Once Upon A Karma (Karmic Krystal Book 1)

by Malezer, Rosie

  “Let me talk to your mother about this, okay?” Dad says calmly. “You sit in here for as long as you want to. Come back out to the living room when you feel better.” He kisses my forehead and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

  Not wanting to waste any more time away from my parents than I already had, I go to the bathroom and wash my face before heading back to the living room. Mum and Dad take Leena’s giant suitcase down to the car before coming back upstairs to pack up the playpen. Jake is tired and cranky so Mum says it is time for them to be heading back. After Leena, Jake and Snoopy are safely buckled up in the car, Mum climbs into the driver’s seat before saying, “See you tomorrow,” to Dad.

  I take Mindy downstairs for a sniff, pee and poop session before bed time. Something tells me it is going to be a big day tomorrow so a whole lot of sleeping needs to be had tonight.

  The following morning at breakfast, Dad explains to Tania and me that we will be going to Mum’s place today to reunite Snoopy with his owner. I stare down at my cereal bowl, knowing that my sisters, my brother and Mum will be hurting when it is time to do so. “It’s okay, honey. You did the right thing and I am proud of you,” my father says, putting his hand on my forearm. I feel his honesty and love in doing so, while trying to convince myself that what I am doing is right.

  When we arrive at Mum’s house at 11 o’clock in the morning, Jake is buckled up inside his stroller, looking forward to some outside time with us. Leena and Mum have Snoopy on a leash, but I decide to carry him instead. After stopping at the house in my vision, I climb the stairs and begin knocking. An older woman opens the door. Her eyes are round with shock when she sees who I am holding in my arms.

  “BINDY! OH, MAMA, BINDY HAS COME HOME!” she screams into the house as a happy tear runs down her cheek. Looking at us, she smiles and says, “Please, come inside and meet my mother, Elizabeth! I am Beatrice, by the way.”

  When we enter the house, we see an old lady in a wheelchair staring curiously at the entry-way. As soon as she and Snoopy see each other, Snoopy’s tail wags madly and he scrambles as best he can to run to her. I walk over and place him gently onto her lap. Snoopy then jumps up, sticking his tongue up the old lady’s nose and licking all over her face, obviously overjoyed to see his rightful owner. Although my family feels sad, we also feel a small sense of satisfaction that three lives had just been made a whole lot better.

  “Please, all of you, come back and visit us at any time,” Beatrice says as we are leaving. “You have made my mother a very happy woman today. She thought her Bindy was gone forever. We have been at our wit’s end! He got out of the house as the ambulance was taking my mother away. She has been so unhappy, but now her smile has returned. Bless you all!” Her smile is as wide as it is sincere. I am no longer sad that Snoop… err… Bindy is back home where she belongs.

  Back at my mother’s house at the end of the street, Mum puts the kettle on before changing Jake’s diaper and putting him down with a bottle of water and a nap. She then pours a cup of tea for herself and my dad, while giving each of us a glass of lime cordial. When our drinks are finished, Mum suggests to Leena that she shows us her bedroom for a while and that they play quietly while she and our dad talk about things.

  “I hope I can visit you a lot,” Leena says, sitting on her bed. “Dogs are fun. I know Jake is too young to understand what just happened, but… well, it hurts right now that Snoopy is gone.” Tania and I help Leena put her things into the cupboard as we listen.

  “You saw how happy he was, Leena,” I tell her. “Snoopy deserves to be happy. It would have been selfish to keep him for ourselves instead of taking him back to his real owner.” Leena looks at me, contemplating what I am saying. “If Mindy accidentally got out of the house and somebody took her away and we never saw her again, would you think that was okay?” The shocked and angry look on Leena’s face is answer enough. “I think it would be better if that person brought her back to us, don’t you agree?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she replies. Finally making sense of it all, her spirits pick up and she starts helping to put her things away in their rightful place. Regardless of the stresses of the morning, I can’t help but smile.

  As we leave a few hours later, Tania and I give Mum, Leena and Jake a hug. Dad smiles and nods his head at Mum while giving a hug and kiss to Leena. He then leans over and gently shakes Jake’s tiny hand.

