‘Wait…’ I caught some more confetti. ‘You said he died seven years ago, that’s plenty of time to find me. Grandmama and Grandpapa lived in the same house you grew up in, so I wasn’t exactly hard to find!’ I was thinking more clearly and snapped a little. My emotions were running high and her house was as hot as a cauldron.
Her eyes snapped into focus. ‘After over twenty years of emotional and physical abuse, I didn’t believe any of you would be interested in seeing me, you didn’t look for me, he told me you weren’t. He obviously knew about the letter, and I didn’t. At first, I used to try to check newspapers, but there was never a sign that they had looked for me. And, and, I couldn’t go…’
‘Why? Why not?’
‘No I, I just, I knew that Mum and Dad would keep you safe and I just held onto that. I always thought of you, every day, what you were doing, what you looked like, if you liked drawing or dolls, sports or science. But I was afraid, I was a fool.’
I felt like I was outside of my body. The only thing that kept me knowing I was still inside it was the urge to vomit. I had to excuse myself to her bathroom. Within moments I was upstairs in her home clinging to a pale peach, pristine sink looking into a cabinet mirror. I looked down at my purple dress and felt a little silly, embarrassed at my own sexuality. I shook my head, making hair stick to my face. There was just me, my shallow breathing and the reflection. It’s not about you, I told myself, it’s about her, your mother, who didn’t leave you, who was taken from you. I ran cold water on my hands and combed it through my hair with my fingers taking comfort in the familiar sensation. Stepping out I could see into her bedroom which, again, was a hollow space that comfort forgot. One bed, one cupboard, two cabinets, nothing more, not even an extra pillow. I took my time creaking down the stairs to meet my mother, who sat patiently waiting for my return.
‘This is a lot to take in,’ I said. ‘When I first met you, I just thought you were embarrassed about leaving me or you just didn’t want me around. I never imagined…’
‘I didn’t want you to know what your father was like. I wanted to keep protecting you from him.’
‘Keep protecting? What do you mean “keep”?’
‘Hmph…’ She rubbed her forehead with aggressive fingers. She wriggled in her chair, pulling at the hem of her dress to pull it past her knees before continuing. ‘He said if I left him, he would hurt you, so I never left him. I never tried to run, I would rather he hurt me than you and I couldn’t risk it now, could I? It’s not as though you would have been hard to find. You said that yourself.’ My incredible, strong mother.
‘So, you spent your whole life saving mine and I didn’t even know? I wish you had come back.’ There air felt so heavy and my chest was so tight it was like taking in water; drowning in the information and I couldn’t swim. But still, I had to know more. ‘What actually happened back then? Start from the beginning, I’m getting so confused.’
‘Well, as I said, we started going out when I was fifteen. We actually met at a friend’s party; he, Adam, would treat me so well, he made me happy at first, always the gentleman, opening doors for me and telling me how pretty I was, flowers, chocolates, anything I wanted. Then, when I turned sixteen, he started to force himself on me, saying I owed him. It was very confusing because he had been so loving and charming and some days, he still was, then the next day he would be forceful and aggressive and violent. Sometimes he would tell me I made things up and I would wonder if it was all a bad dream. It was only looking at my bruises that kept my sanity at times. When I found out I was pregnant with you I was too afraid to tell anyone. I only admitted it to myself when I was over six months gone; I told Mum but there was no way I could say who the father was, I didn’t dare, and it caused so many arguments. I wish I had said now. I was a child myself when I look back, I was stupid and naive. My parents wouldn’t let me out after I told them I was pregnant. I hadn’t seen him in months. It was difficult at sixteen with teenage hormones and pregnancy hormones too; I used to kick back a lot and there was only my parents to take it all out on. I didn’t want a baby, I’m sorry, but I didn’t, it was only once you arrived that it changed.
The day he came and took me I think he was shocked to find me with a baby. He was so angry. I don’t know if he had planned to take me, I never asked, not that he would have told me if I had. I had been about to take you out for a walk, your first outing in the pram Mum and Dad had got you. He pushed the pram back inside the door, slammed it shut and took me. Well, that’s the simple, less violent version.’ The silence. Silence to absorb my father’s name: Adam. Silence to absorb who he was: violent. Silence to hold in my urge to cry.
‘Can I have some more water please?’ She jumped up and scurried off into the kitchen. My mouth was dry from holding it slightly open. I couldn’t breathe. It was like the tiny room was getting smaller and yet the contents were somehow getting bigger. I tried to inhale and I couldn’t, my throat was closing up. I groped at my neck and broke the necklace I was wearing. I didn’t care. I had to leave. The door had been left ajar and I ran out of it, still clutching the necklace. The blood-red sunset blinded me and the wind slapped my face. I managed a small breath. I was hunched over, holding my knees and shaking, ready to fall. Liliana, my mother, my beautiful mother, was by my side holding my arm. She knelt, bare knees in the dirt, to see my face and to stroke my hair. She reminded me so much of Mama, she would have been a wonderful mum if she hadn’t been taken from me. I felt so bad at how angry I had been at her for so many years; I still felt anger that she could have found me seven years ago, but I tried to see how she must have felt. Everything was spinning. I could hear her voice, soothing and calm in my ear, but I don’t remember the words. I just remember her eyes stayed on me as she led me back into the house. She got a fan and plugged it in right next to me.
