The Shelter

And as she stood against the living room wall, the telephone still pressed hard against her left ear, she could feel her legs trembling. She pulled the plastic chair and sat down and started shivering. Words were not coming out, partly because her 15 year old brain could not dissolve the information and partly because everything was getting blank.
Random thoughts started crawling inside her head and all she could do was nothing. The math tuition was due at 3:00 PM. She had to get ready. She had to come out of the school uniform and wear normal clothes. She had pressed the yellow top the previous day to wear this afternoon. There's this guy in her class who passes her polite smiles every time she misses out to give the answers to Sir's randomly asked questions. Satish has a crush on her, is what she feels. 
Satish looks cute.
Tear-lines started flowing down her cheeks as she managed to ask
"Are you sure?".
She kept the phone down after getting the answer. 
She kept sitting at the same place. 
Her mother was taking a bath. She was to come out anytime and serve her lunch. 
She kept waiting. The school bag laid carelessly on the sofa.
Her world was about to change. She wiped the tear and started thinking about the next thing to be done.
Her mother came out meanwhile. Watching her mother put a bindi on her forehead and draping herself up in a beautiful saree, she wondered how beautiful her mother really was. How age could never dilute her elegance, her grace, her beauty. As a child she always wanted to do things her mother did. She would wear her skirt like a saree and put an over-sized bindi and apply lipstick and wear her gold chain. Her mother was the epitome of beauty for her. The upper limit of piousness. An idol.
She went up to her mother with her head held low she said.....
"Mom, I'm pregnant"