Hood: The Legacy Of The Rider

Hood, The Legacy of the rider

Mildred Tibbles was bored. She sat quietly in the cramped living room of the apartment that she lived in with her mother, picking at a stain on the rug. It was an alcohol stain to be precise, which wasn’t an elusive site in the apartment. Her mother always had a bottle of beer nearby. And if she didn’t, she would get angry. Who did she take her anger out on? Mildred.
Mildred knew to expect these fits, and bolted for the door whenever she saw her mother’s drunken eyes light up with anger.
“Mildred!” She would shout “What did you do to my bottles?!” Mildred, who had never touched a bottle of alcohol in her life, knew better than to lay a finger on anything belonging to her mother. “Mildred! Bottle! Now! Are you completely stupid? Get me more you useless moron of a daughter…I’m ashamed in….in…” But before she could finish her sentence, she would fall into a dreamless sleep. Mildred didn’t think her mother ever dreamed.
Or perhaps she did have dreams, perhaps she dreamed of days when she succeeded in life, when she had a loving husband, but she did none of this particular dreaming in her sleep.
Mildred picked the stain for a good five minutes before her mother awoke. Mildred stood up
“I’m going to school now, bye!” She hurriedly shouted. Twisting the doorknob, she bolted from the room. In truth, Mildred hardly ever went to school. She was a seldom seen sight at Barkers Edge Public School. This only gave the kids more reason to pick on Mildred. Maybe they were jealous that she was able to skip school and her mother did not care, or maybe they had other reasons to pick on Mildred, but it was mean, and constant. In fact, the only reason Mildred went to school occasionally was because her father once told her that there was nothing more important in life than learning. She loved her dad almost as much as she hated her mom, and she respected his words, and tried to attend school at least three times a week.
Today happened to be one of those days, if only to escape her mothers rage. She ran to school, as fast as her eleven-year-old feet would carry her. She entered the school grounds just as the recess bell rang. Kids poured out of the school doors, shouting things to Mildred as they ran by.
“Hey Mildred, aren’t those the same clothes you wore yesterday? Don’t your parents ever wash your clothes?”
“Hey look everybody, the freak is here!”
“Stay away from Mildred, you might catch her stupid!”
Mildred kept her face stern, showing no expression, and shouted out “My name isn’t Mildred! It’s Millie! And if none you jerks can get it right, than keep you mouths shut and leave me the hell alone!” And she continued walking, towards the bleachers at the small baseball diamond. Nobody would bother her there.
How do you suppose Millie was able to handle every day like this? How did she take the torments and the taunting, and her mother? She was able to because Millie was strong. Not physically, but mentally. She was tough-as-nails, and nothing bothered her. She took everything, and rarely wore a smile.
As she sat down on the bench, shaking her straight, neck-length blonde hair into a messy form, she saw the principal approaching from the distance. Oh great, she thought, more trouble. It wasn’t just the kids that picked on her.
“Mildred Tibbles!” Mr. Frally shouted. His pudgy was face red and sweating, as always.
”It’s Millie…” she mumbled, as she walked towards the overweight principal. He glared at her with his bespectacled eyes.
“We must talk about your attending school more often, it is a mandatory part of…” but before Mr. Frally was able to finish his sentence, the recess bell rang.
“My mum doesn’t care about whether I go or not, so neither should you” she told Mr. Frally.
”Just because your mother happens to be a drunken mess…” he paused to let it sink in “Doesn’t mean I’m going to allow your constant neglect of school and academics!” This was more of an insult than anything, but it didn’t faze Millie. She had her game face on, the face that meant you were wasting your time. The face that meant she would not break down, no matter what you said. Looking up at him, she uttered “Whatever.”
And she walked towards the school. When she reached the front doors, she shot a nasty glance at Mr. Frally, and went in to face her teacher. “Out of the frying pan…” she thought to herself as she shuffled slowly down the dull hallway. Some lame poster for a girl’s basketball team was draped across the wall to her left, and to her right was a painting that reminded her of her mother, and how much she hated her. The painting featured a man holding a beer bottle, drinking greedily, followed by a second frame which showed the man’s gravestone. Millie tore the artwork off the wall, and when it drifted slowly down onto the floor of the hallway, she stared at it for several moments, wishing that her mom could be just as easily wiped of the wall of Millie’s life.