  “Catch you later, big guy,” he says to Jake. Dad’s handshake causes Jake to stare at his hand and start giggling. “…and you be good for your mother, okay? Ring me any time you need me. I love you, sweetheart.” Leena gets tears in her eyes as we pull out of the driveway and make our way back home. “Next stop, Hunter mansion at Cribb Island!” Dad says, hoping to put a smile on our faces. He looks in the rear-view mirror to see that Tania has already fallen asleep in the back seat of the car.

  “Next stop, New Year’s Eve,” I whisper as I look out of the car window.

  That night, I have a strange dream. In the dream, I see my mother and Jake inside a small apartment. It is not any apartment which I had ever seen before. Jake is taking a nap and Mum is doing the dishes. A knock comes at the door. When Mum opens the door, Eddie is standing there with a shot-gun. The moment Eddie sees my mother, he shoots her through the chest, leaving a gaping great hole where her heart had been just seconds before. Jake wakes up with a fright from the noise of the blast. Eddie strolls calmly into the apartment and grabs his son before running out the door.

  Waking up with a sweat, I start crying. The dream, so vivid, seems to be an impossibility. All of the injuries that Eddie sustained in the fall from the balcony meant that he was bed-ridden for the rest of his life… or did it?

  The phone rings early that morning. With Dad still asleep, I crawl out of bed to answer it. “Krystal?” a scared voice says at the other end of the phone.

  “Yeah. Who is this?” I ask, still shaking.

  “It’s your sister, you goose!” Leena says. “Mummy got a phone call and she is packing up Jake and me to go to see Eddie,” she says, depressed. “The doctors said that he has made some progress. He moved his toes!” Suddenly I understand why she sounds so miserable. Living under the same roof as Eddie is nobody’s idea of fun. “I asked Mummy if I can go there instead of seeing Eddie. Is Daddy awake yet?” she asks.

  “Just a sec,” I say. I run to Dad’s bedroom door and knock loudly before entering. Seeing Dad still snoring on the bed, I shake him awake, urgently advising him that Leena is on the phone.

  “What time is it?” he asks, as he slides his feet into his slippers beside the bed.

  “Early. Please come and talk to Leena. It’s important,” I tell him. He gets to his feet and rushes to the phone.

  “Leena? Sweetheart, are you okay?” Dad says, worried that something might have happened to her. Silence fills the air as Leena tells him what she had told me only minutes before. “Of course you can come here! Please put your mother on the phone,” he says.

  I quietly walk into Tania’s room and wake her up, telling her the news of Eddie’s improvement. She responds ever so positively to the news with a heartfelt, “Dammit!” While we discuss the possibilities of his recovery, Dad walks into the room and sits on the end of Tania’s bed.

  “Leena and Jake are on their way here to spend some time with you girls. Your mum is going to talk to the doctors and see what is going on,” he tells us. “I know it’s early but maybe now is a good time to get out of bed and get dressed. I’m afraid it’s going to be another long day.” Filled with lassitude, he goes to the kitchen and puts some fresh water into the kettle before placing it onto the stove.

  “Poor Leena,” Tania says.

  “Poor Leena? How about poor everybody!” I reply. My mind is taken back to the dream I had last night. Is this some kind of portent? I wonder if I should tell Dad about it, but with all of the rushing around going on right now, I decide that it can wait. As my Dad clatters around in the kitchen, I can feel
the anxiousness and worry filling the house. We all fear what will happen, should Eddie ever leave the hospital. When my mother arrives with Leena and Jake, she thanks Dad for letting them both stay while she visits with Eddie and talks to the doctors. Before leaving, she puts the diaper bag on my bed, complete with Jake’s food and bottles, and then proceeds to set up the playpen, making sure the base is very soft with blankets. Leena, Tania and I give Mum a hug.

  “I love you, Mummy,” I whisper in her ear as I hug her. Her eyes fill with tears and she says, “I love you too.”

  While Dad is feeding Jake and my sisters, I sit on my bed next to the diaper bag. Closing my eyes, I “eavesdrop” on Eddie’s hospital room.

