
"Who the hell are you?" I demanded, looking at him with a cocked eyebrow.
His soft smile faded quickly and his expression hardened. He let his arms fall to his sides and he cleared his throat.
"Right," he said, sounding a little odd; like he seemed to be disappointed. "Sorry about that... ye' donne' remember me, however, I was sent here te' find ye'."
I cocked an eyebrow at him again.
"Why?" I then asked curtly.
He cleared his throat again and looked at me; right in the eyes.
"Ye' parents need ye'," he then said.
In the tick of just two seconds, it was as if my entire world hand changed. Dread filled me and my heart began to beat rapidly in my chest. My parents need me? My parents? My parents no longer exist within my world. The day they left me in that tool shed was the day they stepped out of it forever.
Nausea filled me and a lump formed in my throat.
Without even thinking, I slammed the door shut and turned the lock.
"Zelena?" He called from the other side of the door.
"Go away." I said.
"Zelena, please open the door!"
"Go away!" I shouted before turning and walking away. I moved into the bedroom of my apartment, sat down on my bed and covered my ears. I didn't want to hear that man speaking to me through my door. I didn't want to hear anything more after what he said. My parents were gone. They were gone and never coming back to me. They had fifteen years to do that and they still weren't back.
What if they did, though? What if they walked right through that apartment door tomorrow morning? What if they were sorry?
I sighed and lay down.
No. that was a foolish belief. Even if they did come back, I wasn't just going to forget the last fifteen years without them. I wasn't going to let them walk back in and live life as they never left me. No orphaned child could do that.
My honest emotion; what that man had said. It scared me. It scared every fibre of me.
"Well, I did finish all my marking today," I admitted.
"Sometimes I really do consider teaching a lower grade," Linda added. "It's a lot less complicated to teach the younger grades."
I laughed.
"I'm dead serious," she added. "The tests and marking is a lot easier too."
"The patience you have to have is also a lot more detailed," I then reminded her.
"That's true," she agreed. "Anyway, did you get home okay?"
"Yeah," I said as I shifted onto my side and buried the side of my head against the pillow. I adjusted my cell phone against my ear and then bent my knees to curl up. "Although, something happened when I got home."
Linda was silent for a second.
"Uh-oh," she eventually sighed. "What happened? No one broke into your apartment again, did they?"
"No," I assured her. I breathed in deeply through my nose and then pushed myself up. I sat up and then got off my bed. "Someone knocked on my door just after I got home. Some mysterious stranger."
"Oh?" she responded.
"Ja," I said. "Some odd man with a pretty face. He seemed to know me."
"Do you know him?"
I walked out of my bedroom and made my way to the kitchen.
"Nope," I said. "I have never seen him before in my life. He told me that my parents needed me."
"But, Zelena, your parents are—"
"I know," I quickly responded. "That's what the problem was. Some random stranger arrived at my door and tells me my parents need me. It's the weirdest thing."
"What did you do?" she asked.
Embarrassment filled me.
"I slammed the door in his face," I admitted.
"Wow," Linda sighed. "You've got an odd way of reacting to strange things."
A surprising bubble of laughter escaped me.
"Just be careful, Zelena," she said. "There are some weird people in the world."
I sighed.
"I know," I said. "Um, I'm going to take a bath. It's been a long day."
"Okay," she said. "I'll see you on Monday."
"See you."
I moved the phone away from my ear and ended the phone call. I thought that calling Linda and talking about this afternoon's odd phenomenon would have helped ease the emotions. In a way, it had, but that didn't stop the confusion.
Nothing really seemed to help with it. So I took a long hot bath and then went to bed. More than anything, I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep. Until early in the morning, I stayed awake in my bed, just thinking deeply about the day's events and how it truly was messing me up. It seemed so unreal, yet, so damn real.
One thing was for certain; I hoped that man was losing as much sleep as I was over this. He deserved it for messing with my mind.
Sometime after three in the morning, I drifted off to sleep.