Mother

Mother

Hristina Bloomfield

Mother

Copyright © 2024 Hristina Bloomfield

All rights reserved.

London, 2024

hrisisart@gmail.com

Instagram: @hristinabloomfield

www.authorhristinabloomfield.com

All characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

1

March 9 was one of the most anticipated days of her life. It was the day her child would be born. At least that’s what the midwife, who had arrived early in the morning at the small miserable house where Thea lived, had told her.

Shortly after midnight, her waters had broken, and now, several hours later, Thea felt happy despite the pain of the contractions. She had dreamed of meeting her child for months, and now the moment had come. Thea followed the midwife’s breathing and stretching instructions. At first, she encouraged Thea and was nice to her, but after a few hours, she got tired and became rude. The baby didn’t seem to want to come out and was causing problems for both mother and midwife. Finally, five minutes before four in the afternoon, little Maria, as Thea called her, was born. The baby cried and was immediately carried by Thea’s mother into the other room.

‘We will clean her and return her to you,’ said Roza the midwife and also left the room. Thea was tired, but she did not lie down to rest, excited for the child to be brought to her, to hold and see her daughter.

Thea could hear a muffled conversation from the other room. Why are they whispering to each other? she wondered and tried to get up. Thea managed to sit up in bed, but when she tried to stand, she felt dizzy, and she lay down again.

‘Mum, what’s going on?’ she shouted.

The muffled conversation stopped for a moment, then Thea heard them talking again and the baby crying. Thank God she’s alive, she rejoiced.

‘Let me see her!’ she shouted again. No one answered her. ‘Mother! Father!

What’s happening?’

Thea could hear nothing from the other room. There was complete silence in the house. She worried and stood up again. Exhausted from hours of childbirth, she was hurting everywhere, but she tried not to pay attention to the pain. She stood up

slowly, first sitting up in the bed, then pulling the pillow back and leaning on it for support. Thea managed to put on the torn slippers that she’d left at the foot of the bed and slowly made her way to the door. On the third step, she lost her balance and leaned against the chair on which the midwife had rested from time to time while she had been here.

Where is everyone? Thea wondered and called out to her mother again. There was no answer, only silence. Thea gathered her strength and, using the chair as support, moved to the door. In the small house in which she lived, there were three rooms - a kitchen, a large living room, and a bedroom. Thea had given birth to her daughter in the bedroom. When she opened the door to the living room, there was no one there. She struggled towards the kitchen, but there were no one there either.

Where is everyone? she asked herself again and looked out the window. Then she saw them, her whole family, together with the neighbours, sitting on one of the old benches in the street taking pictures of the baby. Maria was a beautiful baby, and Thea’s longing to take her in her arms and hug her grew even stronger.

She watched as her brother and father took pictures of the baby, and it was as if a knife had gone through her heart. These weren’t pictures to show off to friends. They photographed everything – the face, ears, eyes, toes and hands and every little detail of the child’s body.

The baby started crying again, and Thea’s mother wrapped her in the baby blanket she had brought with her. At that moment, the two women’s eyes locked.

‘No! No! You won’t sell her!’

Thea tried to go outside. However, her brother stopped her and forced her to re-enter the house.

‘Rado, you won’t sell her, will you? Please! Please!’ Thea cried, as she stretched out her hands to her child.

‘Go inside and don’t cause problems,’ her brother said rudely and pushed her on the old armchair. Thea cried out in pain but quickly recovered and tried to go out into the street again to find Maria. When she went outside, she saw that her mother and the baby were no longer there. Thea looked around, but they were nowhere to be seen. Then she heard a baby cry again, coming from the house next door. Their

neighbours would help with the ‘deal’; she was horrified. Thea had heard of two such deals so far, but in those cases, the mothers were willingly selling their children, for a

‘better life’. But she desperately wanted her child and was willing to watch and care for her.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Thea cried and ignoring all the pain she tried to get out of the living room window. However, Rado saw her again, entered the house and this time even more roughly, grabbing her by the hair, pulled her into the bedroom and pushed her onto the bed.

‘Why didn’t you sell your child but chose to sell mine?’ Thea asked him angrily.

‘My child is not a bastard; it is mine and has a father.’

‘And my child has a father.’

‘Yes, she has a great father. Do you know where her father is now? Ha, of course, you don’t know. He went to fetch your baby’s future parents.’

‘You’re lying! You’re lying!’

‘I’m not lying! They will arrive soon, and you will see for yourself.’

‘You’re lying!’ Thea cried, but she knew in her heart that Rado was telling the truth. She had realized too late what kind of person Georgi was. She wasn’t the first he’d played like that.

‘The family that will take her is very rich. She will be well taken care of, Thea.’

‘I will take good care of her. Please don’t sell her. Please!’

‘You can’t take care of her alone. This child will be another mouth we will have to feed.’

‘You won’t have to feed us; I’ll go and take care of her.’

‘And where will you go?’ Rado asked.

‘I will go to Bolengrad. My teacher Mrs. Mariola promised to shelter me if necessary.’

