LJ Idol Week 23: "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn"
This week's therealljidol is an intersection, where we work with a partner to create something for two different prompts. I worked with the amazing me_sonrei, who wrote for the prompt "I'm the Usain Bolt of Running From My Problems". Find her entry here! You can read ours in whichever order you would like!
Once upon a time, there lived a girl who had a wicked stepsister …
Wait. No. Back up. That’s not the story we’re here to tell. Let’s try this again.
Once upon a time, there lived a young girl who had the best family she could imagine. She had a mother who always pushed her to be her best, an older sister who always looked out for her and the most amazing father ever, who loved her and played with her and would do anything for her.
But one night, the young girl - we’ll call her Ana - opened the front door to find a police officer on her doorstep, and nothing was ever the same again.
Ana didn’t really understand why her father didn’t come home again, but her mother was really sad about it. After the police officer left, Ana’s mother refused to leave her room for a long time, leaving Ana and her sister, Ella, to take care of themselves.
They ate peanut butter for every meal and washed their clothes in the bathtub after they put too much soap in the wash machine and flooded the laundry room. They went to school in wrinkled clothes and knotted hair, but they survived.
Ella told Ana that their mother would come out of her room soon, and Ella was right. One day, Ana and Ella came home from school to find their mother waiting for them in the hall.
But nothing got better; in fact, it just got worse.
When Ana’s mother had entered her bedroom, she had been crying nonstop. When she came out, she was angry. And she was almost always angry at Ana. Everything Ana did, or tried to do, was wrong, and she was yelled at over and over.
Her mother gave her a list of chores and told her she needed to do them all perfectly. But Ana wasn’t very good at some of them - she was only six years old after all - and she spent nights with nothing to eat, listening to her mother scream about how horrible she was, sometimes rubbing her cheek or her wrist or the spot above her elbow that still stung from her mother’s hand or the belt on her dress.
The years passed, every day filled with dread and fear. Ella stopped coming home much, always out with her friends, but Ana wasn’t allowed to go anywhere until she finished her work - but there was always more work to do. Floors to vacuum, dishes to wash, dinners to make, lawns to mow, cars to clean, dogs to bathe.
And then one day something happened to change Ana’s life once more - her mother met a man. A man who was impossibly kind and more than generous. But more importantly, he made Ana’s mother smile again and laugh again, and the more she smiled and laughed, the more her anger and her coldness and her mean streak faded away.
Soon, Ana had less chores and more free time. She had spending money to buy clothes and fancy restaurants to wear them to. She bought a set of paints and brushes from a local store because the man had seen her doodling once and told her he thought she could paint a beautiful picture.
The day Ana’s mother married her stepfather was one of the happiest in Ana’s life. She didn’t even mind her stepsister, who seemed as kind and cheery as her father.
Ana, Ella and their mother moved into their stepfather’s large house in the country, and life was good for a while.
But as these things go, tragedy struck once more. Ana’s stepfather was killed suddenly in a car crash, and it was like history repeating itself.
In an instant, Ana’s mom went from loving and happy to the mean and cold woman she had been after Ana’s father died. But this time, the rage wasn’t directed toward Ana. It was directed toward her stepsister.
Ana watched as her mother treated her stepsister like she was trash, making her do all the chores, cook all the food, tend to all the animals. She took away her phone and her computer and her iPad and grounded her until all her work was done.
Ana was horrified. She wanted to help her stepsister, she wanted to stand up to her mother, but she couldn’t. Every time she saw the woman, with that ugly scowl and her hand raised, she remembered.
She remembered the red marks on her skin and the vicious words about how she wasn’t good enough and the hours she spent trying to scrape specs of dirt off the kitchen floor. And instead of helping her stepsister, she ended up in the bathroom, choking back sobs, her heart pounding in her chest, her lungs refusing to function.
I can’t go through it again. I can’t go through it again. I can’t go through it again, her mind screamed.
You’re so weak! You’re so useless! You’re going to die old and alone! screamed a different voice in her head that sounded like her mother, and Ana sank to the ground in a panic.
She wanted to help her stepsister, she really did, but if her mother found out …
So Ana did what she could in secret. She cleaned the bathroom until it was spotless, then dropped a few wet towels on the floor so her mother wouldn’t catch on. She brushed the dogs and the horses when no one was looking. She watered the flowers when she snuck downstairs for a glass of water in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t much, but she hoped that maybe her stepsister would realize she was trying.