  My mother walks through the doors and is greeted with excitement by one of the doctors, who explains to her that Eddie had wiggled his toes a few hours earlier this morning. Mum looks at Eddie, lying on the bed. When his eyes shift and he looks back at her, a smile as wide as his ears appears on his face. Mum walks over and strokes his hair as he smiles. Even after everything he had done to us, she continues to feel compassion for the man lying helplessly on the bed in front of her.

  Pushing harder, I enter Eddie’s mind…

  Eddie is behind the wheel of his car. The engine bombinates silently, having been recently tweaked, as Eddie sits patiently, waiting for his targets to appear. Mum pushes Jake, who is cooing happily in his stroller. I hold on to the side of Jake’s stroller with one hand. With the other, I hold tightly onto Snoopy’s leash, ensuring that he does not run into traffic. As soon as the cross-walk lights turn green, we walk across the road. This is the family that Eddie remembers leaving behind. As soon as we are in the middle of the road, Eddie guns the accelerator, slamming his car into Snoopy, me and my mum while catapulting Jake’s stroller clear across to the other side of the road and into a power pole, killing the baby instantly. Eddie fails to stop the car, spinning the wheels and speeding off as the windshield drips with blood. His manic laughter from within the speeding vehicle as he turns on the windshield wipers is the cause of the smile on his face as my mother stands by his bed. She has mistaken his bitter hatred for love.

  Knowing how frangible the situation is right now, I decide that what I know about Eddie is no longer something that can wait. While my sisters and brother are eating, I take my father’s hand and lead him into the living room. In the quietest of whispers, I voice to him my concerns, as well as the dream last night about Eddie murdering Mum with a shotgun and leaving the apartment with a screaming Jake.

  Although pure oneiric to many, Dad knows that my dreams are never to be taken lightly, as they often tell of actual events, whether past, present or future. While he still doesn’t understand how I came to have such recondite powers, he doesn’t flinch when they produce a call to action such as this.

  The house is so quiet that when a knock sounds at the door, we all jump.

  “Stay where you are!” my father shouts to Leena at the top of his lungs as she stands up to answer the door. The image of my mother being blasted through the chest with a shotgun plays in my mind as the door opens but luckily, the person on the other side of the door is Mum. She has tears in her eyes as she walks into the house. She smiles at us and then at our father.

  “Eddie wiggled his toes.” Looking at nobody in particular, she is shaking like a leaf. While she smiles in order to try and disguise the horror she feels, nobody is fooled.

  “I need you girls to go and play in your room. Your mother and I need to talk, okay?” Dad says. “Better yet, take Mindy for a walk and play with her in the yard for a while.” I glance at my parents before walking out the door with the tennis ball in hand. “Don’t leave the yard,” Dad tells us. “We will be down soon.”

  After chasing Mindy around the yard and playing Catch for about an hour, we are all tuckered out and sit down in the shade under the house. Not wanting to interrupt the long talk between our parents upstairs, I get the shovel, rake and bucket and clean Mindy’s house-sized enclosure downstairs. With a major joint effort, my sisters and I manage to drag out the blankets and shake the dirt out of them before shoveling and raking some soft, fresh dirt into the cage to lay the blankets on. Sweating like pigs in summer, we are all out of breath by the time our parents finally come downstairs.

  “Wow! Great job, girls!” exclaims Dad. The last thing he’d expected to see is a sparkling new floor for Mindy. Wagging her tail so hard that her entire butt wiggled, Mindy lets out a bark, showing her agreement with our father’s statement. “Please all come and sit down. I have a new project that I want to start and I need your help to get it done,” our father says, smiling.

  “Yeah? What project?” Tania asks. Dad looks at each of us. When he glances at Mum, she nods, indicating that she wants him to tell us about the project since it is his idea.

  “That is a surprise right now, but it will take some helpers if I am to get it done,” he replies. “Do you know anybody who would like to be my helpers? It is a very big job!” The mystery behind it is driving us crazy. Part of me wants to take a peek inside Dad’s mind and see what he has in store for us, but since he is so intent on making it a surprise, I decide to refrain.

  “I’ll help you, Daddy!” I yell.

  “Me, too!” says Leena, her hand shooting up into the air. It reminded me of my grade one teacher at school this past year.

