The Drenched Truth

Chapter 1

1) the book varies from 1st to 3rd point of view. In first person I speak as the main character almost narrating one could say.

2) I do not use ''pov'' as this isnt a play write. None of professionally published books that I own uses ''pov'' .

3) 1st and 3rd person point of views are seperated with quotes.

4) this book is typed via phone. Errors will occur.

I wasn't born here, yet this place has become my very breath and heartbeat. The bush around me is of the never-ending kind, the ground of a reddish-brown color and the grass, during summer times, yellow like mustard.

The grass seldom turns up green, it's a rare sight unless the rains adorned the earth with a few weeks of nonstop drizzles only then, new sprouts will spring forth in patches here and there, but when no rain was present the grass remained yellow and it would almost seem like they were yellow from the start.

Of course, the grass never remained so clattered up against each other because the elephants and other wild animals would feed on it leaving wide empty patches. ...

No matter which place I'd end up going, I would find myself searching for that yellow grass and that reddish-brown ground.

No, I wasn't born here, but my connection with this place runs so deep that I might have been a child born in this land... I was five when father chose to move here, to the Tuli Block after hearing the great possibilities this country called Bechuanaland has.

I remember so clearly how my grandfather protested against the fact that mother and I had to live in tents until father finally completed the build of our stunning villa.

We lived for a year in the tents, which at times mother had to hand sow back together after a gush of wind would tear through it and during that year, we had the floor fixed twice...

Amazing how floors made of cow dung and this exact red sand held together so well. During the built of the villa, father had two of his workers fix up the yard, slowly but surely building the gardens to the success it is today and he kept the trees intact only removing a few.

Trees are a huge part of the Bechuanaland habitat. Especially the Mopane, Acacia, and Baobab trees and they were also now an important part of our gardens. Yes, so it is...

I wasn't born here but I have my soul resting here... Here were the mustard yellow grass cracks from under your feet when walking, here where the reddish-brown ground sticks to your skin like glue ...

Here where the trees give the sound of thousands of clapping hands when the wind happily sings, here where the birds tell you a story ...of love found, love lost, love found again, and new beginnings.

Here where the sun says goodbye with yellows, pinks, purples and red colors painted through the skies; here where the sky is so blue you could get lost by staring at it.

Here where peace can perhaps be found in the simpler of things.

However, my soul may be a part of this place. I must admit that the peace I seek, I cannot find in long walks through the bush or focusing on the sound of the wind and I am faced with the realization that if I'm not able to save myself… I could most likely leave my soul here and search for better ways to live by.

But when you have been kept away from family and people you love; you lose connections and you're left alone with no idea of how to move on along.... and it is exactly this question that deeply troubled me today of all days. Yes, my dear, I am no longer at ease, everything inside of me churning with waves of tornado-like emotions building up within myself and I feel nothing but trapped.

How hilarious this fact must be?

One isn't supposed to be feeling trapped by family... yet I am... oh I am and I have no idea how I can keep silent and accept this treatment any longer. They all say that they are in a new millennium since it’s almost in the year 1930 yet I cannot help but notice how close-minded people still seem to be.

Marriages still build on choices by a father, especially when it could mean his business has a possibility to expand, and love marriages are sadly still ignored. They happen so rarely; They, the daughters-the so-called pride of their families, are basically still used to enlarge a business or make peace. They say their value is of unimaginable heights yet in truth their values are determined on their parent's needs

Am I so wrong to feel so erroneous about this? Am I perhaps really taking heed to the devil as father, so eloquently, put it for wanting something more than just a forced marriage? all because I want true love from the right man?

Perhaps I am naive for believing that I have a right to be loved by whom I choose.

We all live in a house on fire, with  no fire department to calla and no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Tennessee Williams

Isabella sighed, wiping a strand of brown hair off of her face; since she opened her eyes this very day, she’s felt restless. She chose to go for a walk knowing that the gardens keep her mind off preoccupied- but not today. She's afraid!

She is scared to face the reality that would face her in the day of tomorrow, in the days yet to come.

