I was born in the month of heavy rains as my mother's fourth child. Back then, it rained continuously for several days and the sun remained hidden somewhere high above the dark clouds. The water rolled unstoppably down the Amarian streets, flooding everything in its path, including our kolibas. Everyone was trying to keep the mines that we worked and died in, but that fed us for the few years of our lives, from flooding. Those were hard days.

My mother spent the whole night in pain on the old table, and the women who helped her stood knee-deep in water. I looked out at the world a moment before dawn. My mother often told me that my first cry summoned the sun and stopped the rain. And maybe that was why she decided to risk all of our lives. She did not believe in any man-made god. But that day she believed she had received a sign.

When the women washed me, they brought me to my mother. All the while she lay tense, not allowing her tired consciousness to leave her even for a moment. She wanted to see me so much.

"Heda," whispered our bati Lena, the neighbor who was the first to take me in her arms. "She has all the limbs."

The other women clustered around us, scrutinizing me in the pale morning gloom. They gently touched me, turned me over and examined me thoroughly.

Some time later, when my screams subsided, they counted my toes and fingers. They looked at my eyes, mouth and most of all my sex. There was no place on my body that they wouldn't look at.

"I didn't find a single flaw," said Lena again. "She's healthy, but she's a girl."

"Don't rejoice prematurely," Matye, an old woman who helped almost every mother in our ghetto, warned her. "A defect may show up in the following years. She wouldn't be the first or the last."

My mother carefully took me in her arms and pressed me to her chest. "No," she sighed. "She is perfect and she will remain like that."

"Don't cling to it, Heda," Matye discouraged her from her joy. "I wouldn't want you to be..." She didn't finish the sentence. The other women silenced her with their stares, as did my mother. Although Matye had the most experience with newborns, none of them wanted to listen to her opinions now. They all just wanted to rejoice in the miracle.

"What are you going to do?" Arleta, my mother's sister and my blood matusa, or aunt, asked excitedly. The eyes of all the women present turned to their mother questioningly. "Tomorrow the faya will come. You must tell him what kind of child you have had."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

My mother was a very proud woman. She was adamant in the decisions she made. She held me tightly in her arms and looked at my face. Then she gently stroked my dark hair and raised her eyes to Arleta. Even though she was exhausted to death, she had determination in her eyes.

"I don't have to," she said, barely audibly, but firmly.

There was a buzz among the women until Matye spoke again..

"Heda!" she scolded my mother. “You're messing with your life and hers. As well as with ours, if any of them find out that we were at birth.”

Mother shook her head dismissively and placed me back on the table. I twisted and wiggled and drew all the attention to myself.

"They'll send her to the burrows!" she hissed hatefully. "She is my only daughter. She won't go to the burrows! She's too beautiful for that. I won't give her to them."

Lena's petite hand squeezed my mother's shoulder. “She won't have to wear a mantle. Her life will be better there…”

"And how did you come up with this?" my mother asked, shaking off her neighbor's hand. “That's what THEY say, that our daughters are taken care of! I would never see her again! And you know very well how most of them end up! I don't want her battered corpse to be brought to me one day, saying I can burn her. My daughter will have a better life!”

There was a thoughtful silence. As the day brightened and light crept in through the small window, my mother thought feverishly.

"You have to make a decision, Heda," Matye urged as both the silence and the streak of morning light grew dangerously long. She nervously watched the morning approach, her hand rubbing the blister on her chin, proof that her time in this world was coming to an end. "The faya will come in the morning. He will want to see his child. He will ask questions!'

Mother bent over me and rested her elbows on the table until she covered me completely.

"Faya knows that a child is to be born. He knows it is tonight. But he won't know which one. I'll tell him it's a boy and that he was born damaged,” the mother announced her decision aloud. Then she straightened up again to face the objections.

"You're not serious!" Arleta was the first to scream. “You will sentence her to work in the mines! You will sentence her to death! She may be lucky in the burrows, but once she steps underground…”

"She won't be sent to the mines until she's ten," her mother warned her in a calm voice. "I'll think of something until then."

"Of what?" Arleta didn’t stop.

"I do not know yet. I have to figure it out first.” mother shrugged casually, took me in her arms again and kissed my forehead. "You'll be different," she whispered to me, rocking from side to side. "Your life will be different from ours, I promise you that. You are too beautiful and perfect to suffer like this, my little fetita. You will help us one day.''

"Your first son Odon was also born pure," Matye reminded her angrily. Neither of the women liked what my mother intended to do with my life. None disagreed with her decision. “He got used to living in the faya house. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with us, he is ashamed of us. When was the last time you saw him? When did he send you something to eat, Heda? Come on, tell me!”

But my mother didn't listen to her. Her head was pressed against my body humming an old lullaby.

"She'll be different," she whispered between the words of the song. "She will understand."

Then she wrapped me in a piece of cloth and laid me on her straw bed. I bawled and wiggled like any other child. Like a child who has not yet understood that there is no place for her screams in this world. Like a child who does not yet know that she will put on the hated mantle and cover her face with a voal.