Read Online Carrier by Vanessa Garden - Free Book Online

keep you here because I’m worried I’ll lose you like Alice. That’s all.’
    At my feet, a lone soldier ant contemplated a speck of brown soil which had spilled onto the red earth.
    â€˜I know, and I understand, sort of.’ My hands began to tremble so I shoved them in my back pockets. ‘But…I can’t live penned-in like this…’ I met her eyes and swallowed thickly, ‘…anymore.’ I shook my head and continued, encouraged by the soft, understanding look in her eyes and the sad half-smile on her face. ‘There’s just no point to it all. What are we even saving ourselves for? There’s nothing good waiting for us. I’d rather risk my life and maybe find something out there worth living for, than to preserve myself for this nothing life.’ When I finished my rant, my chest was heaving and my face felt warm and tight, the blood beneath my skin throbbing.
    Mum bowed her head, her dark hair falling to shield her face from me while she chewed what remained of her last pinkie fingernail. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. A small part of me wondered if I’d maybe gone too far, but a larger part of me just could not shut up.
    â€˜It’s time you cut me a little slack, Mum. I’m nearly seventeen. I want some freedom.’
    â€˜You’re sixteen and a half,’ she said, her voice a monotone.
    â€˜Right, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m only getting older and there’ll come a time when you are going to have to let me make decisions for myself.’ Dramatically, with wild arms, I gestured to the fence, but Mum merely snorted without looking up. I was losing her. She was reverting back to her old, hard self. I needed the soft, understanding Mum back, the one I’d glimpsed for only a second a minute ago.
    â€˜What if you get sick, Mum? Or what if one day, when you hide away in your room, you never come back out? Or you go out hunting and never return? What then? I won’t know where anything is. If our well dries up then I won’t know how to find the waterhole and I’ll die from dehydration.’
    Mum still wasn’t looking at me. I slapped myself against my forehead for emphasis, but got nothing, not even a blink. I groaned.
    â€˜Can’t you see that all of this — ’ I waved my hands at the fence, ‘ — all this locking me up is doing more damage than good?’
    Mum bent her knees, squatting over the ground, and began poking the rich, damp planting earth with her index finger and shoving in the chunks of shrivelled potato eyes with a patience and calmness that did my head in.
    â€˜Yes, Lena, I have spent many nights thinking about it. And yes, it seems ridiculous to not equip you with all the knowledge I have, to pass it down, should you find yourself alone one day. But…’ she paused and rolled a triangle of potato against her dirty palm, ‘your cousin Alice, when I found her, she was only ten metres beyond the front gate — ten metres, Lena. I don’t know what had possessed her to leave the property that night, though I have a feeling it was to meet a boy, but I know that for all her efforts, she only made it a few steps away before those men got her.’
    A solid lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it down, trying not to notice the lone tear trickling out of my mother’s left eye.
    â€˜She was so badly beaten, Lena. It physically pained me to look at her. Her arms were broken, her legs...in more than one place. Some of her beautiful hair was ripped out of her scalp.’ Mum paused and sucked in a deep breath. ‘And they violated her so badly that I think she bled to death, internally, from all the tearing. The footprints showed there were as many as five men... five .’ She shook her head and eyed me from head to toe. ‘What could you possibly do out there against five men?’
    My body turned cold, as though I’d