In the quiet corners of my mind, I’ve already packed a bag with the bare essentials, ready to flee with my child from my husband and his parents, away from this suffocating village. No, I won’t spend my life tending to their goats, cows, and endless vegetable patches. They seem to think that marrying Oliver signed me up as an unpaid farmhand. But I never agreed to that. This isn’t the life I chose, and I refuse to let my son grow up in this backwater, where the height of excitement is debating how much milk Daisy the cow gave today.
When I first arrived after the wedding, it didn’t seem so terrible. Oliver was attentive, his mum, Margaret, and her husband seemed kind enough. The village was quaint—rolling green fields, crisp air, silence. I even thought I could adjust. But reality soon set in. A week after moving, Margaret handed me a pail and sent me to milk the goats. “You’re one of us now, Emily—time to pull your weight!” she chirped, with a smile that still sends chills down my spine. Me, a city girl who’d never lifted anything heavier than a laptop, expected to master goat-milking in one evening. That was my first warning.
Oliver, it turned out, had no intention of standing up for me. “Mum’s right—everyone works here,” he shrugged when I dared complain. And so began my new existence: up at dawn, feeding livestock, weeding the garden, scrubbing floors, cooking for the whole household. I wasn’t a wife—I was a servant. If I dared ask for a day off, Margaret would roll her eyes and launch into her lectures: “In my day, women worked from sunup to sundown without a peep!” Oliver would say nothing, as if it didn’t concern him.
My son, barely three, is my only solace. When I watch him play, I know I can’t let him grow up here, where his future is either toiling on the farm or leaving as an outsider. I want him to go to a proper nursery, learn, explore, see the world. Here? There isn’t even decent internet to download cartoons. When I mentioned enrolling him in an art class in the next village, Margaret scoffed: “What’s the point? Better he learns to milk—that’s useful!”
I’ve tried talking to Oliver. Tried explaining how stifled I feel, how this isn’t what I dreamed of. But he just shrugs. “This is how things are, Emily. What more do you want?” Then I found out Margaret’s already planning to expand the barn and buy another cow—and guess who’ll be doing the work? That was the final straw.
I’ve been stashing money in secret. Not much, but enough for train tickets to the city. A friend there promised help with a flat and a job. I imagine us boarding that train, leaving behind the goats, the cows, Margaret’s endless nitpicking. I dream of a tiny flat where it’s just us, where I can work, and my son can grow up somewhere decent. I want to feel human again, not like some overworked machine.
Of course, I’m scared. Will I find work? Will the money last? But I know one thing: I can’t stay. Every time I see my son playing in the yard, I think—he deserves better. So do I. I won’t let him watch his mother bend until she breaks, losing herself to others’ expectations.
Margaret recently said I’m “too city” to ever belong here. She’s right. I don’t want to belong here. I want to be myself—Emily, who once dreamed of a career, of adventures, of a happy family. And I’ll do whatever it takes to reclaim that life. Even if it means grabbing that bag and running, far from anyone who’d force me to milk a cow.
