Desdemona Shaw // D2F

When you are born, you are a disappointment.

A girl. is alll your father can muster.

In those first moments, you are a disapointment. And in those first moments, you begin fighting to prove your worth to those above you. Your mother cares for you, but only because her instinct drives her too. Your father doesn't even spare you a glance, he never holds you, even when you reach for him, your chubby hands gasping as tears stream down your face. It is lucky, when your younger brother comes, that you do not starve.

The say it takes a village and it is your community that keeps you alive. Mothers who's heart strings are pulled when they see your skin, taught over your ribs and the fathers who's stomachs drop when they see your skin peppered in bruises. They care for you, teach you to wark, the mothers brush your hair and the fathers make you toys. They become your Mama's and Papa's and if it were not for your mother, dragging you back to your house or your father calling your name, then perhaps you would have lived with those Mama's and Papa's.

Despite being a disappointment, your mother tries to prepare you to be a wife. You grow up in squalor, but your parents have dreams. They dream  to grow beyond the small shack you call home. They dream of gold and silver and ruby gems, fame and fortune, and they try to mould you to feed their greed. Your mother teaches you to walk upright, book balanced utop your head and how to speak only when spoken too- but you can't help but disappoint them there too. You stumble when you walk, you speak out loud because you do not want to be silence but your mothers lashings try to mould you into the prize they wish you to be.

But as always, you fail them.

Not pretty enough. Is what they say. Your round face and undefined lips, dirty blonde hair that falls in clumps around your acne riddle face, your blue eyes are dull like an overcast sky - how could anyone grow to love you? is what your father tells you when he tells you that you are to start work in the mines. You cry, but it only makes you uglier. Pretty girls don't cry, your mother scolds, a bitterness in her voice. 

They pull you out of school, and thus rid you of any hope of exceeding beyond their expections. You are good at school, and it breaks your heart when you wake that first morning to realise you will never go again. Though there is a inkling of gratefulness when the school is bombed 6 weeks later. You walk from the world above, into the halls of Hades where you dig into the white earth. Searching for shining metal and gold- to sate the leaders of the state who are so desperate to crush you beneath their boot. You lungs ache and burn from the dust that fills the air, and your posture suffers from hunching to avoid low ceilings and you begin to fear the dark, after a collpasing section of the roof leaves you trapped and seven others dead.

You somehow make it out, much to the disappointment of your parents.

It is not long after, do they joyfully inform you that you will no longer be their problem. You are fifteen when they tell you that- somehow- you have caught someones eyes and he has paid your bridal price. Your father is counting the coins on the dinner table when you come home that night. They are- for the first time in your entire life- happy. Happy because they will be rid of you. You dare ask about him. 

They tell you he is 2 years your senior.

You wear a pretty blue dress, but it is stained with grey patches as your tears spill down your cheeks as you stand in front of this stranger and a priest. Do you Desdemona Moore take Othello Shaw to be your husband? You want to say no, and you falter for a moment, the word Yes trapped in your throat. So you nod, feeling all the eyes in the room on you, waiting in anticipation for this contract to be signed. Your hand shakes as he takes yours, the priest tying them together with fabric to sanctify the marriage.

And so from one expectant household, you fall into another where cruelness follows you like a plague does on ships cast into the night. Your mother in law scolds you for doing things wrong, for how you wash your husbands clothes, and how you cook the bread to feed the men as they work in the mines. She scolds you when your womb does not bear children, despite lying with your husband.

You do not tell her, you do not tell anyone, but your husband is the only kindness in your life. He tells you he will not lie with you until you are old enough to make that decision for yourself. He tells you he did not want this, that he had no choice. You both know if you disobeyed your parents, had tried to speak up, then you would be cast out onto the streets to starve. You had both seen what starvation does to a person.

He is kind, and you think you grow to love him....

He dies fighting in the war. He throws a flaming bottle at soldiers lining the streets and so they put holes in him, leaving his body in the blackened Earth.

A widow- you must return to your parents with your husbands name and wearing widows white. Your hair pulled back, beneath a cap, your parents sneer and snarl at you, barely breathing in your direction as they feed you. You can see how their hand shakes as they hand you food, more than you would have ever recieved at home before, as they force themselves to keep you well fed. To disrespect a widow was an unspoken crime- it was the worst thing you could do. You should have revelled in the power you had over them- 

But being a widow is a painfully lonely existence.

Then, something happens. Your name is called, before the district, and you hear the gasp rippling through the crowd. You were not yet beyond your vowed silence, you had not been reborn in the eyes of God- it was unprescidented. And as you were dragged away, you did so willingly, as you could feel the chains that had held you down for so very long breaking as you were torn from the spot that you stood. Tears streamed down your face-

But make no mistake.

These were not ones of sadness.

"I'll show you!" Your pause, digging your heels into the cobblestones for just a moment, so that maybe your parents can hear you. "I'll show you all! I'll show you what a girl can really do!!"