Annie will not be beaten down. She fancies herself a sort of
patriot, a
Joan of Arc, a
Phoenix, rising from the
ashes of her repressed life. Pardon to the reader, the truth is, Annie would consider herself those things, if she knew what they were. But Annie hates to read. She hated school. She bares her teeth at intellectual dignity, much preferring her wild ignorance. Annie is so proud.
This Annie, whom I met working in a small town cafe was raised by a man who one might, despite the paradox, describe as violently charismatic. He burns with righteous zeal and indignation, scowling at the sins of the world. With his chest thrust out, like the insignificant bantam, he calls his wife a whore, though she isn't half as much a whore as the other woman he's sleeping with. With every sweep of his raging, lusty eyes, he contradicts his pious vernacular. He is intense, compelling, a full-frontal assault to the senses, though all of it is just a masquerade to hide the coward within.
He used to beat Annie. She would throw herself over the babies. Mom was too drunk to know the difference, so the children paid for his mortal sin, and her mortal sin and the world's mortal sin. When Annie was old enough, she paid the bills. Father had his outdated country lounge-mongrel music career to pursue. I could see how she might have hated school, being exhausted from working. And of course, she's dyslexic.
From these empty roots Annie grew up, angry and proud and wild, hating the better fortune of "others", but only in such cases where the "others" made it obvious that the better the fortune, the higher the
Caste (And such things do exist among us, you cannot tell me that they don't.). Annie also grew up tall and beautiful, with eyes that flash large and innocent and wounded inbetween her lightening and her pride. Annie's married now, to a man the polar oposite of her father. She doesn't clean her house, just to spite her father. Now Annie scowls at the sins of the world, and at those who scowl at her sin.It's almost as if she prides herself in turning out badly, the final kick in the pants to a man who wished to point to his children as irrefutable evidence that the fascade was real, or that the whip was righteous and well wielded.
Well, Annie got pregnant and today. She told me she's having a girl. And I wonder...will she crack the soul-injuring mold? Will she fight off the demons, will her daughter know different? Or, has Annie become her father? Her husband confided in me, in tones laced heavy with dread, that he sees the old man in her eyes. Yet, I gently remind him, she has the imprint, perhaps, but also the redeeming fire to fight, and the experience that grants grace. And he nods, and a tired sigh settles in his eyes, he is resigned because he loves her and can do nothing about it, though she eeks his strength for herself. So she can be only stronger, never repressed, never struck down, only fierce...in-between, of course the lightening and the wounded innocence peeking from the shadows in her eyes.