Ilara: Chapter 1
I looked around the town of Hunters Creek, hoping this might be a place I could stop and stay a while. It seemed like a nice, quiet, almost quaint town. Everyone smiled and said hello when you met them on the street or in a store. The scenery was bright, green, and beautiful. It was hot and humid, but not anything I couldn’t handle. If I was lucky, I’d find a job and then a place to live, but first I had to find a place who was hiring.
So far, I’ve been into about half the businesses in town. A few of them said to leave my resume or an application. I did at all those places, but no one had responded with an opening when I checked back with them. Most of them told me they weren’t hiring. I knew part of it might be the fact that when I went in to ask, I wasn’t alone.
Hope squirmed in my arms. She wanted me to put her down. I slowly sat her down on her feet but hung on to her hand. She was little but fast. I found that out as soon as she started to walk. She tugged on my hand. Her cute little face scrunched up in a smile and her dimples peeked out.
“Come. Me hungry,” she told me huskily, in her cute two-year-old voice.
I laughed. “You’re always hungry, little missy. You’re a bottomless pit. Let’s go to that bench we found the other day and we can eat there.” I had a few snacks in my backpack. Hopefully, that would satisfy her. I held her hand and slowly walked to the bench, which was a block away. It was close to our car.
We’d just gotten seated, and she had a banana in her hand when voices caught her attention. I groaned when I realized where it was coming from. Down from the bench, there was a bakery, Angel’s Delights. We’d found it on our first day here. It was filled with smells and sights that made your mouth water and your stomach cramp with hunger. I’d never seen a bakery like it. The heavenly scents wafted out onto the sidewalk. I could understand why it was always so busy. Hope loved to stare in the window at the desserts and the brightly colored boxes.
A couple of nicely dressed women were coming out carrying those pretty boxes. They were chatting away and not paying any attention to their surroundings. They were loud, which is what caught Hope’s attention. She saw them and the boxes they were carrying. She gave a tiny squeal and slid off the bench before I could grab her. She took off, toddling toward them. I jumped up and ran after her, trying to get her to stop.
“Hope, Hope, come to Momma. Baby, stop,” I hollered at her. She didn’t slow down. Right before I was close enough to grab the back of her shirt, she barreled into one of the women’s legs. She cried out and stumbled back a couple of steps. The other woman simply looked down at Hope. She had a pissed look on her face.
“I’m so sorry. She just got away from me for a minute. She saw you with those boxes and she knew what was in them. She’s a little obsessed with the bakery,” I told them with a laugh. It wasn’t a lie. Hope seemed to zero in on that place every time we were near it. I should have remembered that and found us another place to sit and eat our snack.
The one looking down her nose at us sniffed. “You should learn to control your kid. If you can’t, then don’t bring them out in public. Unruly children are a menace. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that children are to be seen and not heard?” she snapped. I felt my face getting hot, not from embarrassment, but from anger. Anyone being nasty about my daughter got me in the mood to punch someone every time.
“My daughter isn’t unruly. She got excited. She didn’t mean to run into you. She’s only eighteen months old. I hardly think she hurt you,” I snapped back. Her eyebrows raised up in surprise, then she looked at her companion.
“Well, I never. No wonder the child is a ruffian. Look at her mother. Dressed like she is and out here in front of good, decent people. You should be ashamed and go change your clothes.” Her friend nodded her head in agreement.
I flushed harder. I knew my shorts were a little too short and my top a tiny bit tight. It was freaking September and hot as hell. My ass and boobs were covered. What was the big deal? Plus, I didn’t have many clothes, and these were one of the few sets that were clean. I pulled myself up to my whole five foot four inches of height and thrust out my chest.
“My clothes are hardly indecent. I’ve seen much worse on the teens running around here. I wonder which of them are your daughters?”
The one Hope had made stumble gasped and then sneered. “My daughter doesn’t dress like a tramp. Why don’t you take yourself and your brat somewhere else? Stop blocking the sidewalk. Some people have errands to run. They don’t need to be molested by that... thing.” She pointed at Hope, who was watching the whole exchange with her eyes wide. She didn’t understand what was going on, but she understood the tone and the tension in the air.
“If you call her a brat, a ruffian, or a thing, one more time, I’ll show you what kind of mother I am. I suggest you leave before I mess up those pretty clothes of yours. I bet I can make them look way worse than mine,” I snapped. I had my fists curled at my sides to keep from decking the bitch. No one was going to talk like that about Hope. She was my joy, my heart, and my hope.
“If you touch me, I’ll call the cops. See what you do then,” she replied. I didn’t want to get into it with the law, but I refused to let her intimidate me.
“Go ahead, call the cops. I’m sure they’ll get a laugh out of how ridiculous two grown-ass women are about a toddler bumping into them.”
I heard a throat being cleared from behind me when I got done shouting. I slowly turned to see what the new threat was. I came face-to-face with a young woman who was my age, if I had to guess. She was also my height, with shoulder-length dark brown hair that was beautifully highlighted, and pale blue eyes. She was standing there with her hands on her hips. I recognized her. She worked in the bakery. Behind her were five other women. They were all staring at me.
“What seems to be the problem? We could hear you all the way inside. You’re scaring my customers,” the woman who’d cleared her throat said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb anyone. My daughter got excited at seeing your bakery boxes. She ran over and bumped into these women. They got upset and have been calling her names and being rude and offensive to me. They said they’re going to call the cops,” I told her in a rush.
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, then at Hope, and finally at those two cows. “Is that true? Did you call this sweet child names?”
Woman number one sputtered, “I-I never called that child names. She’s crazy. We were afraid she was going to attack us for no reason. That’s why we said we were going to call the cops.”
“If I attacked you, you’d know why. You called Hope a brat, a ruffian, and a thing. She’s a little girl, for God’s sake. She ran into you by accident. And your comments about my clothing isn’t warranted. It covers me. That’s all I need.”
“People like you shouldn’t be allowed to have children. If you can’t control them, then give them to someone who can. It’s obvious she’s going to turn out to be trash like her mother,” the other woman said with a smirk on her face.
I didn’t think, I just reacted. I dropped Hope’s hand, and I went after the bitch. She squealed like a damn pig when she saw me coming at her. She tried to duck behind her companion, but she was back peddling too fast to get out of the line of fire. They got tangled up in each other and fell on their asses. I worked hard, trying not to laugh. They looked like flailing octopuses. Arms and legs were waving everywhere as they shrieked.
I couldn’t do it. I burst out laughing at the same time the other women from the bakery did. We were all laughing at those two on the ground. Hope started to laugh because we were, which made us laugh harder. Seeing them on the ground like that made me feel better than hitting them would have.
I was just sobering up a bit when they got themselves untangled and to their feet. They were trying to straighten their wrinkled and stained clothes. They ran their hands through their hair to smooth it down, which only made it stick up worse. I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing again. They must have seen the laughter on my face because the one who called Hope a thing charged at me.
I pushed Hope behind me and met her charge. She slapped me across the left cheek. It stung. She gave me a satisfied look. One that was like, there, that’ll teach you to laugh at your betters. I had news for her. She wasn’t better than me. Too bad for her, I believed in an eye for an eye and I didn’t slap people.