‘You won’t go anywhere. So far, we have endured you. Do you know how much money you’re costing us? No, you will never be able to pay us back.’

‘At least let me hug her,’ Thea begged.

‘No, her new parents specifically mentioned that you were not to breastfeed or hold her. According to them, this will cause you to back out of the deal.’

‘Please, Rado! Please! Let me see her for a little while.’

‘No!’ he shouted and left the room.

Thea stood up again and rested her head against the window. They had all returned and sat again on the old bench in the street. The baby continued to cry, and Thea’s mother tried to calm it down. Then her neighbour took her, but she couldn’t stop the baby’s crying either. The men next to them got nervous and started shouting. Only fragmentary words reached Thea. According to the neighbour, they had to feed the baby to calm her down. Thea watched her daughter, whose face was red from crying, and her heart ached. She gathered her strength again and started towards the living room. She was just reaching for the doorknob when her mother came in with the baby. Thea held out her arms to her daughter, and to her surprise, her mother let her take her.

‘You have to feed her to stop crying.’

Thea hugged her daughter. Then she sat down on the old armchair and instinctively began to nurse Maria.

‘Don’t get attached; she won’t stay with us. Georgi is coming soon with her new parents.’

Thea’s eyes watered. She watched her baby feed and stroked her. At the curve of Maria’s neck near her left shoulder, Thea noticed a birthmark. She tried to remember it without looking for long, so that her mother would not notice her memorising her baby’s skin.

After feeding, the baby calmed down and drifted off to sleep. Her small lips parted slightly, and to Thea, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She stared like that, trying not to think about what might happen soon. She just stared at her daughter, enjoying the moment.

The sound of an oncoming car startled Thea’s mother. She got up quickly, took the baby from Thea’s arms, and tried to go outside. Thea held her back and tried to take the baby back, but her brother appeared and pushed her inside the house.

‘No! No!’ Thea shouted. Rado approached her and ordered her to shut up through his teeth. However, she did not give up. She shouted as loud as she could so that the people who wanted to buy her baby could hear her. She rapped on the window to get their attention, and Thea saw an elderly couple get out of the car and turn to the shouting in the house. But then they continued, ignoring her, and the woman took the baby in her arms. Georgi was standing on the side and smiling. Not even looking at his child. All the time he was watching the ‘buyers’ and talking about something with them. Thea started screaming again. This time she tried to break the window.

The slap Rado gave her stopped her. Her brother pushed her to the ground and leaned into one of her ears.

‘If you don’t stop screaming, I’ll kill you,’ he said through gritted teeth. Then he roughly lifted her off the ground and pushed her onto the bed.

Thea tried to get out and see what was going on through the window, but every time she got out of bed, Rado pushed her back roughly, and finally she felt so tired that she didn’t have the strength to stand up.

Shortly after, she heard the car start, and her heart felt as though it might shatter.

She could feel the absence of her daughter without even having to see with her own eyes that she was no longer there. They had sold her, and the old couple had taken her. Thea stared at the cracked ceiling wall. Tears were falling from her eyes, but she couldn’t feel them. What she felt right now was helplessness. She closed her eyes and wished herself dead. She couldn’t live without her daughter. Then Thea remembered the little body clinging to her as she nursed and told herself she wanted to feel that again. She would find her; she would fight for her and bring her back into her life.

She knew what the people who took her looked like, and she would turn every corner of the world to find them and get her back.

2

After a hard, emotional day, Thea finally fell asleep. She woke up several times from the nightmares she was having. At one point, she heard her family feasting in the living room. Her father and brother had gotten drunk and were swearing at their wives. Thea was ashamed of them, ashamed of her family and ashamed of what they had done. She wanted to make a plan and escape as quickly as possible from this house. But where would she go, she wondered. There should be someone somewhere on this earth who would agree to help her, she thought, and she became so carried away with her plans that she flitted between sleeping and waking all night long.

When she woke for the final time, she was full of doubt and fear. The house was quiet now. Her relatives and neighbours had feasted late and were now asleep. Thea opened the door to the living room, praying the old hinges wouldn’t creak. When she looked into the room, she saw only her father. He was lying on the old sofa, snoring loudly. Her mother was nowhere to be seen; she had probably gone shopping with Rado to the twenty-four-hour store in Bolengrad, Thea thought. She went back into the bedroom, put on the old pants she had worn while pregnant, threw on a sweater quickly, and went back into the living room quietly. Her winter jacket was hanging on the hanger under her father’s coat. Thea decided not to take any chances by reaching for her own coat and slowly unhooked his, slipped it on, and slowly opened the front door. Then she crossed herself twice before going out and prayed her neighbours wouldn’t see her.

Her parents’ house was the sixth in the row of houses, and the smallest property in the hamlet. Thea went out the front door and quickly moved to the back of the house, which was full of all kinds of hardware and junk. If anyone had seen her, they would have thought she was out on the road, but that wasn’t Thea’s intention. She wanted to use the rubbish in the backyard for temporary cover and, if no one was

looking for her right away, slip through the broken wooden fence and into the woods that were behind the hamlet.

