1731. It's still raining © Bruce Goodman 13 February 2020

Heidi Windybank had three children to feed and she’d run out of money. She always put the children first. She’d fed them the last crumbs in the cupboard and now she herself was hungry. She had job interview after job interview. It was getting more and more difficult to look presentable at these interviews. It was getting impossible to pay for a bus ticket to the places of interview. And suddenly! She got a job! It was cleaning rooms in a motel. She knew how to wield a scrubbing brush. She could make a bed to perfection. The problem was she had tried to scrape together some food for the kids and send them off to school, but they would have to do without lunch. The first pay would not be for another two weeks. She was feeling weak and tired. She had to sit down for a bit. The motel proprietor popped into one of the rooms to check how she was doing. She was sitting on an unmade bed. The motel proprietor dismissed her there and then. He’d had a bad morning; his attempt to purchase another motel had failed, and he was not going to pay riff-raff to do nothing. Heidi walked home. She was at the end of her tether. A man and woman called into the house. Teachers had reported that every day her children had eaten no breakfast and were provided with no lunch. The house was cold. They were poorly clothed. She was maltreating her children. The government was taking over. The children would go into foster care. Do you know her perhaps? She’s that mad woman who walks up and down the main street all day. Everyone says she’s as cuckoo as they come. That was last winter. Now it’s summer. It’s still raining. Contact Author Back to Still More Stories Index Next Story Previous Story