Robert (Fallen Angel Series Book 1)

by Tracie Podger

  It was at times like that I did what I knew made her happy. I poured the brown stuff from the bottle under the sink and she would cry while she drank lots of it. After a while she would fall asleep on the sofa and I would cover her over with a blanket. She would still be there in the morning, looking really strange. She would have little lines of black paint running down her cheeks from her eyelashes. I would try to rub it away with my fingers sometimes, to make her pretty again. I hated the smell of the brown stuff. One day I had tasted it. It was like drinking fire, it burnt my mouth and my throat. It made me cough and my eyes watered.

  “Do you think your mum loved you?” he asked, now this startled me.

  After thinking for a moment, I answered.

  “No,” I said with clarity.

  I knew she didn’t love me, I think she liked me though, I was no trouble. I kept myself to myself and stayed in my bedroom most of the time. I did what I was told, I didn’t cry and whine like other kids. I dressed and cleaned my teeth without being asked every morning. I took myself off to school when the big hand on the clock said so and I brought myself home straight after. She never hit me, ever.

  “Why do you think your mum didn’t love you?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer. When it was home time, other kids had mums that hugged them and laughed and asked them how their day had been. I watched kids show their mum a drawing or a book. Mine never did that and if I showed her a book she would swipe her arm, knocking it to the floor. She told me not to fill my head with rubbish. I didn’t know how to fill my head with rubbish but I liked reading my books. If she loved me, she would laugh and be happy, wouldn’t she?

  Session over, I went back to my class with no real understanding of what that was all about.

  So it went on, people asking me questions about my parents and how did I feel about it? Throughout the whole time I had not shed one tear. I didn’t think they would understand what was going on in my head, so I said very little. I didn’t like them keep asking questions, especially when I did answer them. I started to get angry.

  “Did your mum ever hit you?”

  “No.”

  “Did your mum ever hug you?”

  “No.”

  “Did your mum play with you?”

  “No.”

  “Did your dad play with you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I saw the way their eyes shifted, the way their eyebrows went up when I answered. I was not stupid, they didn’t like my mum or maybe they didn’t believe me. The more they asked, the more confused and quieter I became. The stiller I was, the more nervous they became, they seemed uncomfortable around me. I felt it, I saw it in their eyes.

  ****

  A few weeks had passed and after returning from school one day, I met an elderly woman. Apparently she was my aunt Edith, my dad’s sister and the person I had spoken to on the phone that one time. She looked so different to me. She had grey hair, pulled back in a tight bun and runny, grey eyes with fair, leathery skin. Then again, my mum and dad looked different too. I had black hair and dark, dark eyes. Sometimes I would look in the mirror and I couldn’t decide if they were brown or black. My mum was blonde with light hazel eyes and as much as I tried, I couldn’t quite remember what colour my dad’s eyes were. I got upset when I couldn’t remember the colour, I didn’t want to forget him.

  “Robert, this is Edith, she’s your aunt and she’s come from America to visit you,” Sarah said.

  “Hello, Robert, I’m pleased to finally meet you,” Edith replied, holding out her hand for me to shake.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, but I shook it anyway.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mum and dad. I’ve been asked to take you home with me for a while,” she said.

  I didn’t want to go, I was happy at Sarah’s but what I didn’t like the most was that she didn’t have kind eyes. She never looked at me, she never let me look at her. If I tried to move my head, to look at her face, she would turn away slightly. It confused me.

  “Thank you but I don’t want to,” I replied.

  “I have a house with a woods and guess what? Some deer come and feed in the garden,” Edith said.

  Deer? That made me smile. I had never seen a real one before.

  “Wow, that sounds cool,” I said, getting a little excited.

  Sarah sat beside me and sometimes I caught them looking at each other, over my head. Sarah would nod and smile at Edith but her smile didn’t seem right. It wasn’t the same smile she would give me. The smile that made the skin around her eyes crinkle. She didn’t like Edith, I thought, and I wondered why. You see, if the skin around the eyes crinkled it was a good smile, a friendly one. If it didn’t, then I knew it wasn’t good. That was one of the reasons I liked to look at people’s eyes.

  “There’s a school nearby you can go to, but you have get a bus. It will pick you up at the top of the lane every morning. I spoke with the school, they are looking forward to meeting you,” Edith said.

  “Oh, what about my own school?” I asked.

  “They won’t mind, as long as you go to school it doesn’t matter which one it is, does it Sarah,” she replied.

  Sarah never answered but kept that strange half smile on her face. Edith was to collect me a couple of days later I was told. After she had left Sarah and me sat in the sitting room. She seemed a bit sad and I took her hand.

  “It’s okay, Sarah. I won’t be gone long and we can take Benny to the park when I get back,” I said.

  She smiled sadly at me, patted my hand and went to make dinner. I did notice she had tears in her eyes though.

  I wanted to go back to my old house to collect some things. Driving past it one day, on the way to school, I had noticed a sign outside, it had been put up for sale. I didn’t know who was dealing with that, I guess my aunt would, but then, what did I know about these things. It seemed my aunt thought that the best thing was to forget about my parents as soon as possible. She never mentioned them and I knew that she hadn’t seen her brother for many years. We have lived in the same house all my life and she had never visited. She only ever rang at Easter and Christmas to speak to my dad. Not that he was there every Christmas. When he wasn’t I didn’t get a present, we didn’t have a cooked meal or laugh and have fun. It was just a normal day.

