Bratva Mother

Grandma's Memories Part 2

Warning: This chapter will contain topics viewers may find too sensitive or triggering. If you find Domestic violence, child murder or r**e too graphic or triggering, please skip this chapter!

Stealing her nerves, Carol pushed off the counter and walked back to the table with a fresh cup of tea to get to the bottom of this mystery. Grandma if you're behind this falling in the first place. I don’t like where this is leading. Misriha noticed that her mood has shifted. But she wasn’t panicking or shaking. Just shook. He rested his head on her lap while she read on. Carol resolved she would read a few more than take a break to absorb the information she read so far.

6/15/79

I am a horrible mother! I am ashamed and angry with myself. I let so much slip my attention. My poor girls! My poor little girls. That boy has hurt them both. But he hurt them differently. How did I not see or hear him hurt my Alasie!? Why didn’t she come to me? She opened up to her uncles like I thought she would. They got the full story out of her. How since their wedding day he has been abusing her and telling her awful things. He has the same mindset as the Americans. Well southerners now. Apparently he isn’t happy with the native traditions where the women rule. Where the women’s line inherit. He told her that if she gives birth to a girl, he would throw the babe in the river. Told her if she reported him to the elders, he would take what he can and leave the village. After leaving her bloody on the floor, someone might get to her before she died, but unlikely. So my poor Alasie has suffered his beatings silently. She asked Jessica for help in finding plants that would hurt an unborn babe. Apparently too afraid he would drown her babies to even try for a child.

Jessica…. My Jessica has suffered differently than her sister. She shared the same belief as Kigatilik for a time. He told her pretty lies, then turned on her. Once he found out that she was helping Alasie terminate any babies, he wasn’t so kind to her. Oh my youngest isn’t even an adult yet. Still he violated her. She started taking the same medicine as Alasie. Jessica started reading about westerns because the white man almost always killed the native warriors. She was looking for her savior.

Oh great spirit. What lesson were you trying to teach my girls? Why bring that boy into their lives? They were happy before all this. Why? My girls will never be the same.

7/20/79

My brothers and I have requested the help of the elders. We want them to decide that Alasie could throw her husband away. There are enough people to talk about the change in my girl since the wedding. Not a good change either. She stopped eating, cries often and is often found with furs in her hands sewing. We had to start hiding the sewing kits. Her fingers can’t take much more. This is why she was sewing so much. The more furs he brought back, the more she could drop at his feet once the ‘divorce’ was granted. We made him move to the communal building. The one the village uses for meetings and official things.

With my brothers and my boys, hopefully we put enough safeguards to keep that boy away from our girls. My girls need space and time. I am gathering the abortion medicine myself now. How is it, only last year I was looking forward to a grandbaby? Now I pray the medicine works and she doesn’t have to see him again.

Jessica, turned mean. The healer woman with the clinic said that is normal for r**e victoms. My girl doesn’t like to be called a victim. No, she is too stubborn to be called that. She would rather be called a survivor. She didn’t let him break her. Didn’t let him think he won. She graduated early. She is packing, said she will move to Anchorage and find work. Will send money and what we need through the charter plane when she can.

Spirits, did we do right by our girls? Will they ever heal from this boy? Now that I think of it, his name fits. Alasie would have been a great medicine woman or shaman. Now we would be lucky to get her to do anything outside the hut.

Carol put down the stack, leaned back in her chair and stared at a spot on the wall. She put her hand around her cup and the other resting on her belly. Grandma Sesi had a lot to say. Some of it is fond and beautiful and others down right nightmarish. She just found out that she had an aunt no one talked about. But her mother was r***d before she was 18 too.

She was right, reading grandma’s memories gave her some answers. But she isn’t sure if she liked these answers. Carol would like to know what happened to Alasie, but thinks it is time to unwind. She could tell that she is starting to wind herself up and she can’t get too emotional. Little Rose needs calm right now. So it isn’t wise for her to read more from Grandma right now.

Putting the now cold tea down, she reached for the bag of yarn near her rocker. She was trying to decide what she should make now. While sitting she decided she needs something that she could be absentminded with. Let muscle memory guide her while her mind wanders. The dogs sensing something is off, decided to lay closer to her. Her emotions were higher than normal.

