sable delamore. d8. // cb.

A family business.

That has what I’ve always been told. The day I started asking questions that was the only answer I got. Mom was always out late running it, but all I got was a simple hush when I asked what it was.

It wasn’t until I was old enough that I was truly told what the “business” was.

And it wasn’t anything that any family should be proud of.

It was passed down from my mom’s mom to her mom, then finally to mom, and one day to me. But the day she sat me down and told me, I learned that it wasn’t something that you just inherited.

You had to work for it.

And in the cruelest way possible.

She told me that each owner must deal in the same work that the girls do, they must sell themselves so they can understand what it’s truly like, as you can’t properly run a business unless you know the work that is done by doing it with you own hands.

A silent tear rolled down my cheek, no words fell from my mouth, the room was filled with silence. I shook my head in response, how could I allow something like this to happen to myself? A crease formed between her brows, and the only word I heard fall from her lips was “disappointment”.

I was a lot of things.

But a disappointment was not one of them.

I dried my tears and did what I was told. Tears fell from my eyes the first few times, scaring the men away, and leaving handprints on me from my mother’s scoldings. But i learned to turn off my emotions, and now I feel nothing. Nothing but hopelessness as I wait for it to be my turn to take over, knowing that my sisters and one day my children will have to suffer the same fate as me.

So here I am waiting.

Waiting for one day to be freed from this endless circle my mother is trying to pass off as life.