--
The invitation came on a Tuesday evening. The richest family in their town was having a party - a ball, it announced on the cream-colored paper - and they were inviting everyone.
Ana hadn’t seen her mother’s eyes light up in ages like they did when she read the invitation.
“Girls, girls! This is your chance!” she told them. “This family is rich! And they have a son. He would make the perfect husband!”
Ana didn’t really want a husband, or even a boyfriend - she was still in high school after all - and she definitely didn’t want one just because he was rich, but it had been so long since her mother had looked happy and it had been even longer since her mother had fawned over her, so she took the money her mother held out and said she would go shopping with Ella to get a dress.
“Can I get a dress too?” came a quiet voice behind them.
Ana, Ella and Ana’s mother all turned around to see Ana’s stepsister standing there, a smile on her thin face.
Ana’s mother’s eyes narrowed. “You most certainly can not,” she said, and the tone of her voice made Ana cringe. “You are not going to the party.”
“But it’s to our whole family,” the girl said. “My name is on there too. And these people knew my parents.”
Ana was impressed. She had never seen her stepsister stand up to her mother before. But Ana’s mother did not look impressed. She looked furious.
She huffed in anger. “Fine,” she said. “If you get all your chores done, you may go. But you don’t get a dress! Your father left us no money, and I can’t take care of you!”
Ana saw her stepsister’s face fall slightly, but her voice was still cheerful when she answered. “Okay,” she said. “As long as I can go.”
That night, Ana snuck into her stepsister’s room and laid an old dress that had a few holes on the floor of her stepsister’s room. Ana couldn’t sew but her stepsister could, so maybe this could help.
--
The day of the ball, Ana and Ella and their mother spent hours getting themselves ready while Ana’s stepsister, Cindy, spent her time mopping the floors. Ana felt sick to her stomach as she cast glances at her stepsister when no one was looking, but she didn’t know what to do. Her mother may have had a smile on her face as she applied her makeup, but Ana knew her fury was still boiling just below the surface. If Ana tried to help Cindy, they both might end up in a worse situations than they were in now.
So Ana did nothing except feel guilty as her mother kept making a mess - smearing makeup on the mirror, dropping food all over the kitchen floor - and yelling at Cindy to clean it up.
But then something unexpected happened.
Cindy said she was going out to feed the horses, but an hour later, when Ana’s mother sent Ana out to find her, her stepsister was nowhere to be found.
Her mother was furious, screaming and screaming in rage. She ordered Ana to search everywhere, and Ana did - afraid if she didn’t her mother would turn her anger on her - but her stepsister was gone.
“What do you mean she’s gone?!?!” roared her mother. “Where would she have gone?!?!”
But they all knew where she went.
Ana’s mother ordered Ana and Ella into the car.
“Do not let her get away with this!” she ordered as they pulled up to the biggest house Ana had ever seen. “This is your night!”
--
The party was beyond Ana’s wildest dreams. People were dressed in gowns that must have cost them more money than the car Ana’s mother drove. Waiters walked around with trays piled high with food. All the adults were pounding back drink after drink.
Ana caught sight of her stepsister, looking beautiful with her golden curls piled on her head and wearing a dress made of fabric that Ana recognized, dancing with a cute boy who was whispering in her ear. Ana pretended not to see her, and drifted back into the crowd.
Cindy didn’t come home that night, and Ana fled to her room as soon as they arrived back at the house. Ella had managed to dance all night with a rich boy, but Ana had hidden in the back, eating tiny bite-sized desserts. She knew her mother was furious with her for her lack of doing what she was told, and she wasn’t going to wait around for her wrath to be unleashed.
The next morning the doorbell rang at eight in the morning. Ana, who had been making breakfast before her mother could yell at her to do so, answered the door.
The cute boy from last night was there. A very fancy shoe was in his hand.
“I am looking for the girl who fits this!” he announced, like he was some prince out of a fairytale that Ana’s dad used to read to her.
Ana’s mother and Ella came into the hall. Her mother’s eyes widened at the sight of the boy. But before she could say anything, someone else walked into the hall.
Cindy still had on the dress from the night before, and she was carrying an identical shoe to the one the boy had in his hand.
“Hello,” she greeted him, like none of this was weird.
Ana, Ella and their mother watched as the boy bent down and held out the shoe, and Cindy let him slip it on to her foot. Then they kissed and he told her he loved her, and the next thing any of them knew, Cindy was running with him to his car, and Ana knew she wasn’t coming back.
Her mother knew too, and she screamed and screamed in rage, throwing every object within reach at the door, at the walls, at Ana.
