Float

I float in the water. The lake is cold, and I will need to get up soon. But right now I just float and think. Remember. Always that one day.
It was autumn, my sister had been born for only three days. It was cold, our hut was badly insulated and the wind blew through every crack. Father had drank away most of the money, so there was none left for coal. I think my sister was cold, that's why she screamed. But maybe she was also hungry, for my mother looked so thin and brittle, I could not imagine her feeding another one but herself. But who am I to understand a babies needs. I just heard the screaming, neverending, desperate cries. Our hut only had two rooms, one large where life was held and I slept, one small for my parents bed. After 2 days of screaming from the small room, of shouting from my father that she should be quiet, the door suddenly bolted. My father ripped the baby out of my mother's arms. They were both screaming. He took her and shouted in her face, then he shook her. Violently. Once. Twice. My mother was hanging from his arm, begging him to stop. He slapped her and shook the baby some more. Suddenly there was a heavy silence. She had stopped screaming. My mother lay on the floor. I realized I hadn't breathed for a long time. My father sighed and let the small body fall into my mother's arms. “We’ll make a new one that does not scream so much” he said and went to the bedroom. My mother sat on the floor with my lifeless baby sister in her arms. I didn't know what to do, I was frozen. She sat there for a really long time, then she rose and left the hut. I thought about following her but my limbs were made of ice. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I was woken in daylight by loud rapps on the door. My father lumbered heavily from the bedroom, he looked drunk. They were men from the village - fishermen. They had found something in the lake. It was my mothers body, my baby sister still in her arms. Somehow I was relieved. She hadn't let my sister go alone to the scary place that was death. Although I wondered if it could be scarier than this life. I think my mother had come to the same conclusion and I do not resent her for that. I just wished she had asked me to come along.