  She had told me we were going on a plane to America. At first I had thought it was a holiday, I would be back. I didn’t have time to say goodbye to anyone, I would have liked to have said goodbye to my teacher at least. I would’ve also liked to have taken some of my own clothes with me and my teddy, the one present my mum ever gave me, but no. We simply got into a car and was driven to the airport. I didn’t understand why Sarah was so upset when we climbed into that car, she tried to smile but as she hugged me to her I heard a little sob.

  I was excited though, I’d never been on a plane before and with my nose pressed to the window in the departure lounge, I watched them take off and arrive. I bounced around in excitement, wanting to get on that plane quickly, to have an adventure.

  The journey was long. I had a window seat and I watched the ground fall away, the clouds disperse as we flew through them until all that was above us was miles and miles of sky. As the night fell, I looked at the stars, so bright and clear. If heaven was above me, then I wondered, if I looked hard enough, could I see my mum and dad? Were they one of the stars that twinkled down at me? Nora had said they had gone to heaven and as she was so old, she must know these things.

  I had fallen asleep and was woken by a jolt as the plane landed. The captain announced our arrival in Pittsburgh and after a little while we made our way through the airport. We had no luggage to collect and soon enough we were outside in the sun. The heat was quite something. I had to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun as it reflected off the cars, off the buildings. It smelt different too, the air I mean.

  It felt like a long journey in a cab until eventually we reached the town o
f Sterling. I read the little sign as a few buildings came into view. It was rural with wooden houses dotted around, the complete opposite to where I had lived in a little terrace house in the South East of London. Everyone had a big car, a truck Edith had called them. Some were broken and one we had passed had no wheels. It didn’t look very tidy, people had really long grass in the front garden but every now and again, I would spot a kid, playing. They would stop and look at my face pressed to the car window as we passed.

  Pulling up at my aunt’s house was an eye opener. There were indeed acres of garden and the house was surrounded by woodland. It was one storey but with a basement and a wooden porch wrapping around it. The paint was peeling off the wood and I had to be careful not to tread on the rotted planks. There was a swing seat on the porch and I wanted to sit and throw my legs back and forth to make it rock. I bet it even made a creaking sound too.

  Aunt Edith showed me to my new bedroom. It was okay, it had a small metal bed under the one window with a patchwork quilt thrown over it. There was a book shelf, I liked to read, but making my way over to it, I noticed all it held were bibles, all sorts. Some had pictures, some just words. I had seen bibles in school, we had started to learn about the different Gods. There were no colouring books though and I wanted to practice my colouring. I was getting good at keeping the pen inside the lines.

  A small wooden wardrobe, which held a collection of clothes for me and a desk with a metal chair were the only other things in the room. No toys, no TV, no books or colouring pens, no teddies, none of the things I had got used to having at Sarah’s. There was nothing from my old home, none of the pictures I had on the wall that my dad had drawn. The walls were just bare, painted a sickly yellow colour and there were no curtains at the window. I climbed on the bed to look out the window, all I could see were trees and more trees.

  “Do you like your room?” Edith asked. “I got some clothes from the Church, you’ll need to thank them. I’m sure they will fit okay.”

  “Erm, yes, it’s nice,” I replied. I wasn’t sure what she would say if I said no.

  “Well, feel free to have a look around,” she said, as she made her way out of the room.

  While Edith unpacked her small case in the second bedroom, I investigated the rest of the house. I found a kitchen with a wooden, scrubbed table in the middle and mismatched chairs tucked in around it, a lounge with an open fireplace and a couple of battered sofas facing it. In one corner there was a desk with yet more bibles stacked on top and through the kitchen, I found two doors. One led to the bathroom and one to a basement. Down a flight of stairs, I noticed some kind of workbench and stacks and stacks of logs for the fire were drying out. There were piles of old newspapers and tins of paint but that was all.

  ****

  For the first couple of days I was allowed to explore a little, to find my way through the woods and back to the house. I made a plan of camps I could make in there, playing soldiers. Then, on the third day, dressed in shorts and a blue button down shirt, I was sent to school. I had a sandwich and an apple in my back pack and Edith waited at the end of the lane for the bus to arrive. I wasn’t scared about going to school on my own, I did it all the time but what bothered me was, if I was on holiday, why did I need to go to school at all?

  My mum took me out of school all the time. Sometimes we would drive for long hours to meet my dad who had holed himself up in a beach shack somewhere, to paint. I had not had to go to school though, this was something new.

  I climbed aboard the bus, it was nearly full but the kids quietened when I got on so I took the first seat available, next to a girl. She smiled at me. She reminded me a little of my mum, she had blond hair in pigtails and kind, hazel eyes. The first thing I noticed were the bruises on her skinny, bare arms.

  “Hi, my name’s Cara, what’s yours?”

  “Robert,” was all I said, shyly.

  “You speak funny,” she said, but I didn’t think she was being unkind.