Ana raced up the stairs to her room, slamming the door, shaking.
She knew what was coming next, and she was terrified.
--
Ana made it six months, cowering under her mother’s rage and her mother’s hand, and doing all the chores her stepsister used to do, before she couldn’t take it anymore.
Every night, she dreamed of her stepsister walking out the door and not looking back, and she knew she too could be brave.
Ella was marrying the rich boy she had met at the party in a few months so she would be okay, and she had never been subjected to her mother’s abuse like Ana and Cindy had.
So Ana packed a bag, with clothes and food and her art supplies, and snuck out her window on a cloudy Monday night. She ended up on the doorstep of her best friend’s house, and she didn’t have to do anything other than show her best friend’s mother the bruises on her arms before she was welcomed inside and given a bed in a spare bedroom to stay in.
Ana spent every day until high school ended scared to death that her mother would show up at school or at her friend’s house, but she never did.
And the day after graduation, Ana bought a bus ticket to New York, waved goodbye to her friend and her friend’s parents, thanked them for everything they had ever done for her, and left her old life behind.
Ana found a job as a housekeeper and spent her free time painting, selling the artwork on eBay.
“How do you create something so evocative and pain-filled and yet hopeful?” someone once asked her. “You’re so young to paint like this.”
Ana just smiled. “Thank you for the compliment,” she said.
--
In the end, Ana found a therapist on the advice of a girl she worked with. There, for the first time, she could talk about her life with her mother and the guilt she felt over her stepsister and how she hoped she was finally happy.
“Why don’t you find out?” her therapist suggested.
It took a long time. Her stepsister had hidden herself very well, but finally Ana was able to find an email she thought was hers.
She stared at the screen for what felt like hours, her stomach in knots.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” she reminded herself, over and over, as if on a loop, and finally her fingers typed.
Hi Cindy.
It’s your stepsister, Ana. Please don’t delete this. I want to explain.
I’m so sorry.
She sent the email three hours and hundreds of words later.
She didn’t know what would happen now - that was up to Cindy - but for the first time since her stepfather died, Ana felt like there was hope. For her relationship with Cindy, for her own life, for her own future.
It wasn’t a happily ever after, but it was a start. And that was good enough for now.
Fiction. Probably.
This was written for Week 23 of therealljidol. I hope you enjoyed it! If you would like to read more entries, you can head over here. If there's voting, it should come Thursday night.
Once upon a time, there lived a girl who had a wicked stepsister …
Wait. No. Back up. That’s not the story we’re here to tell. Let’s try this again.
Once upon a time, there lived a young girl who had the best family she could imagine. She had a mother who always pushed her to be her best, an older sister who always looked out for her and the most amazing father ever, who loved her and played with her and would do anything for her.
But one night, the young girl - we’ll call her Ana - opened the front door to find a police officer on her doorstep, and nothing was ever the same again.
Ana didn’t really understand why her father didn’t come home again, but her mother was really sad about it. After the police officer left, Ana’s mother refused to leave her room for a long time, leaving Ana and her sister, Ella, to take care of themselves.
They ate peanut butter for every meal and washed their clothes in the bathtub after they put too much soap in the wash machine and flooded the laundry room. They went to school in wrinkled clothes and knotted hair, but they survived.
Ella told Ana that their mother would come out of her room soon, and Ella was right. One day, Ana and Ella came home from school to find their mother waiting for them in the hall.
But nothing got better; in fact, it just got worse.
When Ana’s mother had entered her bedroom, she had been crying nonstop. When she came out, she was angry. And she was almost always angry at Ana. Everything Ana did, or tried to do, was wrong, and she was yelled at over and over.
Her mother gave her a list of chores and told her she needed to do them all perfectly. But Ana wasn’t very good at some of them - she was only six years old after all - and she spent nights with nothing to eat, listening to her mother scream about how horrible she was, sometimes rubbing her cheek or her wrist or the spot above her elbow that still stung from her mother’s hand or the belt on her dress.
The years passed, every day filled with dread and fear. Ella stopped coming home much, always out with her friends, but Ana wasn’t allowed to go anywhere until she finished her work - but there was always more work to do. Floors to vacuum, dishes to wash, dinners to make, lawns to mow, cars to clean, dogs to bathe.
And then one day something happened to change Ana’s life once more - her mother met a man. A man who was impossibly kind and more than generous. But more importantly, he made Ana’s mother smile again and laugh again, and the more she smiled and laughed, the more her anger and her coldness and her mean streak faded away.
