Freedom
Freedom. I had never been free. Never. Until the eve of my sister’s wedding.
My father had always been an old fashioned kind of man. He thought women should stay at home, married while in their younger years to powerful men who provide. He even thought that educating women was not important because women shouldn’t have job. Careers were for men.
I had never agreed with him and his sexist views. They always seemed outdated and idiotic to me, especially since he had two daughters.
My sister was two years my senior, 20 to my 18. We were extremely close, sharing everything with one another – from shoes and clothes to secrets and heartbreak. Absolutely everything. However, she always played along with my father and his beliefs. She allowed him to dictate her entire life. He said that she could not go to university, so she didn’t. She acted like his wife, caring for the home, cleaning and cooking for him. As a ‘reward’, he chose her husband. John Thompson. John was a businessman from Edinburgh, high up in some corporate food chain. He went to our church, that’s how he met my father. Every Sunday he was there with his ailing mother. John was exactly like my father just a younger, blonder model. I hated him with a passion. Not because he was to marry my sister nor because he was taking her away from me but because he had no respect for her. He was changing her. Making her a shell of the person she once was. She was no longer the girl I once knew.
The relationship between John and my sister had been swift. A mere three months after their introduction, they were engaged. The wedding was soon set for two months later.
The night before my sister’s wedding, we were on the way to the rehearsal dinner – my father and I. My sister was travelling with her fiance. The air was thick with tension. Neither of us spoke a word to one another. We hadn’t spoken in a while – I had been too busy helping my sister plan her wedding and my father was busy doing whatever it is my father does. The silence engulfed my whole being. I felt like a stranger in the car rather than the daughter of the driver. It was a feeling I was used to. The feeling was never stamped out by my father, he almost tried to make it become stronger. I stared out the window at the dark road we were driving on. The smell of smoke filled my nose, choking me.
“What are you doing?” I spat at my father as I turned to find his smoking a cigar.
“I’m celebrating this glorious evening,” my father looked over towards me.
“Why do you have to smoke to celebrate?”
“What do you expect me to do? Drink?”
“Yes,” I murmured as I stared back out the window.
“What did you just say?”
“Yes. Yes I expect you to drink. That’s what you always do.” I screamed, turning back to look at his now red face.
“How dare you speak to me like that! I raised you myself.”
“Here we go again! Do you expect me to be thankful? Do you? Because I am not. I hate…”
Black.
A raindrop splashed upon my face. I could feel it running down my face. Another hit me. And another and another and another. Hitting my eyes, my face, my body. Slowly and with great effort, I opened my eyes.
My pale, bloody body was lying in the middle of the empty road. The harsh tarmac scraped my skin which had already been penetrated with shards of glass. The pain was overwhelming. The sensation took over my whole body, capturing it, condemning me to experience this agony.
A scream pierced the peaceful night. My scream. The sound seemed alien. It did not even register to me that I was the one who was screaming. I couldn’t. In that moment, I thought it came from someone else, anyone else. That’s when I saw him. My father.
He was still inside the car. His undisturbed body was in the same position it had been in before, only now he was upside down. I scrambled up from my position, further puncturing my skin on the glass as I raced towards him.
I still remember his eyes. They were open. But they were not the eyes of the man who had raised me himself. They were the same shade of cobalt blue, however the life was gone from them. They used to twinkle in the light. I was always envious of this. My murky green eyes never sparkled that way, they never danced with joy the way his had. That is how I knew he was dead. The taste of sorrow still fills my mouth as it did that day when I think about it – raindrops, smoke and blood.
I tried to get his body out of the car. With all the strength I could muster, I grabbed a hold of each of his arms and pulled. He would not budge. I know now that his legs were trapped and that is why he would not come out. I don’t know how long I tried. I just didn’t stop. I didn’t stop when I felt the coarse hand of a stranger on my shoulder. I didn’t stop when they told me help was on the way. I only stopped when the emergency responder ripped me from him as salty tears streamed down my face, filling my mouth and silencing my yells.
He looked so tranquil. He looked happy.
That was the last time I saw my father.
Earlier, I said that I wasn’t free until the eve of my sister’s wedding. I lied. I am not free. I am haunted by the last words I spoke to him. Those hate-filled words said in anger. I see him each night in my dreams in that car with those lifeless cobalt eyes. I will never be free.
H. Barton
After reading the ‘Cameronian Preacher’s Tale’, I was inspired by the way Hogg explores the theme of guilt. I was also inspired after reading ‘Friend of My Youth’ by the idea of freedom and Flora being the most free of all the characters despite being perceived as the least free. I took both of these inspirations and used them to form my story which explores the theme of guilt and the idea of freedom. In addition, I was explored the theme of sorrow which was evident in both stories.
