I didn’t bother answering. That’s what they, my mother, aunts and grandma, all said. Not, ‘Hold out for a guy you like who will live to see his hair turn white.’ or ‘Wait for the right one. Someone who makes your toes curl.’ No. Instead, their suggestions all revolved around holding out to make the best of a horrible fate. After all, they’d all done the same.
Knowing their stance didn’t stop their answers from frustrating me. I didn’t want to make the best of things. I wanted life to go easy on us all for a little while.
I could feel her eyes on me while I chopped in silence.
“Tessa, honey, you know we want you to be happy. We’ve all tried to find what happiness we could. When you lose your man, you’ll at least have your daughters. That’s why we say to wait.”
The onions and the garlic made my eyes water so when I answered, I sniffled a little. “I know, Gran. I just don’t understand why this is happening to us.”
“All we have is what is in Belinda’s book,” she said sadly before turning to pour the noodles into the boiling water.
Belinda, the first of our line, had created an unpretentious small book detailing the basics of her life and passed it down to her daughters. The book followed her line from mother to daughter giving us a sliver of knowledge.
All women of our line have a gift. With a single touch, we see a glimpse of our future. The touch only worked on men. The gift manifests on our twelfth birthday. We have until our seventeenth birthday to choose a boy. The choice is binding. Once we choose, the gift disappears.
Reading the first few pages of the book, a person might think fate favored us with such a wonderful gift. To see our potential future with any man we touched, who wouldn’t want that? Avoid the cheaters and the unmotivated and search for the one who could make you truly happy. If they read the whole thing, they would understand the depth of our misfortune. The one we choose dies young. Always. If we’re lucky, we’ll have a daughter or two before that time. Always a daughter. Never a son.
Belinda’s book left so much for us to guess. What would happen if we didn’t choose? Neither she nor any of her descendants ever noted an answer. Only that we must choose. In the back of the book, Belinda started a family tree of sorts. Mothers noted the birth of their daughters by entering their name.
Many branches just stopped. Like great Aunt Danielle’s. She never had a daughter. No one ever talked about her choice. My mom warned me at an early age not to bring it up. Mostly, Aunt Danielle sat quietly on the chair in the corner of the living room her haunted eyes staring off into space. I suspected she lost a daughter long ago along with her husband, but never asked.
Aunt Grace, my mother’s sister, chose a man who wouldn’t give her children. Unlike Aunt Danielle, Aunt Grace spoke about it once when just the two of us were home. She hadn’t wanted to condemn her child to our shared fate, the visions and forced choice. But after helping to raise me, she regretted her choice. Only one branch remained active in the book. My mother’s. Everything rested on me now. I’d have no cousin to share the burden when I reached their age.
Gran and I worked in silence. The smell of fresh basil, plucked from the herb pot in the kitchen window, filled the room. Water bubbled on the stove heating the kitchen. Gran chopped ingredients to the frying pan and I moved to sit at the table. I buttered bread, cutting each slice in half and set them to the side. I enjoyed working in the kitchen, mostly liking the warmth and light.
“Looks like it will be dark early tonight,” she observed, glancing at the cloud-laden sky through the window by the sink. “Homework done?”
“Yeah.” I loved summer and its long days. Winter sucked almost as much as the bus ride did because of its short days.
Belinda’s book also stated those with the gift had to be home before dark. No explanation why. Just simple instructions to secure the house before the sun sunk below the horizon with a note that shutters worked best to block out the night.
Mom and Aunt Grace arrived home as we put supper on the table. As usual, Aunt Danielle didn’t join us, preferring her solitary chair. She took her meals when she felt like it. No one seemed overly worried about her. As Gran’s identical twin, I supposed they would worry if she started looking thinner than Gran.
After supper, we all got ready for bed. I had priority on the shower since I wouldn’t wake before seven. Another lovely rule. To protect the daughters from the night, we slept until the sun’s first ray crested the horizon. In winter, it made it a tight race to get to school on time.
Mom knocked on the door. “Fifteen minutes until dusk. We’re starting now.”
“Okay,” I called back turning off the water.
In late fall through early spring, the monotonous events of my short days made me want to scream. Get up, race to school. Do homework while riding the bus home. Make dinner with grandma, eat, and get ready for bed. No time remained for anything else.