Cassadie's Life
We often look back on our lives, wondering where things went wrong, what could we do to right them, who else could we blame. It seems that the human brain has little capability of accepting its own mistakes and our initial thought is �how can I make this seem less incriminating on my part?�
Cassadie would think this every day of her life since the eve of her 21st birthday. The day had started out wrong and spiraled down from there. She awoke, with the dreariness of an overcast day pouring through her bedroom window. The vibrating sound of roadwork echoed through her small bed-sitter apartment in the center of the city. Which city it was is of no importance, they�re all alike. Filthy, noisy, drowned by brain dead drug addicts who insist on making anything that was designed to look attractive seem like a place for the pitiful and depressed.
As she did every morning, she stretched and glanced at the busy streets below. And, as every morning, she visualized herself falling from her window shouting obscenities at those who make her view foul, of course adding her own personal decoration to the street as her body would spread artistically over the cement. A short sigh left her lips as her hand moved to her pregnant belly. A child conceived after a night of alcohol and a man who was unable to take no for an answer. Her thoughts flashed to the night, the smell of his retched breath in her nose, the feeling of his tight grip around her wrists and the pain of him forcing himself inside her. Every morning the same thing. Every morning another tear would streak her face as she recalled that night.
Of course, she didn�t have much to lose really. Her mother had been a prostitute for a cheap brothel but 3 blocks down from where she lived. Her father had been a simple man with a simple job who fell in love with her and promised to take her away from the life she had been living. 15 years he promised her riches and happiness. 15 years he beat her black and blue and forced her to consummate their commitment as a reminder of the vows that she had agreed to take. She almost felt it a blessing when he was hit by a car, but also a curse that caused her mother to begin drugs again.
Every morning she would recall the image of her laying there, a rusty syringe protruding her arm, drying foam at the corners of her mouth, her eyes wide open, sunken and red and a build up of nasal fluid forming at her nostril. When she thought back to all the emotions she had experienced over the course of that year. Hatred was the most dominant.
Perhaps it was the addition of movement in her womb that made this day harder to keep her temper restrained. The confirmation that a life had indeed been growing inside her, Even though she had already known.
This morning was especially difficult. It was indeed the day of her birth, 21 years before.
She dressed in her usual, unclean attire and snacked lightly on a piece of stale toast. She looked in the mirror and studied her gaunt, shadowed face and eyes that had lost any remainder of sparkle that they use to have. She picked up her keys from the bench and walked out of her sad apartment with the intention of buying some milk and some more bread from the remaining $10 of her social security pay out. She strolled down the street slowly, passing by the future of yesterday. 14 year old boys offering drugs, 16 year old girls offering their body just as her mother had done all those years before. Someone else would no doubt tell her story in the future. One of these girls� lives would be so similar to her mothers that perhaps in 21 years time, another person just like her would stroll these streets, pregnant and sorrowful.
As she walked slowly, head down, something inside her insisted that she look up. So she did so and found herself faced with the man who would be the father of her child. He looked at her quizzically and his eyes moved to her swollen belly and a grin formed on his face. He began to speak words that disgusted her and his hand moved into a grope. Anger shot through her, she lost control and lunged at him with all the force that she could muster. Had he been expecting it, it might not have done much but the shock was enough to make him hit the ground. His head made obvious contact with the cement accompanied by a loud thud and a small stream of blood trickled into the groove of a crack. She might have stopped at him being unconscious but the hatred� the anger and raw emotion inside her caused her hands to circle around his neck and squeeze. She didn�t hear the screams of people that had gathered around, nor did she hear the siren of a police car that had been alerted to the situation.
Cassadie found herself convicted of murder and pondered the questions of life every day.
Every morning she would awake to the sound of alarms in the prison for criminally insane women. Every morning she would think of the little baby girl that was whisked away from her seconds after birth and never to be heard of again. Probably to become a prostitute on the street after a life in foster care. Probably to be promised the world by someone who couldn�t provide and would die from a drug overdose leaving her own daughter to fend for herself.
One morning, on the dawn of her daughters 10th birthday she thought back on her life.
How could she have made this seem less incriminating on her part? Who could she blame�
On this morning, she retrieved a leather belt that she had removed from a security guard who had had his way with her, and tied it around her neck. She was found but 10 minutes later by that very guard who grunted at the site of her and alerted the proper authorities.
What happened to her body� her daughter� Her little apartment that overlooked the dirty, pitiful streets of the city, I don�t know. But I�m sure the story will retell itself eventually�
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