She will be turning twenty tomorrow, and she knows that her father has great plans. He has been talking nonstop of his three different suitors.

Henry van Staden, who's farm is exactly right next to theirs and a marriage to him could mean a morphing together of the two farms and thus so expands her father’s business. A lovely deal- but her father fails to see that Henry is forty-nine... yes, a forty-nine-year-old man who still seems to be a bachelor has a huge bush for a beard, which Isabella could swear he hides things in, and a ponytail he keeps in place with red or blue ribbons.

Of course, there is no doubt he is a well-behaved man with gentle mannerisms; but can a woman really stay in harmony with a man who still stays with his mother? He regularly visits them and Isabella is always forced to entertain him with conversations.

‘’You're such a wise woman Bell...’’ he would say.

‘’Just like mommy. I think you and mommy would be so perfect together.’’

"I beg your pardon dear sir? I should think not... " she chipped another flashback and it scared a flock of birds nearby.

He once visited them for dinner on invitation by her father and she was forced to sit next to him. He insisted to cut her meat for her saying that he couldn't live with the very thought that she might just cut herself.

Has it ever crossed his mind that she could also cut herself when he wasn't there?

And after dinner, they had coffee in the lounge where he sat next to her. He asked her in a rather odd voice, ‘’Is your tummy wummy full? Did you eat enough my sweet?’’

At that very moment, she had the dire need to run for the hills if ever there were hills near her at that moment.

She informed her father of  her dislike of this man’s age and ways of interacting with her as if she was still a child....well obviously in his eyes she is but she is a child  due to the rather large age gap; her father stares blindly on to the idea of the two farms together.

Then there is Leo De La Rosa, her father came to know of this man through his connection with his friend and colleague señor De La Rosa…whom ,also, is  a criminal lawyer like her father. Leo De La Rosa is wealthy, rather so wealthy he doesn't do anything but waste away time instead of knowing the thrills of hard work.

Yes, he is handsome but there is but one fault she finds with that... He knows he is beautiful and therefore he has become rather arrogant and overindulged in self-loving that he could spend hours on talking about how expensive his designed clothing is and the hair oils he uses...

In her eyes, in her thoughts- Isabella believes it is rather a dangerous thing when a man knows he is of beauty on the outside... for its then that they live with this false idea that they can get away with everything perhaps even murder.

Does her father see the annoyance of being in his presence? Of course not.

And last but certainly not least Guillaume Echard.

Rich? Obviously, or else he would not be a choice of her fathers.

Handsome? Most certainly not. He has a face speaking of old acne scars, which he partly hides from under a well-groomed mustache.

Smart? She would rather not judge... She would point out though that he is easily manipulated. And that is exactly why father likes him.

Guillaume lost both his parents at a young age and grew up under the much-controlling care of his grandfather, a man like many others that her father points out as friends whom Isabella wished her father never met at all.

The old man was summoned for embezzlement and her father was his defense. They claimed he was innocent and her father got him off the proverbial hook.

Of course, after countless shamelessly actions of eavesdropping on conversations between him and her father, she found that much like the others her father defended in court, he was quite guilty. Is she wrong to feel that since her father is aware of this knowledge this makes him just as guilty as the one having done the crime?

This man-child, as Isabella would describe Guillaume, was the least allegeable for marriage in her mere point of view... surely one would agree with her that you want a husband that can take charge. Makes you feel safe and can think for himself and not the other way around where you have to do the thinking for him.

But how may Isabella reason? how will she provide ground fast evidence on why these three men are most certainly not for her?     She knows that her words, if she pleads, will still not be considered as valuable and she will face it all tomorrow once she turns twenty.

Funny how when you are a child that you practically wish you could be a grown up so you could do things you wished to, like move away from what hurt or bothered you buy once you are a grown up… you wish you were once again a child where worries and hurt was just a mere knee scrape or a lost Teddy bear.

"Are you daydreaming again?!" A low voice brought her back from her deep disturbing thoughts and Isabella breathed in a little startled.