Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

Author:Chloe Michelle Howarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2023-01-11T08:24:29+00:00

12

March 1992

The house is all wrong now. It feels as though I am living upside down, breathing animosity in place of oxygen, as though I have slipped into the Otherworld, and I am now an invisible thing living in an invisible place, parallel to my human family. To Mother, I am no longer Lucy. I am a fragmented memory, brought back when she trips over my schoolbag in the hall, when she hears the closing of my bedroom door and sees my empty seat at the dinner table. This memory is easily ignored. She has given up on my curfew, on my laundry, on my meals. I am thinning and unclean, and she is unbothered. At last, we have reached the long-anticipated limit to Mother’s love. What I wouldn’t give to be punished.

As I never bring lunch to school anymore, the girls have begun to suspect that I am starving myself. Bernadette quietly warns me that this is a dangerous habit and offers me the solitary clementine in her lunchbox. I give her a sad smile and split the segments between myself, herself, and Susannah.

This is the reaction I always expected from Mother, should she find out about Susannah and me, although it feels more extreme now that it is actually happening. Perhaps if I had been better prepared for this, it wouldn’t upset me as much. Perhaps if I had a little more self-worth, I would understand that Mother’s love is too conditional to want. The time I ought to have spent reflecting on this, readying myself for this, was spent staring at all the shapes Susannah takes. It seems that Susannah has done this reflecting already, and that is why she is able to embrace herself so readily, without question. Or perhaps we are just wired differently.

If only I had never spotted the tortuous loveliness of her. If only I wasn’t afraid to look inside myself, that way I might know better who I am. As it stands, I don’t know whether I might want a boy or another girl, or whether my heart has been spoiled beyond any other love by Susannah. How can I defend myself to Mother when I don’t understand what I am defending? How is it that when you grow up and get stuck in love, that love is forgotten about? My love now seems to be an aggressive, political thing. It is the ceaseless search for an identity and then committing to that identity. It is a fight to exist in my own home. Is that not exhausting? Is it worth it? It feels like the good parts of loving have been thrown on the backseat and forgotten about.

If I were another girl, in another house, this would not be a problem. I might simply be somebody who found good in somebody else. If I were Susannah, with enough inheritance coming to get me out of Crossmore and a family so exhausted of heartbreak that they are apathetic to everything, this would not be a problem.

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