  “And me, three!” smiles Tania.

  “WOOF!”

  “And Mindy makes four!” Dad says out loud. We all fall over laughing at Mindy’s bark, obviously volunteering to wag her tail when needed during the upcoming mystery task. We all wonder if Dad will give us any hints as to what he will be making.

  “One more thing…” he says, hanging on a long pause, “…your mother and Jake will be staying here with us for a while. Leena, you can help your mum pack up her clothes and bring them here. Tania can also go with you and help pack. Jake and Krystal can stay here with Mindy and me.” When Dad sees all of our eyes bulging wide from the news, he adds, “While we are not getting back together at this stage, your mum and Jake will be helping us get back to becoming a family for a while.” I nod, knowing that he is doing all he can to protect our mother and her son.

  Almost one hour later, Jake is fast asleep. I clean the house as quietly as I can while Dad is outside with his tape-measure and a shovel. Is he building a bigger dog cage for Mindy? My thoughts about this project simply won’t leave me alone. I do all I can to try to keep busy, focusing on other things. Unfortunately, almost all other thoughts in my head involve seeing my mother with a hole through her chest, dead in her apartment. By the time my sisters and Mum had arrived back, Dad had made a right mess off the back yard, having dug up a large square of grass and soil. Mindy jumps all over the place, sniffing at and digging up all of the new dirt patches that she can find while Dad measures and digs some more. From his lack of crankiness, I know that he appreciates Mindy’s efforts.

  Leena, Tania and Mum take a bunch of clothes upstairs from the car. They are put on the bed in the guest room before the trio leave again for another trip. I climb into Jake’s playpen and lay next to him, quietly reading one of my books. When the front door opens, both Jake and I jump, after having both fallen asleep.

  “We can do more later,” Mum says, as she lifts Jake out of the playpen. “It’s time for your brother to change diapers,” and she sniffs his butt. GROSS! While she changes his diaper, I head downstairs to see if Dad’s secret new project is finished yet.

  The giant square hole in the ground is deeper and some metal criss-cross grills are inside the hole, each overlapping the other. Dad fires up the cement mixer and I cover my ears at the noise. I watch as he shovels gravel and cement dust into the mixer, followed by a bucket of water, then more dust, more gravel, some sand, some gravel and more water. It takes about four hours, but finally the hole is filled up with freshly laid cement. A trailer filled with sand is then delivered, along with some more bags of cement.

  “Tomorrow,” h
e says, and covers the newly laid cement with a few tarpaulins, weighted down with bricks. With everybody exhausted after the long day, we have a very early, simple dinner of eggs on toast before going to bed.

  The next morning, I am woken by the loud noise of a rattling cement mixer outside. Downstairs, my father is already hard at work, smoothing over the top layer of the cement/sand/water mixture. It takes a while before I realise that my mother and sisters are, once again, at Eddie’s house. When they return home, they have a trailer attached to the back of the car containing Jake’s cot, Mum’s pots and pans, Jake’s toys and walker. As soon as I see these items arrive at our house, I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that she is never going back to him, regardless of his recovery.

  After all of her belongings are at our house, she then goes to the court house to fill in some papers. Mum takes me along with her, explaining that the papers will keep Eddie away from all of us when he leaves the hospital. She makes a telephone call before we leave the court house. We then go to the hospital to see Eddie. I stand at the side of his bed, watching the same sickening smile on Eddie’s face which I had seen in the vision. Cognitively, he looks up at me and my mother and his smile grows wider.

  My mother hands the papers to Eddie’s lawyer, who she had rung from the court house, asking him to meet us there. The stink of pure hatred emanates from Eddie as he smiles. My mother explains that his violence towards us, his drinking and the fact that he stole and used all of her savings, medical insurance and life insurance money on alcohol was the reason she could no longer be a part of his life. Handing over the papers to the lawyer, I listened as he told Eddie that he will no longer be permitted near his wife or her children, including his own. My mother advised the lawyer that she will also not be visiting Eddie again at the hospital. Peering inside Eddie’s thoughts, I once again see Eddie’s recurring “happy place” inside a vehicle covered in our blood.