CHAPTER 4: My turn

*ALANA*

           “You look so beautiful, my dear.” Patricia cooed.

   I eyed her. I didn’t fall for that. She was just being nice because Valentina was in the room.

    I stared at the mirror. About three people hovered around me making last minutes tweaks to the wedding dress.

     It was a sleeveless gown, revealing my beautifully decorated necklace. The gown flowed on the floor as I walked, tiny diamonds sewn in a lace overlay sparkled.

    It was my wedding day, my wedding to Manuel Buford. A lot had happened these past few days. I had undergone some medical scans and texts.

   According to Valentina, they had to make sure I was clean and my reproductive organs were okay before the wedding. Everything came out well. The planning of the wedding went smoothly and here I was.

      I still haven’t met Manuel in person though. I was told he had said meeting with me before the wedding would not be necessary.

Sure there were many signs about how cold heated that man was but my heart had gotten pretty much gotten cold as well.

And I couldn’t back out of this.

I didn’t want to.

Not after finding out he was Julia’s father.

I heard Julia would be at the wedding. She was definitely going to bring Eugene with her.

  I couldn’t wait to see the look on their faces. I knew doing something like this was wrong.

Marrying my best friend’s Dad to get back at her.

I wasn’t even thinking about my future with him.

All I wanted to do was torment Julia and Eugene. I didn’t care if this made me a bad person.

I was done being nice.

Being nice got me nowhere!

          Life had never been fair to me. From the day I was born, life had never been fair to me at all.

      My mother was a prostitute. I do not know who my father was. I know at the moment I could find out through genetic testing and all that but I was really not interested in knowing who he was, plus, I didn’t even have the money for that.

  Also, at this stage of my life, I do not need him anymore.

     I don’t remember much about my mother. But I don’t recall ever being loved by her. She was barely around, barely took care of me. I finally understood why when Patricia told me the circumstances surrounding my birth. My mother never planned on having me. She was just whoring as usual and when she found out she was pregnant, she was already far gone and an abortion would have taken her life. She honestly couldn’t remember which man got her pregnant. She had obviously been with a lot. If there was anything I remember about my early childhood with her, it was of me always being in the dark apartment and waiting for her to come home. And then one day, she didn’t. Days passed and she still didn’t come home. Someone else came home though, my grandmother. She told me my mother had been killed. It was by one of her clients but no one knew who it was exactly and we had no money to pursue the case.

    My grandmother took me to the countryside to live with her. I was six at that time. My grandmother was the only person who had genuinely showed me love.

     She had many regrets in life. One of them was being poor. And she would often blame herself that she didn’t raise her girls, properly. When things had been so hard that they could barely feed, both girls had run away from home. While Patricia was able to land herself a man(Harold) who married her. My mother didn’t and she took to prostitution. She seemed to have really liked sleeping around. She liked that more than her own kid.

     My grandmother promised to raise me well and it seemed that would ease her guilt a bit. I didn’t blame her. I could see that she indeed tried to raise her girls the best way she could. But once the girls heard their father was a rich man, they wanted to stay with him instead and had ran off to go find him. The man had sent them away and instead of coming back home, they wanted to make a life for themselves no matter the kind of life it was.

     Grandma had said she tried to talk them into coming back but they refused. The years I spend with my grandmother were the best years of my life. We didn’t have much but she loved and cared for me in a way no one had ever done. She would always tell me to study hard so I could have a respectable job in the future.

   Her guidance inspired me to be very studious, acquiring praises, accolades and awards when I was in school.

But my time with grandma didn’t last. She suddenly started to lose herself, her memories, her sanity. I was heartbroken when the doctor diagnosed her of dementia. I didn’t want to lose her so I searched through her notes and found Patricia’s number. After begging and begging, Patricia finally agreed to admit grandma into a care home.

And she took me in.

   That was the beginning of another form of suffering for me.

       I watched as Linda was always provided everything she needed. Her parents loved her. I knew I wasn’t their child, I was grateful Patricia took me in but I always wish she could hug me, even if it was just once. But she never did. They hated my guts. All of them. When I noticed how much they didn’t like my presence in their house, I started to try my hardest to please them, to make them like me. I always tried not to talk back no matter how much their words hurt but they still found fault in everything I did. They countlessly told me how worthless and useless I was, and that I was just like my mother. They beat me up at the slightest provocation. They made me do literally all the house chores and they would hit me if anything wasn’t done right. Doing the house chores wasn’t a problem though, I just kept wishing that they would stop hitting me. It was depressing to always go around with bruises on my body. One time I had asked why they hated me so much, why they won’t stop maltreating me and they really couldn’t give me a good answer. There was not a good answer for making me starve, for locking me up in the basement and for beating me until I found it hard to breathe. I realized then that they just loved doing it. They just loved abusing me.

   There was a time, my teacher noticed that I was always wounded and she called Patricia to school to ask why. She had made me lie to the teacher that I was always getting into fights in the neighborhood. She made it seem like I was a stubborn kid. Well in fact I hated the pain they inflicted more than anything. I had no where else to go. No one to turn to so I had to continue staying with them, wishing that one day, there will be an end to the suffering.

  Well, the end was me getting married off.

But I wasn’t going to let this or anything break me anymore.

    Patricia, Linda, Harold, Eugene, Julia, they all treated me, worthlessly.

Julia said it was fun to hurt me like that.

  I smirked as I stared at the mirror.

Well, it was my turn to have some fun!