Cherry - part 21

Zia
Rubber duck

Zia walk around the house with a duster. She knows it is the maid’s job, but she is really bored. She is also alone in the house, her mother went to see her friends and her father and Perry is working. Two weeks until she can start her new job as an English teacher at a high school.
The house is very big and seems twice as big when it's empty. She is humming her song and making little dance steps when she walk. The main living room stands as it always have, not much have changed since she left. One year went by, and not much changed. Only her entire way of seeing things have changed. She wonders how she should help Perry. Is it enough that I showed up? How about Cherry? What's her role in all this? She honestly doesn't know exactly what's wrong with him. She should have asked. She probably will ask. But she didn't want to do it right when she arrived, and the he came home from Cherry, all high on a hug and stuff. It never seemed like the right time to ask him anything. He was drowning. Drowning where, drowning how? Is it their dad, who's too much for him? Maybe he should take a year somewhere, like she went to Paris.
Her brother would learn so much from taking a trip abroad. He wouldn't go anywhere, not as long as there's something holding him here. Not as long as Cherry is here.
Zia have always seen Perry as a person whom she needed to rescue. Not all the time, but when he was in trouble, she saw it as her sacred duty to help him through it. If anyone were to tease him, she would tell him how to handle it. She felt so responsible if he got beaten up in school and always told her father “I got this” if he wanted to take any action.
She thinks about Cherry in the old days, when she used to babysit her. How adorable she was and how Zia thought about getting her own children when she was older. She wanted someone as cute as Cherry to hold her in own arms. She wanted someone of her own to take care of, like she used to take care of Cherry. Mr. and Mrs. Waltz was always so nice to her, gave her fine bonuses and in return they could pretty much call her whenever they wanted. She took care of Cherry as if it was her own, that's how she liked to think of it. Right before she quit her job at the Waltz's, she almost considered Cherry her own. She quickly learned to say 'Zia' in her neat little baby voice. And when Zia had quit her job, Cherry was crushed for months. Her mother and father hired another babysitter, and Cherry would barely speak to her. They rarely spoke with Zia after she quit. It was not because Zia wanted to quit, it was just... she had to move on, and so did they. Zia was barely home. When she wasn't at school, she was usually at the Waltz's. But time catches up on you, she thinks. If she hadn't been a role model for Cherry, she probably never would have chosen to become a teacher. She sends a little thanks in her thought for Cherry – again – for 'forcing' her into a subject she truly loves. All the crap they give you, about how giving it is to be a teacher... it's all true... And she hums a melody, a few tones from a foreign song or maybe she just makes it up as she hums along, no one really knows for sure.
She imagines a tiny rubber duck in a giant tub.