Afflicted Aphrodite

By Norma Molla

"I kept seeing her most prized possession sitting in the backseat of the car: her favorite child, my baby brother, Mateo. The non-problematic child. The healthy child. The eleven-year-old boy who protested against her cruel decision to abandon his gravely ill sister. The child she refused to lose to cancer."


March 2012. A single doctors statement of three words morphs a familys merriment into turmoil and distress. An ordinary teenage girl is forced into a battle against cancer for the second time in her life. But for the first time, she is evasively forced by her mother into fighting the battle alone.
Along with the pressures of growing up and trying to be a normal teenage girl, drop-dead-gorgeous Tegan Giovanno determinedly tries to face her life-threatening illness without the aid of her nurturing mother, in the process becoming an ordinary teenager coping with extraordinary things...

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477233719

Norma Molla

Norma has always had a sensitive approach towards cancer—in particular, teenage cancer—but it was only when her aunty had had an involuntary experience with cancer that she was compelled to write her first book, Afflicted Aphrodite. Norma currently lives in London and is in her final year of secondary school, in the final stages of completing her GCSEs. Aside from writing, she has a keen interest in a lot of things, including, but not limited to, Sociology, History, Art, Performing Arts, Languages and fund-raising for children’s charities.

Book preview

© 2012 by Norma Molla. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   10/17/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3369-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3370-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3371-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Acknowledgements

Helplines & Information

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I don’t remember how and when I first got the idea to write this short story, but I’m glad it came to me.

I wrote about teenage cancer because, mainly, I think it’s a subject that most people are afraid to write about because of the sensitivity of the topic, but also because I thought someone should shine a light on what they may possibly go through.

Although all of the characters and the situations in this book are a work of complete fiction, the topics in this book are real everyday things that may happen to any one of us. They are quite sensitive subjects that may or may not touch people’s hearts. I want people to understand that although cancer can affect your lives, it cannot dictate your future.

By writing this book, I don’t mean to offend anyone who either disagrees with the content in it or is going through a similar situation, and apologise in advance if it does.

I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it, but also thinks about the message behind it. Thank you!

Dedicated to my dad, who suffered from a cardiac arrest and by God’s grace, survived, and my Aunty Alina, who fought against cancer, and by God’s grace, won.

Tegan

My spirit looked at its shell and felt empathy. Fight it all, Tiga. Fight it all and win. My spirit cried. How? She whispered. Our Father, who art in heaven, my abstract dreams started spiralling together, hallowed be thy name. Faster and faster, like a vortex, Thy kingdom com; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. colliding with each other, creating a tornado of memories. Give us this day our daily bread, I thought of God blessing my family with Mateo’s return, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Come back and fight with me! I willed my spirit. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. My spirit came crashing down into my body, allowing me to drink in the precious oxygen my body longed for and awake with a start.

Chapter One

"You were

Water to me

Deep and bold and fathoming

You were

Moon’s eye to me

Pull and grained and mantling."

‘Praise Song for My Mother’ by Grace Nichols

First, there were four.

But she left with him at 12:00pm on the 15th March 2012. The day of my 16th birthday and also, the day of The Ides of March. However, this event hurt more than being stabbed by a large group of colleagues 23 times. Although, I had guessed something bad would’ve happened on this day, I wasn’t prepared for this. All the foreshadowing omens had been bad: the sky was a light shade of grey, the sun refused to come out of its hiding place behind the thick clouds and rain threatened to darken the afternoon furthermore—worse than the usual London weather.

The last thing I remembered seeing before entering another state of depression was the thick, black exhaust being exhaled by my mother’s electric blue Mazda as she accelerated down the road; out of sight, out of mine and my father’s lives but never out of our minds. I watched, with an unexplainable numbness, wondering when I would next see the woman who once bound me with unspoken covenants of unconditional love and endless nurture when she gave life to me. The cowardice who abandoned me in my time of need to save herself and her precious son from future grievance.

My dad’s sobs continuously echoed in the silence of my fazed consciousness as I mentally attempted to annihilate myself for being the unforgivable force that pushed my mum away from us. Me and my condition, my burden; the reason she could no longer cope.

