Eva

Eva is thirteen, stuck between being a little girl and a teenager.  It feels like her mother doesn’t care about her anymore…

Eva:  “You’re the worst mother ever!”  I shout, basically throwing myself up the stairs – I hit the wall with my body, bounce off, fling myself up another step, crash, thrump stomp stomp.

I want to throw my laptop against the wall, just to show her, but I can’t even throw it on the bed.  Aaagh!  I can’t believe she made me take my homework upstairs just because precious little John, her precious baby who’s not even a baby anymore, just because he’s using the computer downstairs, and my laptop lost its charge and now I’m putting it gently on my desk and plugging it in because even though I want to show my mother how little she means to me, I need my laptop. 

After it’s plugged in, I throw myself across the bed.  I stop crying, because she hasn’t come up the stairs after me, and she won’t hear me.  She doesn’t care.  She doesn’t care about me anymore. 

Before she had John, shit, even earlier this week…

I remember, sometimes she’d scream at me if I screamed at her.  I remember how much that scared me.

But this time she just calmly told me to go to my room now, and she didn’t yell, and she didn’t come after me.  It’s been like ten minutes, and she’s just downstairs watching TV with Daddy or playing a game on the computer with John, and she just left me up here.

I start doing my homework, but not on the floor, like she said, or my bed, where I could be comfortable, but standing up next to my desk.  My chair is covered with clothes I haven’t put away when she told me to. 

She used to put my clothes away for me.

She used to read me three stories a night.

She used to cry how sorry she was if I had a tantrum.

Now it’s like I don’t exist, it’s like…

“Eva!” she shouts up the stairs.

“What?” I say, and I don’t even sound mad, like, “what!”, instead, I sound relieved.

“When you’re done with your homework, come down, I want to read the Nutcracker to you and John.”

She always does this, she always tries to make me part of the family.  It’s like she doesn’t even acknowledge that I’m mad at her, and plus I’m thirteen and not a kid anymore…

“I’ll be right down!”  I say, and hurry up to finish my math homework.

I’m not saying she’s right.  But I feel a lot better, and I can’t wait to snuggle up next to her and anyway, she needs me to cuddle with her because she’s always cold, and she’s says I’m her heater, and I can go back to being mad later.