THE UNSEEN FLAME

Tania was born in a small gray town where dreams seemed to rust like old machinery.She was the first born to her mother and the fourth to her father.To her parents,she was an accidental child.They loved her but they never saw her,not really."You're just Tania,"her mother would tell her in the presence of her siblings.This always stung her but as life would have it,this statement became a normal statement to Tania,it no longer felt like an insult.She was always looked down upon by her siblings on whom their parents dotted very much. At the age of five,Tania would do stuff that was meant for the older people.She would be forced to cook,clean and cater for the younger siblings when their mother was away.Later that year,her mother asked her to accompany her visit her paternal granny.Tania was very excited about the whole idea because that was her first time to ever leave home.When the two got to the granny's,her mother left her claiming that she was coming back in a few minutes.Guess what,that was the last time Tania saw her mother in many years. At her granny's,she had anticipated that situations would get better since it was new environment but whatever happened thereafter broke her heart even more.She was younger than all the other kids she found there,her cousins,but she was treated no different from them.Chores were distributed evenly irrespective of age or gender.Tania learnt that her granny was a short fuse that even a little delay in executing whatever she told you to do would set her off.Of course,it is right that you could not object to anything she told you to do but chances of objecting were very huge.Their granny would put all of them to work and would scold them if they didn't finish stuff in the given time. At six,Tania was lucky to start school at a local public school, a few kilometers from their home.Her granny who lived on her children's support decided to cater for Tania's education.She strongly urged Tania to study hard and would not tolerate any misconduct Tania would do at school."If by any chance you're sent home for misconduct at school,that will be the end of your education," her granny strongly warned her.With this stuck in her head,Tania was very determined to focus only on education and not anything else.She had a feeling that she'd prove herself worthy through her hard work at school. In school,Tania performed extremely well but this only attracted little attention and affection from her teachers.They teamed up with Tania's classmates and they resented her.Tania wore a rugged dress,did not have shoes and she didn't carry a lunch box to school.This attracted a lot of rejection from her classmates and teachers.One day,Tania brought home a drawing,a wild swirl of colors she'd poured her heart into.Her teacher had handed it back to her with a tight smile,"try harder next time.This is very far from being good."Her classmates giggled and most of them made fun of her.That night,she tore it up,the pieces fluttering like ash into the trash.With a heavy heart,she curled up in the corner of the bedroom she shared with her cousins and cried her heart out."Why isn't my life the same as other kids'?Is it so hard for God to make it up to me?",she asked herself as tears rolled down her cheeks like rain.