Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Not My Mother's Daughter
    Not My Mother's Daughter
    Not My Mother's Daughter
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Not My Mother's Daughter

    By Laureen Bennefield

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The difference between being cheeky and proclaiming to the world that you're NOT your mother's daughter when you're a twenty-something adult, and feeling that way when you're eleven is staggering. It swallows you up like a gigantic sink hole. 

    This short fiction story is about finding a way out of the holes that seem to consume us as children. It's an engaging, funny, and sometimes sad journey to wholeness...wholesome will have to come later.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBenn Lee Wong Publishing
    Release dateOct 12, 2017
    ISBN9781775157205
    Not My Mother's Daughter

    Read more from Laureen Bennefield

    Related to Not My Mother's Daughter

    Related ebooks

    Coming of Age Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Walled Garden

      Apr 30, 2020

      The Walled Garden
      4 min read

    • Article

      Vagaries

      Mar 1, 2024

      Vagaries
      8 min read

    • Article

      Beyond the Mangrove Trees

      Aug 6, 2020

      No one expects their house to float away. Ethel certainly hadn’t. Our story begins in the sleepy village of Greenwood, where Ethel had spent her entire life. It was an overcast Sunday afternoon and Ethel watched the rain lash against the window from

      7 min read

    • Article

      One Look Back

      Jun 1, 2023

      One Look Back
      20 min read

    • Article

      The Traveler Part 1

      Sep 1, 2020

      Jamie wandered aimlessly, kicking a broken chunk of sidewalk, following the chip of cement as it skittered and bounced through leaves and off curbs. In a trance, she walked down unknown blocks and around unfamiliar corners, her mind so far away that

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Artful Dodger

      Jun 12, 2020

      The Artful Dodger
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Writer’s RETREAT

      Feb 23, 2022

      A Writer’s RETREAT
      6 min read

    • Article

      My Country Childhood

      Sep 4, 2019

      AUTHOR AND FORMER executive director of the Australian Writers Guild, Angela Wales, 71, moved from Bondi in Sydney to Walcha in the Northern Tablelands of NSW when she was five years old. Angela’s father, Bob, was to take over a struggling sheep prop

      7 min read

    • Article

      Watch Out for the Hedley Beast

      Mar 1, 2020

      Watch Out for the Hedley Beast
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Lucky Cat

      Sep 3, 2021

      The Lucky Cat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nostalgia, Secrets & Lies

      Aug 12, 2020

      Nostalgia, Secrets & Lies
      7 min read

    • Article

      Grandma’s Secret Recipe

      Aug 2, 2022

      Grandma’s Secret Recipe
      3 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Best

      Oct 29, 2022

      Best Of The Best
      8 min read

    • Article

      Can’t Take It With You

      Apr 10, 2022

      Can’t Take It With You
      8 min read

    • Article

      SERIAL PART 3 A new PAGE

      Mar 20, 2024

      SERIAL PART 3 A new PAGE
      9 min read

    • Article

      Women Sweeping

      Mar 15, 2022

      The woman in Édouard Vuillard’s Woman Sweeping, painted between 1899 and 1900, is Marie Michaud Vuillard, the painter’s mother. She is tall and stocky, her posture—that slight give of the back to the broom, without bending—marking a nonchalant style

      25 min read

    • Article

      The Wildest Place OF ALL

      Mar 2, 2022

      The Wildest Place OF ALL
      9 min read

    • Article

      Benjamin Nugent

      Jun 15, 2018

      Claire’s roommates threw her out on November third, for falling behind on rent and hogging the Xbox. During the next three weeks, she lived in other people’s houses. She missed the Xbox, but couch surfing was like a game. She had to not smell like co

      20 min read

    • Article

      Cupboard LOVE

      Jul 26, 2023

      Cupboard LOVE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Extract

      May 16, 2022

      Book Extract
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Necklace

      Mar 8, 2021

      A fine silver chain, with a circlet of diamonds. More of a pendant, really. Lydia saw it in one of the glossy magazines left in the reception of the TV channel where they were waiting to pitch. She would never read one of those normally – never had t

      6 min read

    • Article

      Something Even Better

      Oct 27, 2022

      Something Even Better
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Christmas Memory