Soon, Ana had less chores and more free time. She had spending money to buy clothes and fancy restaurants to wear them to. She bought a set of paints and brushes from a local store because the man had seen her doodling once and told her he thought she could paint a beautiful picture.
The day Ana’s mother married her stepfather was one of the happiest in Ana’s life. She didn’t even mind her stepsister, who seemed as kind and cheery as her father.
Ana, Ella and their mother moved into their stepfather’s large house in the country, and life was good for a while.
But as these things go, tragedy struck once more. Ana’s stepfather was killed suddenly in a car crash, and it was like history repeating itself.
In an instant, Ana’s mom went from loving and happy to the mean and cold woman she had been after Ana’s father died. But this time, the rage wasn’t directed toward Ana. It was directed toward her stepsister.
Ana watched as her mother treated her stepsister like she was trash, making her do all the chores, cook all the food, tend to all the animals. She took away her phone and her computer and her iPad and grounded her until all her work was done.
Ana was horrified. She wanted to help her stepsister, she wanted to stand up to her mother, but she couldn’t. Every time she saw the woman, with that ugly scowl and her hand raised, she remembered.
She remembered the red marks on her skin and the vicious words about how she wasn’t good enough and the hours she spent trying to scrape specs of dirt off the kitchen floor. And instead of helping her stepsister, she ended up in the bathroom, choking back sobs, her heart pounding in her chest, her lungs refusing to function.
I can’t go through it again. I can’t go through it again. I can’t go through it again, her mind screamed.
You’re so weak! You’re so useless! You’re going to die old and alone! screamed a different voice in her head that sounded like her mother, and Ana sank to the ground in a panic.
She wanted to help her stepsister, she really did, but if her mother found out …
So Ana did what she could in secret. She cleaned the bathroom until it was spotless, then dropped a few wet towels on the floor so her mother wouldn’t catch on. She brushed the dogs and the horses when no one was looking. She watered the flowers when she snuck downstairs for a glass of water in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t much, but she hoped that maybe her stepsister would realize she was trying.
--
The invitation came on a Tuesday evening. The richest family in their town was having a party - a ball, it announced on the cream-colored paper - and they were inviting everyone.
Ana hadn’t seen her mother’s eyes light up in ages like they did when she read the invitation.
“Girls, girls! This is your chance!” she told them. “This family is rich! And they have a son. He would make the perfect husband!”
Ana didn’t really want a husband, or even a boyfriend - she was still in high school after all - and she definitely didn’t want one just because he was rich, but it had been so long since her mother had looked happy and it had been even longer since her mother had fawned over her, so she took the money her mother held out and said she would go shopping with Ella to get a dress.
“Can I get a dress too?” came a quiet voice behind them.
Ana, Ella and Ana’s mother all turned around to see Ana’s stepsister standing there, a smile on her thin face.
Ana’s mother’s eyes narrowed. “You most certainly can not,” she said, and the tone of her voice made Ana cringe. “You are not going to the party.”
“But it’s to our whole family,” the girl said. “My name is on there too. And these people knew my parents.”
Ana was impressed. She had never seen her stepsister stand up to her mother before. But Ana’s mother did not look impressed. She looked furious.
She huffed in anger. “Fine,” she said. “If you get all your chores done, you may go. But you don’t get a dress! Your father left us no money, and I can’t take care of you!”
Ana saw her stepsister’s face fall slightly, but her voice was still cheerful when she answered. “Okay,” she said. “As long as I can go.”
That night, Ana snuck into her stepsister’s room and laid an old dress that had a few holes on the floor of her stepsister’s room. Ana couldn’t sew but her stepsister could, so maybe this could help.
--
The day of the ball, Ana and Ella and their mother spent hours getting themselves ready while Ana’s stepsister, Cindy, spent her time mopping the floors. Ana felt sick to her stomach as she cast glances at her stepsister when no one was looking, but she didn’t know what to do. Her mother may have had a smile on her face as she applied her makeup, but Ana knew her fury was still boiling just below the surface. If Ana tried to help Cindy, they both might end up in a worse situations than they were in now.
So Ana did nothing except feel guilty as her mother kept making a mess - smearing makeup on the mirror, dropping food all over the kitchen floor - and yelling at Cindy to clean it up.
But then something unexpected happened.
Cindy said she was going out to feed the horses, but an hour later, when Ana’s mother sent Ana out to find her, her stepsister was nowhere to be found.