For an hour, I gazed lifelessly at the empty space in which the Mazda previously occupied when it was stationary. As a haunting travesty of what just happened, my mind secluded me into a delusional world where vague images of my pain taunted and mocked my misfortune. I kept seeing her most prized possession sat in the back seat of the car: her favourite child, my baby brother Mateo; the non-problematic child. The healthy child. The eleven-year-old boy who protested against her cruel decision to abandon his gravely ill sister. The child she refused to lose to cancer.

Now, it’s just me and my dad.

And then there were two.

That night, as I lay in bed, my body felt strangely at ease but my heart and mind fought a moral battle, which, concluded in blaming me for the damage caused to our once happy family. Although I couldn’t feel it, a rivulet of tears effortlessly flowed down my colourless cheeks just as it had all day. I slowly started to feel my spirit sink, uncontrollably, into an unfathomably dark abyss where I was no longer a sick human, but a ghost forced to promenade the Earth to constantly relive my pain. I watched my abstract dreams float above my head, torturing me, but refused to wake myself up from the nightmare as a way to punish myself for my sin; a way to pay my penance. I convinced myself that God was punishing me for driving my mum away and plunging my dad’s happiness into an ocean of despair.

I allowed the torment to continue replaying the distorted images of Mateo’s tear-streaked face, my mother refusing to look at me as she walked out, and my dad reduced to begging on his knees for her to stay and work things out, together, with him. I watched the images spin faster and faster, colliding with each other and morphing into a vortex before crashing back down with full power into my mind. I awoke in cold sweat, screaming for my mother as loud as my lungs would allow me, and violently shaking. But the slumped, defeated silhouette that appeared at my door wasn’t my mother. It was my dad, and the harsh reality dawned upon me again. Mum was gone, and I had never felt more alone in my entire life.

Dad leaned against my white bedroom door-frame and regarded me, clueless but pitifully. It seemed he didn’t even know how to cope with himself, let alone with his screaming, heart-broken, leukaemia stricken daughter who was on the verge of having another mental breakdown. I knew he was trying his best, but my affliction didn’t permit me to see that he was the only person in the world who could feel my pain.

‘Tegan.’ He started, his voice sporting his heavy Italian accent. Testing waters, he took a few tentative steps into the room, unaware of what to do next, but aware that he was treading on thin ice. ‘Tiga. Sweetheart, I know you miss your mother—’ He stopped abruptly upon sensing my choler when he mentioned her.

‘Alyssa.’ I corrected him, my voice barely above a whisper, but dripping with venom. A look of worry shot across his face. ‘She is my mother only by name.’ I rapidly blinked to fortify the metaphorical dam holding back my tears.

‘Tiga.’ He coaxed, calling me by the name I used to call myself by when I was little and unable to pronounce ‘Tegan’. ‘Tiga, I know this is hard for you, as it is for me… but, she’s still your mum, and still my wife.’ I flinched upon hearing the desperation in his voice and burst into another flood of tears, but this time, crying for him. ‘Darling, don’t cry. Come here, sweetie. It’s going to be alright. Trust me.’ He pulled me into a big hug as I sobbed on his shoulder for what seemed to be an eternity. In my dad’s arms I felt safer, like I had when I was a little girl and was afraid of the thunder and rain.

‘Daddy, how are we going to cope without mum?’ I said, incoherently. He held me tighter, reassuring me and trying to calm my nerves. No matter how hard I cried, or how many tears came gushing out of my eyes, they never seemed to soothe or drown my pain. I tried to accept that my mother was gone and wasn’t coming back, but a faint voice of hope clung onto the fantasy that she would come back crying that she’d made a great mistake and couldn’t bear to be away from us. Again, the afternoon’s events unravelled in my mind, causing turmoil in my heart.

‘Don’t worry più giovane!’ he said, smiling through his own tears. ‘I’ve still got you and you’ve still got me! We’ll look after each other, sì?’ He tried to feign confidence, despite his uncertainty, as an attempt to reassure me. ‘You’ve just got to trust