Checkmate
By: Delta B. Mckenzie
Tags: Family Drama, Fiction, Storytelling, Short Story

Checkmate

This is a game that you can’t win

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

If there was one thing that Suzie knew, it was that her mother hated her.

The woman had never said it but actions spoke louder than words and Dahlia Simmons’ actions screamed like a banshee in the night.

Suzie had done everything she could to live up to the standards that her mother had set yet nothing she did was ever good enough.

None of her relatives saw the way her mother looked at her. Her dad never noticed how her mother would snatch her hands away and curl them in her lap if Suzie strayed too close, as if to make sure that she wouldn’t have to touch her own daughter, not even by accident.

Suzie’s mother hated her and Suzie hated her mother right back.

She hated the way her mother’s soft smiles would turn brittle with edges as jagged as a glass shard when her gaze flickered over Suzie. And her mother’s gaze always flickered over her because the woman didn’t seem to be able to stomach the sight of Suzie on most days.

Suzie didn’t care.

That was a lie, she did care but she didn’t care enough to change the things her mother hated.

Maybe if her mother had been willing to compromise, Suzie would have too but as it was, she dug her heels in and threw her rebellion in her mother’s face every time she could.

It wasn’t like her mother could replace her.

The stricken look on the woman’s face the first time Suzie taunted her with the words made her feel warm inside.

The warmth was ripped away when she realized that her father had heard her.

Her ears rang with his fury and she retreated to her room to lick her wounds.

She didn’t blame her father for being angry but she did blame her mother.

Suzie blamed her mother for almost everything.

That was why she took her chance at the tender age of fifteen, running away with the boyfriend that her parents detested.

It wasn’t until the cops dragged her back four months later with her tail between her legs and a swollen belly that she realized what her rebellion had cost her.

Her father was dead.

She didn’t even get the chance to mourn before her mother sent her away to live with her grandmother.

The longer Suzie stayed with the old woman, the more she realized that it wasn’t only her mother who hated her.

Her grandmother refused to help Suzie with anything.

She had to make her own food and clean up after herself.

It was awful and to spite her, Suzie fled again only returning when her stomach was flat and her baby was in the arms of a stranger.

She’d known that her grandmother had planned to raise the kid but there was no way that Suzie was going to give her the chance.

She only stayed long enough to watch the news rip the hope from her grandmother’s eyes before she left her family behind again and this time, no one came looking for her.

She spent twenty years on her own, making do with the money her father had left to her until the day she got a call that changed her life.

Her mother was dying which meant that everything that Suzie’s father had foolishly willed to her would now be Suzie’s.

The thought had Suzie grinning as she booked her flight.