Setting: the kitchen. MOM is getting ready to go to the pre-evening-service prayer meeting. The sisters AELGIFU and LIADAN are looking for food.

MOM: (to LIADAN) Are you coming to the prayer meeting?

LIADAN: Nope! (enters pantry, stage left)

MOM: Why? (raised eyebrows, Knowing And Not Liking Glance)

LIADAN: 'Cause I don't want to.

MOM: (displeased) Well, make sure you meet us at church at six. (shift target) Aelgifu? Are you coming?

AELGIFU: No...

MOM: Why not?

AELGIFU: (shrugs, looking uncomfortable)

MOM: Is prayer not important to you? Do you not like prayer?

LIADAN: (exit pantry, enter kitchen) Mom! Way to guilt trip her!

MOM: (primly) Are you part of this conversation?

LIADAN: Geez. (exit kitchen, stage left)

MOM: (exit kitchen, stage right)

Setting: LIADAN's room.

AELGIFU: (enters) Can you braid my hair?

LIADAN: Sure.

AELGIFU sits on LIADAN's knees, which she is getting way too big for.

AELGIFU: Mom does that all the time.

LIADAN: I know, she does it to me too. I hate it.

AELGIFU: Me too.

LIADAN: You know that not liking church isn't the same thing as not liking God, right?

AELGIFU: Yeah.

LIADAN: Okay. Hair's done!

AELGIFU: Thank you! (bounds out of room)

--------

I still can't fucking believe she did that. It's not enough that she does it to me, now she has to do it to my little sister, whose reasons for not leaping at the chance to go to a pre-church service church service for after going to a church service in the morning have more to do with the fact that she's ten and it's usually rather boring?

Fuck that noise. I'm twenty-two and I can argue with her when she pulls that on me. It's not fair to lay that kind of warped shit on a ten-year-old.

Labels: family, religion