A Broken Heart (Ashlynne Rose)

The more we post our writing, I feel the more jumbled it will get. That's why I put my name :)


So I nannied for a while in high school, best first job ever. I got to play with kids all day! Out in the sun getting tan, inside an air conditioned house with free reign on the fridge...the parents even stocked it with Dr. Pepper for me. I was living the high life.
And what's better is I LOVED THOSE KIDS. I couldn't help but love them. My job was to spend every day with these adorable, lively, rambunctious children that I absolutely adored! Spending every day with them from eight in the morning to five in the evening has that affect on you.
Maybe that's why it made it so easy for their mother to leave every day.
Because you see, usually when people get a nanny, it's because they need assistance with their children due to their job. Which is totally understandable, sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do. And in some cases, parents just need another set of hands to help out while they try and make ends meet. I get that.
But in this case, she would leave at about 8:45, saying something in passing about Costco, or a yoga class, or a doctors appointment, or lunch with a friend. She would return at about 4:45, just in time to welcome her husband home. She would leave, dressed to the nines in designer jeans and low cut tops, looking pristine and lovely.
At first, my four little charges would cry and wail and scream for mommy, mommy, where are you going? Can't I come with you? And she would look at them blankly and then leave. After about 20 minutes of this consonant, ringing crying, they would look at me, flustered red cheeks, runny noses and clenched fists, and they would sort of...sigh. A shudder, almost, from the energy or throwing a natural fit, and they would settle down.
They would ask me for a juice box, if I could please turn on Toy Story 2, and then we would all sit on the couch, and they would rest their head on my shoulder or breast, or they would wrap their little arms around my thighs and middle, and as the opening scene comes up, I could feel their sniffles and small shudders, the aftershocks of a child's crying, reverberating in my middle. And it broke my heart.
But what broke my heart more than that, more than feeling their tears inside of me, was when their sad tears for the Mother's departure stopped. When the sniffles ceased and they stopped asking for the comfort of juice boxes and Disney movies, because they weren't so affected by it anymore. They were used to the absence.
Although, they did cry and scream and wail when I left at five every evening. Go figure.

(Consonant, about the fifth paragraph)