Ten minutes (and counting) to write something that has a little oomph to it. Let’s see what word leads our story…
Truculant
At night she never spoke. She tended to her evening chores, a short list that consisted of stoking the fire, sweeping nearby so that dust and debris would not set their small house aflame, and walking to each of the three windows and the one door to ensure each was locked and shut tight against weather and anything else present in the dark beyond their home. She did this work without question, as she’d done on her wedding night and ever since, as she’d done in her father’s home once her mother was gone, as her sisters did now in her absence. Alma rubbed her belly, considering the lineage she’d past down to the baby growing inside her.
It was a girl. This she knew in the way that good riders can sense a horse can go no further. It was a natural thing for her, more natural to not tell him. He wanted a boy; expected it. Perhaps the next child would be a boy. If not then the one after. She would try again and again until the birthed him an heir. She would give him what her own mother could not give her father, and thus avoid her grim fate.
Never did she speak of the incident. Even now when her thoughts filled the near empty space of her marriage home she did not give voice to the words. Instead she stared into the flames and imagined the thought burning and rising out of her like ash on the wind.
No, he would not bear to hear that she was having a daughter. He would not bear many things, especially on cold nights such as these where the work of the day had numbed his fingers and made them blue. Once she’d not prepared the meal in time for his arrival. He’d kissed her gently on the forehead, told her it was alright and then, without warning, shoved her to the ground and kicked her again and again until she screamed.
He knelt beside her and sighed. He said, “This is how I will help you when things are wrong. I will show you the pain of failure, so that you have the courage and the motive to avoid it.”
Then he kissed her.