Chapter 10. Denied

CHARLOTTE

“Yeah, because I don’t have the look to judge, right? It’s not my place because I look like this…”

“No… that’s not what I meant,” he replied.

My heart was so heavy—I had to let it out, for someone to listen. I don’t care who… I had to.

“My own mother told me that she regretted the day she conceived me. She wished I died in her womb! She screamed those words at five-year-old me, pinning me to the floor with a dagger pointed at my neck.

‘Mummy, I’m sorry,’ my little voice whispered.

It wasn’t something new to me. I don’t remember the first time, but I’m sure I must have cried—terrified and confused. Yet, at the end of each outburst, she never had the heart to finish me off. I guess she wasn’t a horrible mother… just a broken woman.”

I paused and looked down, my tears flowing like a fountain.

That day, she came home drunk from a failed date. He had rejected her for being a single mother to a Black child. That wasn’t the first ti