Cold, But I'm Still Here
Title: Cold, But I'm Still Here
Characters: Simone Deveaux, Sarah Ellis (Eden McCain), OC
Rating: PG
Warnings: short sex scene described in third person
Setting: Two years after "Brave New World" takes place.
Summary: "I can't become like Sarah: dead inside." No powers AU.
Disclaimer: Simone and Sarah are not mine. The rest is.
Cold, But I’m Still Here
My name is Simone Deveaux Nadu. I live in a small, run down apartment in Minnesota with my husband and our two children, a son and a daughter.
Everyday is a struggle. Often times we can’t afford things that we need, like the good medical care that Minnesota Care claims that we do not qualify for.
My husband, Harjit, is depressed, so much so that it is hard for him to get out of bed in the morning. It’s clear that he needs antidepressants but the price of the pills alone (not to mention the doctor’s visit and the resulting bills) is far more then is covered by my paychecks.
Day after day I get up before five am and force myself to go to work. I make myself go even though my body is heavy and my eyes burn and a deep seated ache has set into my muscles. I go even though my carpel tunnel is acting up, sending sharp shooting pains in my wrists and hands that make it difficult to hold a pen, let alone screw in light-bulbs and haul heavy loads.
I go to work because I have to, for if I don’t they’ll shut off our heat or we won’t be able to pay the rent and we’ll end up in the streets again.
I work because there’s bills to be paid and clothes to be bought and money that needs to be put away in case the kids get cancer or worms from that week old chicken we had for dinner last week.
The kids.
Adam is six years old and Padma is five. They’ve got my milk and coffee skin and full lips, Harjit’s curly black hair and liquid onyx eyes as opposed to my reddish hair and blue-green eyes, and gaps between their teeth.
Adam will start first grade next week, and Padma begins kindergarten the week after that. Neither Harjit nor I know how we’re going to pay for their supplies, we’ll no doubt have to get them from that church up the road. They have a donation room in the basement, where people drop off things like clothes and toys that they don’t want anymore.
I’m not looking forward to that. To getting my kids old, broken, or used items that other people regard as useless trash and then thoughtlessly give to people like us. It is as if they are saying that we are worthless trash, and therefore deserve no less then the same.
Other children’s faces light up at the sight of new things, they laugh and perhaps even smile. Not our children. Adam will cry at the sight of used crayons and Padma will throw a tantrum when she has to put on a sweater with food stains set into the fabric.
I loathe it when they do that, when they cry and scream and look absolutely crushed because… because then I want to hit them.
I know it’s wrong to hit your children (even though my mother beat the daylights out of me) and that it’s not their fault they want nice things… but when they give us that look I feel like such as a worthless and pathetic failure… and I want to.
God help me but I love my children and wouldn’t hesitate to die for them a thousand times over… and yet I want too.
What kind of mother does that make me?
I imagine that most people have goals, both of the short term and long term verity. Goals like repairing their car, getting their kids off to college, or eating healthy.
My goals? They’re much more simple.
One: Make sure my kids get good grades and make it through high school without getting shot or becoming addicted to drugs.
Two: See that Harjit gets out of bed in the morning.
Three: Save money in case there’s an emergency.
Four: Don’t get fired from my job. I know that this sounds like an easy one, but when you’ve got the “triple race whammy” of being African American, Native American as well as Caucasian you don’t tend to get a lot of work. I’m attractive so that helps somewhat, but when the boss reads my pathetic resume normally all he sees is another mixed black woman who didn’t finish tenth grade, has a tendency for “crazy behavior”, and has one charge of aggravated assault.
If I were asked I would have explained.
If my mother hadn’t crawled so far into the bottle after my dad died that she needed to be pulled back out by her toes then I sure as heck would have finished school. I had wanted to be an art dealer, to earn the respect and status that my father, Charles, had always dreamed of but had never been able to achieve. You don’t not get that by choosing to quit. You don’t get something like that when you’re forced to quit. I didn’t choose to quit school, and I sure as hell don’t deserve the stigma, prejudice, and disrespect that comes with it, the level of which is only slightly above that which my father (a poor black man growing up during the Civil Right Movement) endured all his life. By choice or not, however, it’s become my burden nevertheless.
For some reason or another, I wasn’t born the same as everyone else. I was born with sound/color synesthesia, and just because I have a hard time preventing myself from watching the mobile and multihued blasts of color that result from every single sound does not mean I’m crazy.
As for that assault? If your last boss told you to… “get on your knees” in order to keep you job then I’d encourage you to knock out their teeth too. Despite what a lot of people assume thanks to my appearance and the stereotypes that are associated with those living at my poverty level, I’m not a whore.
I’ve never been a whore.
If my mother had ever been sober she would have smacked me upside that head for suggesting it, my father would roll over in his grave if I’d considered it for even 30 seconds, and my grandparents would’ve taken their old willow-switch to my bare backside if they’d caught wind of it.
There also the fact that I have far too much pride to lower myself to that, even though I know that I’d make more money at that then from my job.
I simply can’t do it.
I can’t do what Sarah Ellis does night after night in the allies and backseats of cars, the tattoo on her ass of a green snake coiled around a red apple bobbing up and down as she gives head and her eyes blank and dead as some man pounds into her from behind.
I can’t betray my husband, deceive my children, and cause the disappointment that I know would form in the eyes of my parents and grandparents.
I can’t become like Sarah: dead inside.
I won’t.
None of that matters however, because almost no one ever asks.
They see what they want to see.
I’m used to it.
My current boss didn’t seem to care about any of that though, he hired me anyway. Now all I’ve got to do is keep this job that pays $7.00 an hour for doing whatever task is assigned to me ( normally this means standing in an assembly line all day and screwing in florescent bulbs during the week, while my weekends are spent hulling bricks and pouring concert into house frames).
I don’t know how I’m going to meet these goals of mine.
When it comes to my kids I guess I’ll just have to push and encourage them as hard as I can, make sure they see dead bodies and people picking at their sores in an alley so they’ll know what happens when you get involved with gangs and guns or shoot liquid into your veins along with inhaling paint fumes, and pray that it’s enough.
Harjit? I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing: waking him up with cheep and terrible coffee before I catch the buss for work, trying to act happy even when I feel like crying so he doesn’t have a reason to be more depressed, seeing that he prays to Shiva and Parvati as well as the other deity’s of his religion, and reminding him that the kids and I love him.
Saving money… I don’t know how I’m going to do that. I’m trying through, Harjit and I both are.
As for my job?
I’m going to keep it even if it means fighting tooth and nail to do so.
It’s not because of the awesome pay or that fact that my boss doesn’t care about words on a piece of paper or because we literally can’t offered for me to loose this job.
I’ll fight for it because my kids brag to their friends about what I do (apparently they think it’s pretty cool), because it keeps us off the street, prevents my kids from being called “mixed Hindu trash”, and because both Harjit and I take pride in the fact that I have a job when so many others don’t.
As much as I hate the fear and desperation, hopelessness and anger, and so much else that is a daily part of this life to which I have been born… the fact remains that this is my life.
I can either give into the weight of the hardships and bleak emotions that are inherent to this social class, or I can fight and struggle and give beyond what I’ve got in order for myself and my family to survive this day as well as the next.
Giving in? That’s not an option.
Fighting is all that remains, and that I will do to the best of my ability and then some.
FIN