Thea stood silently for a minute, listening to see if anyone had followed her. She heard no voices or footsteps, so she slipped through the hole in the fence and found herself in a small meadow with two horses owned by one of their neighbours. The horses grazed peacefully as she walked past them and entered the forest. The pain in her groin prevented her from walking quickly, and Thea made slow progress. Several miles separated her hamlet from the town. She knew the way there very well because she had walked that way for over ten years. Every weekday morning, except for the holidays, Thea took her backpack with her textbooks and notebooks and walked to the town school. It took her about an hour to get there. She often arrived at school with muddy shoes, wet and frozen from the cold, but when she got there, she was comforted and calm.

For many years Thea thought of the school as her own home. Her classmates made fun of her looks and called her names, but she was used to their taunts. For a long time, insults from her peers did not affect her. The only opinion that mattered to Thea was that of the teachers, especially Mrs. Mariola. The teacher had taken her under her wing, and now, walking to her house, Thea was thinking how right Mrs.

Mariola had been when she had warned her about Georgi.

‘He’s a bad guy, Thea. You deserve more,’ she had told her, but Thea did not listen to her. She was so in love and blinded that she turned her back on the old woman and stopped contacting her.

I’m so stupid, Thea thought, and tears began to flow down her face. She walked off the path and jumped over bushes and stumps. Thea knew that it was likely that her family had already found out that she had escaped and would have started looking for her. The path to town would be the first place they would check, so she decided to take a detour that led to the more distant part of Bolengrad. It was a risky decision because it would take her longer to go there, but she had to take the chance to get out. Her plan was to get to her teacher’s house, tell her what happened, and seek shelter, at least for a while.

It got cold in the forest, and snow started falling from the sky . That’s not good, Thea thought. If it piled up, her brother and father would see her steps. She looked

up and prayed that it would stop snowing. But instead, the snowfall intensified and turned into a blizzard. Thea wrapped herself further in her father’s winter coat and continued to move slowly. She could feel the cold coming from her toes. The shoes she had on were not suitable for bad weather, but she tried to ignore the cold.

Instead, she focused on the memory of nursing her daughter. The little gentle body snuggled up to her. That memory warmed Thea, and she kept walking. After about half an hour, she found herself at the edge of the town. Smoke was billowing from the chimneys of the houses. The streets were deserted; no one wanted to go out on a day like this, and since it was Sunday, most people were resting. Everyone preferred to stay warm at home. She hoped her daughter was somewhere warm right now too, Thea thought, looking around cautiously before crossing to the other sidewalk.

Mrs. Mariola’s house was located in the central part of the town near the school where Thea had studied until recently. To get there, she had to cross almost half the city. There was no direct way; she could go through several side streets, but in the end, she had to cross the main one. Thea huddled against one of the houses, feeling the warmth of the building’s outer wall. She rested her fingers on it, trying to warm them. Then, seeing that someone was approaching her, she quickly lowered her head and went to the other side of the street. The blizzard continued and made the people she passed walk with their heads down. No one looked at her.

Two blocks before the teacher’s house, she slowed down and tried to see if anyone from the hamlet was watching the house. Her brother knew Thea was close to this woman and would probably come check on her there. There was no one at the first block, but when she arrived at the street where the teacher’s house was, she saw the front door open and Georgi talking to her. Thea’s heart sank in fear. Her ex-boyfriend must have gone to threaten Mrs. Mariola, she thought, and wondered where else she could go. Thea looked around and saw the school. She could go in there temporarily, she thought, and headed that way. Thea was horrified to see her brother Rado was standing in front of the school entrance, talking to someone on the phone. She flinched at the sight of his angry face and quickly backed away.

‘Thea?’ She heard a woman’s voice behind her. The voice startled her, and she quickly turned to see who it was, preparing to defend herself. In front of her she saw an old woman, one of Mrs. Mariola’s neighbours. Thea had seen her at the teacher’s

house, but she had never spoken to her and did not remember her name. She only knew that they were friends and sometimes had coffee together.

‘Don’t be afraid, please and don’t run. Mariola called me half an hour ago. She said that all the people from the hamlet are looking for you and asked me to shelter you if I saw you.’

The old woman pushed Thea in front of her and gestured for her to move. After a few houses, Thea saw an open front door and the woman pushed her firmly into the house.

‘I think no one saw us,’ she said. ‘I’m Jeanne, we’ve met at Mariola’s, haven’t we?

Come, sit near the stove to warm yourself.’

Thea had already headed for the stove and held out her freezing hands to warm herself. Then realizing that she had entered the house with her shoes on, she took them off. The old woman looked at her reddened bare feet from the cold, went into the next room, and returned with hand-knitted warm woollen socks.

‘Put them on – they will warm your feet quickly.’

Thea put them on and sat in the chair in front of the stove. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly and cried. The warmth and cosiness of the