  “Well, so do you. I come from England,” I replied.

  “Where’s that?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I had to get on a plane so it must have been far away.”

  “I’ve never been on a plane before,” she said.

  “It was cool, really fast and we went really high in the sky. I could see the stars and everything,” I gushed.

  “You saw the stars? I love looking at the stars, they’re so pretty,” she said excitedly.

  We arrived at the school, there was a woman waiting to meet us and I was escorted off the bus with Cara in tow and led to a classroom. I was introduced to my new teacher, Father Peters and I didn’t like him, he didn’t have friendly eyes at all. I sat next to Cara that day, she showed me where we went to eat our lunch and she was kind to me. My first ever friend, I thought. The school was small, attached to the church and when it was play time there were no swings, no climbing frame, none of the things I had back home. Cara and I sat on the dried up grass and just chatted.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  “Not too far, we have a farm.”

  “That’s cool, do you have animals?”

  “Yes, I have to get up early and feed the chickens every day, they run around the yard and sometimes get in the house,” she said, with a laugh.

  “Can I come and see them one day?” I asked.

  “Erm, well, my dad is not real friendly. I don’t think he would like that,” she replied.

  “Oh, is your mum friendly?” I asked.

  “Yes, when she’s not sad.”

  “My mum was always sad, she’s dead you know. So is my dad.”

  “Oh, that’s real terrible. Who do you live with?”

  “My aunt, her name is Edith. Do you have any brothers?” I asked.

  “I had a sister but she doesn’t live with us anymore. I miss her.”

  “Oh. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, it’s just me,” I replied.

  At the end of the day we travelled back on the bus together and she got off long before me. None of the other kids spoke to me although they whispered a lot behind their hands, their eyes looking my way, but I just ignored them.

  When the bus stopped at the top of the lane to Edith’s house there was no one to greet me. Some of the other kids had mums or dads at their stop who bundled them up into a hug. I just made my way down the lane to the house. Edith was always there, she left the house only once a day, every day, to go to church and then once a week to the grocery store. Why someone would want to go to church every day was beyond me, I’d never been to a church before.

  Edith had a list of things I had to do, she had written them down on a large piece of paper that she pinned up on the kitchen wall. It would change from day to day but some of the things remained the same. I had to sweep the front yard, start repainting the wooden rails around the porch and make sure there were enough logs cut and stacked for winter. Sawing logs was a new one to me, I would find the fallen branches in the woods and drag them until sweat dripped off my brow, all the way back to the house.

  Then I would saw them into smaller pieces until blisters formed on my hands. They then had to be chopped in half and luckily, she had a splitter. The logs had to be exactly the same size, ready for storing for the fire or the stove, or she would make me do them again. It never dawned on me that someone of my age should not be doing these things. I would have to help sweep the house as there were no carpets anywhere, the occasional rug but otherwise it was just wooden floors throughout. I would then clean the kitchen, wash the dishes each night and finally, exhausted, I did my homework and fell into bed. I didn’t mind being busy, it kept me warm. Even in the summer the house was always chilly and Edith wouldn’t have the fire going. The warmest place was either fully clothed under my quilt or in front of the stove.

  Edith and I never really spoke much, she never asked me about my day, what I had done at school. She would sit at her desk each night and read from her bible, aloud. I would sit and listen, there was not m
uch else I could do really. She didn’t have a TV to watch and other than my school book, I had nothing to read. Sometimes she would read then ask me questions, if I couldn’t answer she would get cross. She would squint her eyes at me, tut and read the passage again, slower.

  ****

  The first time she beat me was about a month after I had arrived. It was when I was late home from school. The bus had a flat so we didn’t leave at our usual time. By the time I had arrived home, I was fifteen minutes late. Edith was at the end of the lane, at the stop waiting for me. I smiled when we arrived, it was unusual but good to see her. My smile soon faded when I saw the look in her eyes, she meant me harm, I could tell.

  She dragged me by the arm from the bus in front of everyone, her fingers dug into my skin and my face burnt with embarrassment. She pushed me in front of her, forcing me to march the path to the house and then I heard it, a whoosh, followed by a sting across my back. The buckle end of a belt bit into my skin. I turned in shock, no one had ever hit me before and she lashed out again, catching my side, then my stomach.

  “I know what you are, what you are up to,” she screamed at me, repeatedly.

  As quick as I stumbled backwards, she came forwards, swinging her arm, the belt wrapped around her hand and the end catching any part of my body it could. She was cursing me but I didn’t understand what she was saying. This could not be because I was late, it was not my fault after all.

  I held my hands over the areas she had already hit, trying to take away the pain and ran to the house. When I got on with my chores she stopped but she took up her bible and starting reading aloud to me, following me from room to room. I didn’t cry, in hindsight, I didn’t have the ability to. I guessed I must have cried as a baby but my mum hated it if I cried and soon enough I learnt not to.

  I went to bed that day without any dinner, hungry and confused. What had I done that had deserved that beating? As I lay on my bed the only comfort I got were my thoughts of a previous life, back in England. Whether my mum and dad were good or bad, whether they left me alone or not, it was better than where I was.