Susan sighs tiredly, totally annoyed that she has to keep up the family garden every week, especially since it's only because Mother wants their precious last affluent possession to remain impeccable. Crouching down onto a large stone pebble, she breaks for a moment on this makeshift seat now that she's halfway done, having passed the checkpoint of their small grotto. Still irritated as ever even midway into the tedious routine, Susan can’t help but fall into a distracting, dizzy daydream; half-irate, Susan guiltily thinks about how fed up she is with Mother’s nonstop pleas.
Well, her demands really, she reconsiders unhappily. This discontentment of Susan's is nevertheless quite forgivable given chore-by-chore, Mother keeps consigning her to endless housework. It's been like this ever since Dad passed away in the car crash six months ago. It spites Susan very sharply as her father’s face runs past her thoughts, a memory fonder than ever; this constant thought of his missing presence leaves her almost bursting into tears, remembering his greatness is long gone now...
Admittedly, Mother has suffered the same torturous heartbreak since the car crash, so empathy isn't hard for Susan to feel. Be that as it may, however, she is still a 16-year-old girl after all, and wants to soak up every little bit of teenage joy despite losing Dad. Unfortunately, there is always loads more to do on Susan's list of duties, an itinerary which Mom brutally lengthens each day. The scenario sort of becomes a paradox for Susan to crash upon really, always feeling mixed between frustration and compassion for Mother. It really only helps so much to remind herself that she isn't the only one quickly descending from wealth to impoverishment...
It’s just far too late to save Dad’s old and paling business machine, she depressingly concedes. Susan remembers how shortly after Dad died it dawned that it would be impossible for them to transform evening conversations with Dad into the expertise necessary to maintain his flourishing business. That alone was always more than enough to enable their upper-class status, but that was no longer possible without Father. After all, Mother certainly was ‘inexperience’ in a nutshell, having married Father just one year into college, and then dropping out to be the domestic goddess whose sensational glamor has long worn-out. Dad inadvertently left them in quite a wreck, with a disaster that makes their anxieties prior to the crash feel like trivial stresses; as such, no longer are there servants to keep house for them, something they never could've appreciated before now, nor are they eating out on a weekly basis anymore. So while the grief of losing Dad is already a most terrible experience, Susan and Mother are also forcibly accepting destitution, a new degraded status.
Suddenly snapped out of her reveries, Susan has to look three times before feeling convinced that, in the meantime of her entertaining sad thoughts, she has managed to offhandedly finish her course at the garden’s west end.
Finally.
Relieved, she wipes the sweat off her soaked forehead, sensing she should be feeling way happier right now. This failure to probably has something to do with the three baskets of laundry waiting inside, though, which will consume another two hours of her day. The thought increasingly frustrates Susan, leaning her more toward anger than sympathy for Mother in the heat of the moment. She simply is exhausted from Mother’s insistence she be a slave!
“Goddamn this bullshit!” Susan suddenly cries out much too loudly, possessed. This moment overwhelming is finally cracking her; without warning she forcedly embraces the entire encompass of all her grief, all her despair--all her depression from a dark six months.
Mother’s voice intercepts loudly all the sudden. “Susan, please, I need your help in the kitchen!”
And then the overtaking moment stops, no longer agitating Susan, who somehow in a split-second swiftly returns to rightful character: back to selflessness, to compassion, to her mess’s principle regard. The moment was like a subconscious reminder to Susan that her own grief is Mother’s; and just as unwell, Mother's depression suffocates her too. After all, Mother's thorns are just like the thorns at the core of Susan's suffering. The least Susan can be during these barely survivable times is Mother’s Little Helper, right?
Pushing herself, Susan takes a deep breath, counts back from ten, and feels surprisingly alright. “I’ll be right in, Mom.”
