The moaning stopped, and Amanda could finally breathe; she learned in that moment she’d been holding her breath for too long.

She stopped pressing and left the little pillow right there, carefully, like she didn’t want to wake her baby girl up; went downstairs, sat in the kitchen and lost herself in contemplation. It’d been a beautiful scene a year ago, but today it was about to rain and the view was quite gray except for the erubescent cherries; there was something about all that which echoed within the walls of her remote conscience.

The casing of the glass door had framed the view of the cherry tree just as life had framed her. She kept thinking about the weather and the ambivalence of a moment spoiled. The stormy whirls agitated the slender branches, making the cherries drop almost rolling in the air. The wind outside was a tormentor with a whiplash. The tender drupes fell and bumped into one another; even after having been taken from their mother prematurely and beaten for no reason, the draft kept harassing them on the ground. Their plump bodies which resembled huge drops of fresh blood soon showed the yellow juicy flesh under their skin, and after a few kicks in the gravel, she could see their skeletal seeds. They were certainly ruined. The glass kept all of that apart and showed her the sad short film starring the little corpses of the cherries. You can always blame it on the weather, she said to herself.

It started to rain. The water hit the glass with its splashing claws and roared at her. The beast had been there all the time but asleep; now she saw it. The lamb had grown horns and fangs.

She didn’t want children, but she couldn’t help it. She had pretended she did want them. She had to; she was an orphan, and somebody had to like her, just as well. And after she was adopted, she had to like the new baby that Fred and Joan adopted, too, two years later. She wasn’t good enough for anyone after all. And how could she not like the baby? She had to and like this and that, and like the unlikable all the time. She had to say more, please, and thank you and smile. It was tiring, but it was her way out already; where else could she go?

Amanda didn’t get much of the world, and the world definitely didn’t get much of her. All of her life, she’d been trying to look normal, then suddenly she found herself trying to look more insane than she had done lately, enough to pretend she didn’t remember the unspeakable thing she had just done to her baby daughter.

She went five years back. The crying of her baby brother was exasperating for a teenager who wanted to be left alone and listen to music or anything else but the terrible whining of a creature which could not get back at her even if it wanted to. Why would she stand that? Why then; why now? Making everybody think she was mentally ill did not prevent them from finding her a boyfriend who proposed too soon. She was only eighteen; Leo was forty. She’d been given and taken and given and taken again. Would it stop, ever?

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Leo came back a bit late and smelling of smoke and cheap perfume, as usual. He found her drunk and covered in the baby’s vomit; there was a lot of it. Where’s Lila? He asked, fearing something bad had happened. He ran upstairs and there was silence for a little while. Amanda essayed the mad laugh that would render her both innocent and free, but it was interrupted by the crying of her daughter. She had survived.

Amanda walked towards the glass door so she could get a better view of the cherry tree. It still had plenty of cherries to offer to the stormy world.

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