Three years ago
The rain drenched her t-shirt as Jean looked on, ignoring her reality. The man they said was from the authorities held an umbrella over her head. But, Jean carefully stepped aside in the rain while the man conversed with her parents; father a careless freak, and a sobbing mother who was a drunken mess.
Even at the tender age of 5, Jean knew that it was useless for her to let the reality sink its ugly teeth into her mind. So, she watched aimlessly, wondering about her friends and the ugly teacher who was fat like a hippopotamus, yet everyone called her ‘miss mini.’ That was a serious confusion for Jean though.
At first, she thought that ‘mini’ meant ‘fat’ but her English teacher told her that the word’s synonym was ‘tiny.’ By now, she was sure that this the teacher’s name was some insider joke that she still had to crack. And right now, at about half-past eight, with the wind picking up pace and the rain pouring down heavily, Jean tried hard as ever to understand how and why her fat teacher was called by the name of mini.
A nickname perhaps? The idea came to her mind as sudden and sure as lightning in the sky above. Except there was no cackling sound of thunder accompanying the idea. It fell silently into Jean like a revelation. In that moment, the girl with a tiny nose and large, green eyes with hazel flecks in them, knew that there couldn’t be any other possible explanation to her query. God, whoever he was, had finally answered her question.
The stranger called Jean politely and asked her if she was ready to go. She shook her head in agreement like her separation from her parents meant nothing to her. Fate gave an out an ugly laugh, waiting to bend the little girl to its mercy. Maybe she didn’t know what it had in store for her in the future.
Two years ago
It was just two days before the anniversary of the day Jean was moved from her parent’s place to her foster parent’s place. She didn’t really compare things. She missed her parents just a tad bit but not more than that. She told her best friend, Rachel, a girl whose father left her and her mother, that she missed her parent roughly equal to one slice of a pie out of all the slices that Rachel shared with her at lunch.
Most of the times, Rachel thought that life couldn’t be any more unfair to her. She was the sensitive kind, and sometimes, she’d even forget her best friend in her sorrows. Other times, she was grateful that she had at least one of her parents unlike Jean. She was happy that she lived with her mother’s boyfriend instead of at a foster place where Jean was scolded for having an extra cookie.
For Jean, however, that was the norm, eating an extra slice of pizza and getting a beating. If she’d use a little bit extra water for her bath, she would be made to stand in the sun as part of her punishment. The only thing that Jean thought that those foster-lunatics (a new word that she had learned) didn’t understand was that the punishment ruined her shower. She had to roll her almond-shaped eyes to that.
