by Bobbie Smith

Created on: March 24, 2009

Chapter 3 Anna
"Don't even get it in yer head about stayin' home today, missy," her mother growled from the bedroom doorway. Leaning against the nicked doorpost, her lids heavy with fatigue and ill-health, Anna's mother looked up at the ceiling searching for patience.
Anna didn't stir. She didn't even breathe for fear of moving at the wrong moment. Until she knew her mother's real mood, she wasn't about to do anything. This was the game she played a lot: pretending to be frozen still at the sound of her mother's voice, or practicing breathing without moving her chest, just letting her diaphragm down near her stomach slowly grow outward and inward with air, keeping shoulders and chest perfectly still. This practice was actually really good for her singing. Her music teacher back home told her so.

"Any proper singer should never let her shoulders do the work; you need support from your diaphragm."
Ms Tracy had said so, too; though Ms Tracy knew nothing about Anna's mother. Nobody knew about her mother and that's the way it needed to stay.
"Did you hear me, young lady?!" Her mother's scratchy voice had been roughed up by decades of inhaling cigarette smoke and growing up in a big, loud family of 15 from a tiny place called Sweet Bay in Newfoundland. It now broke apart her thoughts, snapping her open like a lock.
"Yes, I'm trying." Anna's meek and muffled efforts did nothing to soothe her mother's irritation. Used to practically raising half of her siblings by the time she had Anna, her mother yanked the acrylic bedspread from her cowering 12-year-old mouse of a daughter. No child was going to get the best of her.
"C'mon," she barked. "No more of this nonsense." Her mother had no sympathy for Anna's softness'. She was so sensitive', her mother always complained, always crying and moaning about everything. She needed to toughen up if she was going to get anywhere in life.
"Newfoundlanders were tough and could handle anything," her mother always said, as if the harsh climate hardened them into bone-dry tundra.
But Anna couldn't help how she felt. She just felt everything. She was a lightening rod for emotion and what was wrong in her world. She wished she were tough. She longed to be free. Free of emotion, free of school, free of her life in Ottawa, free of her mother. She just wanted to be at peace.
Coming from Sweet Bay, she has had the same friends for as long as she can remember. It was strange meeting new friends at her new school who didn't know much about her. They

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