Her mother was furious, screaming and screaming in rage. She ordered Ana to search everywhere, and Ana did - afraid if she didn’t her mother would turn her anger on her - but her stepsister was gone.
“What do you mean she’s gone?!?!” roared her mother. “Where would she have gone?!?!”
But they all knew where she went.
Ana’s mother ordered Ana and Ella into the car.
“Do not let her get away with this!” she ordered as they pulled up to the biggest house Ana had ever seen. “This is your night!”
--
The party was beyond Ana’s wildest dreams. People were dressed in gowns that must have cost them more money than the car Ana’s mother drove. Waiters walked around with trays piled high with food. All the adults were pounding back drink after drink.
Ana caught sight of her stepsister, looking beautiful with her golden curls piled on her head and wearing a dress made of fabric that Ana recognized, dancing with a cute boy who was whispering in her ear. Ana pretended not to see her, and drifted back into the crowd.
Cindy didn’t come home that night, and Ana fled to her room as soon as they arrived back at the house. Ella had managed to dance all night with a rich boy, but Ana had hidden in the back, eating tiny bite-sized desserts. She knew her mother was furious with her for her lack of doing what she was told, and she wasn’t going to wait around for her wrath to be unleashed.
The next morning the doorbell rang at eight in the morning. Ana, who had been making breakfast before her mother could yell at her to do so, answered the door.
The cute boy from last night was there. A very fancy shoe was in his hand.
“I am looking for the girl who fits this!” he announced, like he was some prince out of a fairytale that Ana’s dad used to read to her.
Ana’s mother and Ella came into the hall. Her mother’s eyes widened at the sight of the boy. But before she could say anything, someone else walked into the hall.
Cindy still had on the dress from the night before, and she was carrying an identical shoe to the one the boy had in his hand.
“Hello,” she greeted him, like none of this was weird.
Ana, Ella and their mother watched as the boy bent down and held out the shoe, and Cindy let him slip it on to her foot. Then they kissed and he told her he loved her, and the next thing any of them knew, Cindy was running with him to his car, and Ana knew she wasn’t coming back.
Her mother knew too, and she screamed and screamed in rage, throwing every object within reach at the door, at the walls, at Ana.
Ana raced up the stairs to her room, slamming the door, shaking.
She knew what was coming next, and she was terrified.
--
Ana made it six months, cowering under her mother’s rage and her mother’s hand, and doing all the chores her stepsister used to do, before she couldn’t take it anymore.
Every night, she dreamed of her stepsister walking out the door and not looking back, and she knew she too could be brave.
Ella was marrying the rich boy she had met at the party in a few months so she would be okay, and she had never been subjected to her mother’s abuse like Ana and Cindy had.
So Ana packed a bag, with clothes and food and her art supplies, and snuck out her window on a cloudy Monday night. She ended up on the doorstep of her best friend’s house, and she didn’t have to do anything other than show her best friend’s mother the bruises on her arms before she was welcomed inside and given a bed in a spare bedroom to stay in.
Ana spent every day until high school ended scared to death that her mother would show up at school or at her friend’s house, but she never did.
And the day after graduation, Ana bought a bus ticket to New York, waved goodbye to her friend and her friend’s parents, thanked them for everything they had ever done for her, and left her old life behind.
Ana found a job as a housekeeper and spent her free time painting, selling the artwork on eBay.
“How do you create something so evocative and pain-filled and yet hopeful?” someone once asked her. “You’re so young to paint like this.”
Ana just smiled. “Thank you for the compliment,” she said.
--
In the end, Ana found a therapist on the advice of a girl she worked with. There, for the first time, she could talk about her life with her mother and the guilt she felt over her stepsister and how she hoped she was finally happy.
“Why don’t you find out?” her therapist suggested.
It took a long time. Her stepsister had hidden herself very well, but finally Ana was able to find an email she thought was hers.
She stared at the screen for what felt like hours, her stomach in knots.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” she reminded herself, over and over, as if on a loop, and finally her fingers typed.
Hi Cindy.
It’s your stepsister, Ana. Please don’t delete this. I want to explain.
I’m so sorry.
She sent the email three hours and hundreds of words later.
She didn’t know what would happen now - that was up to Cindy - but for the first time since her stepfather died, Ana felt like there was hope. For her relationship with Cindy, for her own life, for her own future.
It wasn’t a happily ever after, but it was a start. And that was good enough for now.
Fiction. Probably.
This was written for Week 23 of therealljidol. I hope you enjoyed it! If you would like to read more entries, you can head over here. If there's voting, it should come Thursday night.