Page 124 of For Cowgirls and Kings

Sometimes you have to choose yourself, even if it breaks your own heart.

May 24th, 2014

“I want to go to school here.” I straighten my back, my mother’s scrutinizing glare marking each of my flaws. I’ve worked for nearly four months, practicing daily in the mirror, to say those seven words. If my friend Stetson can uproot her entire life—run away in an effort to better her circumstances even as the people who are supposed to “love her” would want different things, then I can at least do myself the favor and speak my truth.

I don’t want to be a disappointment—God knows she’s the one person in this world I want to please. But I have to say this, and pray that she’ll hear me. Her face is perfectly impassive though as I wait—not a single tell-tale emotion evident anywhere.

Until it isn’t.

Her lips rip back, eyes flashing angrily a second before her palm connects with my cheek, a resounding smack filling our humble kitchen. I freeze, too dumb-founded to do much else.

She hit me.My mother has never been the kind to lose control, and yet, she hit me.

My hand clutches the stinging flesh, water rushing my eyelids, more from the assault to my heart than my face. She loves me, and yet she would rather see me wither and die, than flourish the way I know I’m meant to.

“How dare you?” she hisses, her voice deathly quiet. I barely hear it over the ringing in my ears. Does she love me?Has she ever?

“You hit me,” I whisper, still lost for words. My mind swims, and I can barely see the surface. This isn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. I knew it would be hard, and she’d be resistant, but this? This isn’t that.

“I’ll do worse if you speak to me that way again.”

I blink, straightening, hand still holding my face. “Like what? Like an adult, stating what she wants?”

“You ungrateful?—”

“I’m almost eighteen, and I’ve always done everything you wanted. I’ve been the perfect daughter. But I cannot move with you to Merida. My life is here.”

“If you were the perfect daughter, you wouldn’t constantly disappoint me. Your responsibility is to this family, not yourself, you selfish brat.”

Selfish brat?

“Mama, please. I didn’t have to ask for your permission, but it’s your opinion I respect the most and I wanted it. I will stay here.” My heart is a drum in my throat, and bile threatens to crawl up. I’ve never spoken to Mama in this way, and doing so breaks my heart.

But if I don’t say this now, I’ll die.

“You want my opinion?” She takes a menacing step toward me—an even five foot three to my own, she still seems to tower over me, and my skin crawls with the overwhelming need to cower. “Common women like us can only hope to be important to our families. That’s your purpose—the only value you will bring to this world. You’ll never amount to anything, here or there, unless someone is willing to choose you as a wife, and make a mother of you. That is what we’re good for. That is all.”

Her words are not new, although more hurtful than usual, because I hear them for what they are:my prison sentence.

I don’t even want to be a mother—I don’t ever want to love someone so painfully that I’m as miserable as the one who raised me. I don’t want to be married, or even find love, if it means losing myself the way my parents have so completely lost themselves.

I don’t want any part of this life. I want something different—something for me. I just don’t know what that is yet.

“I don’t believe you.” My voice shakes, but my stance does not.

“You are nothing, no one. And you’ll never be, no matter where you are.”

I back up a step, her presence almost too much to bear. The lump in my throat swells, bordering on suffocating, her words cutting far too close to the insecurities that plague me.

There’s no winning, not with her. Will I go to Merida, and die?If I do, will she notice?

Before I can turn and run like I’m preparing to do, my father walks into the room, his normally sunny demeanor dimmer than usual, his face stoic. His eyes ping from me to my mother and back to the hand still pressed to my cheek. I drop it, half afraid he’ll get mad at her and make it worse, but my father has never once defended me.

And I’m a fool for thinking this time will be any different.

“What’s the matter, Maria?” His eyes remain fixed on hers and like a switch, her expression melts into cool indifference once more.

“Your daughter thinks she’ll be staying here when we move.”