Carol knows she needs to start calming down. It is almost time for her to do her routine with checking on baby girl and doing some chores. She would get burned out quickly if she started working while high off emotion. So while the crochet hook glinted in the light, she started thinking of calming things. She counted her breaths, 5 while breathing in, ten while holding it and four while blowing the air out. She did this several times until she felt her heart rate slow down. Then she thought about Ray, her dogs, Mikhail and a warm bowl of chicken dumpling soup.

Slowly her breathing evened out, the shakes started to leave her hands and thinking of comfortable things didn’t sound so much like a chore. Carol wonders if that was the start of a panic attack. It will have to go into her notes for her doctor. She dosn’t want her own emotions to hurt baby Rose.

Then she paused. Paused rocking, crocheting and almost breathing. Realization struck her hard. As a soon to be mother, she would do anything for her little girl. She would burn the world if they tried to hurt her. So what was the difference between her and Jessica?

As much as Jessica wants to say she is a survivor, she isn’t. She is letting some guy who has been long dead to hurt her. She thinks just because she is a woman, she will be the weaker person. Forgetting she herself gave her three brothers. Her best friend has made sure she is safe on all fronts. Carol is 90% sure that Ray put a GPS tracking somewhere inside her. So if she ever went missing and didn’t check in for a certain amount of time, she could find her easily.

Then finding out that Carol went through a divorce but kept the baby. It must have triggered long buried memories. Things that should have been worked through, not buried. However, given how the natives were treated, they didn’t trust southern way of dealing with emotion. Too afraid to end up in a mental hospital if they admitted to anything being anything but perfect. No Jessica to a degree isn’t a survivor. She didn’t put the past in the past and left it there. She let it break through the ground and seize her. Mothers don’t push their daughters away.

In a sense, she has an answer for her brothers. They may not like it. But it is the only thing she is willing to do to mend bridges. If Jessica refuses, then she is done. She can’t keep going back and forth with her while building a business and raising a little girl.

Jessica gets one shot. However, she has to attend counseling with one of the native clinics first. Once the therapist says “She is open minded now, she will listen” then they could try and rebuild that bridge. If Jessica goes back on her word, doesn’t put in the work or does something stupid again, Carol would walk and pretend she is an orphan.

Her brothers wouldn’t like the ultimatum but would agree because Carol has been through enough already and doesn’t need more drama from their mother. No Jessica has done it this time. Her one and only daughter is on her last straw of giving two cents about her. Is on her last thread of giving her mother any more ammunition. If Jessica wouldn’t put in the work or will screw up just one more time. Carol would walk away and never see her again. She and little Rose wouldn’t even show up for a funeral. That is how done she is with her own mother.

How the boys would react to this would be another matter. They have put in a lot of effort to change and be there for her. To try and salvage any affection so they could still be in little Rose life and teach her things. If they sided with their mother? Well Carol would have to pay them back the money they spent on her and baby, she would have to move out of the cabin and go back to Seattle where Ray would be. If they all pushed her away. Ray would be the only one left who didn’t push.

Another week or two of isolation, then visitors may start trickling in. They might wait until after thanksgiving before arriving. All Carol knows, is she will have at least a week to finish reading Grandma’s memories, three at the most. Once Thanksgiving was done, there would be a great many people traveling the land and doing all kinds of winter activities.

Looking at the time it was time to start doing her documentation for the doctor on both baby and herself. She did the basics first, heart rate, weight, temp and a few other things. Then moved on to the other things. The dogs saw her do this enough times to know to leave her alone for 30 minutes or so. If she was worked up longer. So they laid down while she did her thing with the machines.

Once all documentation was recorded, she felt like she needed some fresh air. So she put her gear on and had the dogs follow her outside. She didn’t need to do any chores out here. She does all that in the mornings. Unless it is snowing then she comes out to brush off the solar panels. Today she just wanted to stretch her legs and get fresh air. Maybe that is what she needs to relax and get grandma’s memories out of her head.

She started humming while putting her hand on her belly. She thought about Mikhail and what he would say if he read the same things she did. Would he agree with her aunt's husband or would he try to track the guy down? She stopped and stared off into the distance. Imagining Mikhail tracking down the guy and doing to him what he did to her aunt. If her uncles haven’t already did something. But it was a nice image all the same thinking of Mikhail defending her family.