Her Tortured Bear

Chapter 4

She was waiting for me by the closet.

“Mom, you wanted to see me regarding something?” I asked as I knocked and went inside the room.

“Yes Mindy, I just wanted to help you select the dress that you will be wearing for today’s luncheon. I have selected a few, now just take your pick,” said Nerrissa, my mother.

“But Mom, you know I hate wearing dresses. It makes me look like a young child which I am not at all. I am more comfortable in a jeans and a shirt and if you want then I shall wear white even but don’t ask me this,” I replied as I closed the door behind me.

“I did not ask for your opinion Mindy. I have asked to take your pick among the dresses that I already have chosen for you. You are correct, you are not a little kid any more. You are a grown up girl, on the verge of becoming a woman but if you want people to think so then you need to start taking responsibilities for your actions,” replied Mom, taking a pure milky white flowing dress with small blue flowers embroidered cinching the waist.

“I did not know that I was allowed to take responsibility Mom,” I scoffed at her comment.

“Oh sweetie….you are not mature enough to take decisions and make your own choices which is the reason I am there with you along with your father. We will show you what is correct for you at this time of life and Mindy you have no other job except being responsible enough to promise that you are really going to obey our decision,” she said with a smile but it felt like she had just slapped me.

I got a feeling inside me that something was going to happen soon and whatever it was I was sure that it was not going to be good at all, not for me at all. And she kept on calling that man my father. She was mother, he had slapped me and my lip was still split and she still insisted on saying that she knew the best for me. Heavens, I thought that it would have been much better if she had just cast me out of home…

But there was no point arguing with her and I did not want to spend my day locked up inside, at least not when my friends were coming over for the feast today.

When I came down, wearing the dress which made me look like a young child Nina had suggested that I wear my hair up in a crown with small blue flowers making me look a bit more mature. And my arrival earned me appreciative stares from all the sides. My mother gave a surprised smile at me, probably surprised because I had listened to her in reality and not arrived in dirty torn jeans and sneakers. Not that I had not thought of doing it but the look on her face was worth it.

Even Cad’s father was surprised and threw a tight-lipped smile towards me acknowledging my presence.

I sauntered my way towards my classmates and were enjoying the feast when they called us for the luncheon. It was odd this tradition of all sitting at the dining room in a giant table making small talk with their neighbors while the food was served. It was something which had been picked up by my mother when she was in finishing school in London. To my greatest horror, I found that I had been alienated from both my friends was sitting in between two boys, rather on the verge of becoming men. I smiled and ate my food but made no attempt at talking to them.

“What happened to that lip of yours?” asked the blue-eyed blonde boy sitting on my right. He looked like he was in college and had a cocky grin which made me want to slap it right off his face.

“I stumbled in the vineyard yesterday afternoon,” I replied smoothly as I sipped from my glass of wine.

“You should not go poking around in the places where you are not supposed to. Pretty girls like you should well stay at home and take care of the house like they should,” he replied as if he had said something very intelligent and winked at me slyly.

I was going to give him a piece of my mind but before I could my step-father stood up at the head of the table and clinked the fork to his glass of wine and said,” Can I have your attention everyone?”

All the chatter around the table stopped and everyone looked at him. Oh God!! This insufferable bastard loved to hear himself talk.

“First, I would like to thank all of you for coming down to our house on this beautiful occasion of Thanksgiving and sharing our food with us, making us feel blessed to have so many friends.

 And we are honoured that you would come here and think of our family as the proper hosts for the day when we all spend time with our family. So we are really happy that you consider us to be not only your friends but also your family,” said the man that I loathed from the very base of my being.

Everyone was smiling and my mother was looking at that selfish bastard with affection in his eyes. That singular thing on her part made me want to murder her as well.

“And not only Thanksgiving, but today is another joyous occasion as well for our family and the Richardson family. It is today that we have decided that our families will not be friends only anymore but will become families by the very beautiful bond of marriage between our daughter and their son. That is between Miranda and Jackson,” said the man whom my mother called husband.

I felt that someone had thrown, rather splashed acid over my entire torso. My skin was burning, I was burning and everything was red. And the boy who was sitting beside me and had been smirking at me for this long now placed his hand on my thigh and was rubbing my dress. The heat of his clammy sweaty hand was searing on my skin making me feel that I would probably throw up my entire meal on the dinner table.