An Epilogue

Hey! I really need some help editing this essay I wrote for my English class, based on The Glass Menagerie. My writing prompt was to continue the story 10 years later.
Honestly, anything to help make this piece better would be appreciated. Rip this thing apart is you must.
Thank you! ily
~ Stella

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The woman, crumpled in a dirty heap against the wall of the dark alley, allowed a rattling sigh to leave her lips. She hugged the scrap of material, a poor excuse for a blanket, to shield herself from the bitter wind. Her stomach was knotting and twisting like a garden snake, her mouth drawn into a tight purse from hunger pains. Thin strands of gray hair hung from the woman's scalp. The hollows of her cheeks were enunciated, and her skin was an ill, sagging yellow. Amanda Wingfield had wasted away into a shriveled husk of what she had once been.

Soon after Tom's departure, Amanda and Laura had been forced to sell any of their belongings that held any value. They rationed the amount of food they consumed and amount of electricity they used. Opting to be plunged into darkness rather than pay a large bill, or starve one night but eat a bit the next morning, they survived. Barely. They went on like this for a while, until Amanda secured her daughter a job, working as a maid for a family in the upper part of town. Fast forward to a week later, and Laura was promptly fired, due to incompetence. No more than three days later, Laura was killed by a passing truck when she crossed the road.

Amanda had then sold each glass figurine that made up Laura’s beloved menagerie, and that damned phonograph that seemed to haunt the room, just by looking at it. She sold all her daughter’s clothes, and even managed to sell her bed frame. She sold the stuffing of Laura’s pillow and mattress to a manufacturing company, and used the excess cloth to made blankets for herself, since affording coal or firewood to warm herself was far from being an option.

So she lived like that, alone, placing all her time and energy into selling magazine subscriptions and books over the telephone. She became a ruthless merchant, using a range of tactics until each person purchased the item in question, or hung up with an air of finality. She was able to survive off of this meager source of income, saving money in a bank account, but no matter how hard she worked, she soon wasn’t able to pay bills, and drained her savings account quicker than she had ever thought possible.

A sharp knock knock! on her apartment door almost two years ago, and the words, “You're evicted, Miss,” was the beginning of her homeless state. She had survived off of food she had brought with her when she left, making it through the first winter by shielding herself in the doorframe of an elderly woman who took pity and allowed her to stay on her doorstep, occasionally giving her a bowl of porridge for breakfast or the odd baked sweet. As soon as Spring arrived, she was forced out once more. Since then, she had stolen and been stolen from, a self-taught master in sleight of hand. At this point she was a mere rodent, mousy and hardened and timid, cowering when stared at. Now that it was winter once more, the open-air farmers’ markets had since closed. Her diet was now rainwater and tidbits of food left on the plates of restaurant diners.

Amanda’s eyes were shut, but a shower of white light illuminated the darkness from behind the lids of her eyes. In her mind’s eye, an almost translucent, glistening horse - no, a unicorn! - trotted towards her, and astride it rode a young woman, who graced her with a smile.

The sickly woman managed to croak out her daughter’s name, a question, to which the woman nodded. She offered her hand to Amanda, who grasped it and effortlessly swung herself onto the shimmering beast. As she wrapped her arms around her daughter’s waist, the unicorn began to gallop as she became enveloped in white once more. The skies had opened up, and the rain fell in heavy sheets, turning everything it touched slick. A couple waltzed under the rain, silhouetted below the yellow, flickering light of a streetlamp. Their laughs floated down the street, reaching Amanda’s ears, and her mouth curled up into a smile as she rode away atop the glass unicorn.