      Nov 1, 2018

      A Christmas Memory
      18 min read

    • Article

      Marked with SILVER

      Jan 17, 2024

      Marked with SILVER
      12 min read

    • Article

      Green Fingers

      Jul 21, 2020

      Green Fingers
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Not My Mother's Daughter

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Not My Mother's Daughter - Laureen Bennefield

      Not My Mother’s Daughter

      Laureen Bennefield

      Chapter 1

      Life has a funny way of circling back on us . . . or maybe it’s always circling, waiting for a place to land and connect. One thing life doesn’t seem to follow is a nice neat pattern. Like if you add A+B, you should logically get AB, but sometimes you get FU instead. Life can just be like that.

      Katy Joi came from the Old Country, as she used to say, as a young woman of seventeen. She referred to herself as a war bride, but was probably more of a mail-order bride. She could recall with laser sharpness stepping off the train to meet her new husband. Katy was fresh, young, and healthy; so ready to start her new life in Canada.

      He, on the other hand, was rumpled from head to toe, wearing brown twill-patterned trousers, a yellow-stained shirt open at the neck so that his chest hairs were visible, and a grey overcoat with one pocket hanging out. His look was completed with a brown felt hat, worn brown leather shoes (no laces in the left), uncombed hair and what appeared to be several days’ worth of stubble. From the platform she was sure she could smell him: an aroma of dirty armpits and sour feet coupled with tobacco and gin from last night’s poker game.

      For an instant she considered walking by, pretending she was meeting someone else, but then he spoke in her native tongue and when she glanced with understanding, he knew it was her. Good sense tells you never to look a wild beast in the eye, but she looked and, to her surprise, beheld softness: long dark lashes and eyes a deep brown colour, with flecks of gold sparkling in them. She steadied her resolve and went with him to his home: her home now.

      She never went into detail about Mr. Joi, only remarking that he didn’t live long and she was widowed within a few short years. There were no children from this union, she explained, her fist and her voice raised—he was never allowed to get that close.

      Actually, at the time she would say, He can get close to me when he decides to get close to a bar of soap. Rumour had it that he never opted for the soap, preferring to sleep on a cot in the back porch, but rumours are just that and more often than not worth exactly what you paid to hear them.

      People joked that he got the better end of the deal when he paid the $25 fee for Katy to join him as his wife: she cooked, cleaned, grew a beautiful garden and turned his smelly house into a home. And for all that she got a roof over her head, food in her belly, and a bittersweet loneliness that cycled in and out of her life always.

      By the time the Bakker family moved next door to Katy she’d already lived in her house with no plumbing for well over forty years. It was an old house to be sure, much older than any of the others on the block, but she had two lots: one for the house and one for her garden. The hand pump for the well sat outside the kitchen window, on the west side of the house. Every day she pumped water into a bucket and carried it inside. The outhouse sat further back on the lot, as did a large, rough wooden structure that served to house stray cats for blocks around. She was the original cat woman, but without the leather outfit, whip, or pretty claws.

      Katy was petite and that’s probably an understatement. She stood 4’10", with flaming red hair (in her younger days), a round face with thin lips, blue eyes, and a steely grit to match any momma bear. She always wore skirts that hung to her ankles, a simple white cotton blouse paired with a pink or white sweater, and beige stockings that just couldn’t seem to stay up on those skinny ankles. Her shoes were no-nonsense black Oxfords; she walked everywhere—miles in fact—just to get the bread she liked from a bakery on the far side of town.

      What Katy lacked in style and polish she made up for in green-thumb gardening. She could make anything grow, inside or out. She had a room in her house just for plants—gigantic, exotic plants, some bigger than she was. The stories go that the youngest Bakker girl from next door was the only child ever allowed to enter that room, the inner sanctum. Little Helene would wander through the room gently touching each plant; at times completely disappearing from sight because of the foliage, but always reemerging a short while later looking for that special glass of tea and some lemon drop candies. On cold days, tea was served while Helene sat upon the oven door of an old wood stove. The tea was never too cold, never too hot—always just right for this baby bear, whom Katy had secretly adopted as her own.

      Sometimes Katy babysit Helene while Mrs. Bakker was away for the afternoon, though she drew

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1