‘Is that better? Sorry it gets so hot in here, I can’t afford air conditioning. I guess I’m mostly used to it now, after so many years.’ She was back to kneeling by my side and clutching the arm of the chair.
‘I’m sorry’ – my voice was quiet against the power of the fan – ‘I couldn’t breathe, I needed air.’ She got up and grabbed the glass of water off of the little table.
‘Here. Drink your water.’
I took it and sipped slowly. It did help. It gave me something new to focus on. The fan was blowing my hair fiercely making my ears ring. ‘All these years I thought you didn’t want me. If we’d known…you realise we were all coming to this island for holidays? Most years. I mean, other Greek islands too but…you were less than an hour away from us.’
‘I chose the island. He told me we had to go. We couldn’t stay in England. We were in a few different countries following his work, Germany for six or seven years, all over the place really. Eventually, I persuaded him to come here. I would tell him stories of the Greek islands, this one in particular. I’m sure you know we used to holiday in Sidari. I hoped that one day I might be lucky enough to see my parents on holiday, sometimes I could persuade him to take me to Sidari for the day, not very often. In my head you were still a baby of course and I’d pick you up and never let go.’
‘Can we sit outside? In the shade?’ I couldn’t bare the closed-in walls any longer. She led me through the small galley kitchen and outside. There were white chairs and a round table underneath a greying umbrella, I stumbled towards them. Slumping over the table. The metal table dug into my arms.
‘You were only, what, forty when he died? That’s so young, you’re so young now. Even though she’d had a hard life, she was full of potential. I wanted to dress her, do her hair and make-up.
‘I feel about a hundred,’ she laughed. ‘I have for thirty-one years. I’m so happy you’re here. Please don’t hate me…’ Her voice was pleading on the breeze and she carefully laid her hands on the table. The more I looked at her, the more everything fell into place. Her odd little ticks, her, at times, stilted movements, all too well
thought out. You can’t brush twenty years of abuse under the table. She needed me as much as I need her.
I told her I didn’t hate her, how could I? She had just been a child. I wanted to reassure her. Only, the desire to run away and hide from the thought that my biological father kidnapping, raping and beating my mother was overwhelming. If I hadn’t had more questions perhaps I would have left then. I asked her if there had been others like me, the undesired result of rape. In a strange way, I was hopeful.
Her lip trembled when I asked and her chest heaved and her fingers pinched at her knobbly brown knees. ‘A son. Your brother, Phillip.’
I let out an elated gasp, I wanted to know everything about him. Where he was, how old he was. She was pointing to the back of the small rectangular garden. Her shoulders rounded and caved in then her head dropped and shook. Without a word I walked to where she had pointed. There, pressed into the dry ground of Corfu stood a small wooden cross with P.J. scratched into it. I squatted down next to it. It was the sort of headstone you’d give a beloved family pet. I had to touch it to check if my eyes were seeing it correctly. The edges were sharp and sun-bleached. I could hear my heartbeat as my jugular throbbed.
‘What on earth happened?’
‘I could hide it for a long time, being pregnant. I thought I might be able to keep it. I must have been eight months when he realised. He didn’t want children…’ she paused and looked up to the sky. ‘He was a sadistic man. He, he beat me but with purpose – he really didn’t want children. It brought on early labour and I was in and out of consciousness. I remember him pacing and swearing at one point and it was the strangest thing, I was there in the pain of it one moment then it was like a dream, like it wasn’t real. When I eventually came round, I mean, really came round, the house was quiet. I begged to see the baby; they’d need feeding. He just shrugged, said, “It’s dead.” Eventually he told me it was a boy and he named him Phillip and buried him without me. I’d been so sure I’d heard him cry, it must have been in my dream.’ Her voice was barely audible, tears streamed from her eyes but she didn’t bawl. She didn’t scream or shout. Her eyes were bloodshot and set in pink rings from rubbing the lines of tears away. The tip of her nose had gone red too but that was it. I felt ashamed of myself. For everything. For not knowing sooner, for my own self-pity for years on end, for snapping at her and for not enjoying life when I had the freedom to do so.
I crouched down next to the little wooden cross and hid my face in my hands. My shoulders gave away my sob, juddering uncontrollably until I couldn’t keep it in at all and I gasped for air before letting out everything I’d been holding back. I cried for her, for my lost brother, for myself, for the time we’d lost.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I wailed. ‘I had no idea. All these years. I’m so sorry.’
She led me back to my chair and carefully stroked my hair as my head fell into my own lap. I was swaying knowing I should comfort her, not the other way around.
‘Melodie, it’s okay my beauty,’ she soothed. ‘Do you know why I named you Melodie?’ I shook my head and looked up at her through my hair. ‘No, of course you don’t, how could you? Well, you’re my heart’s song. As soon as I saw you, I loved you. I hadn’t chosen you, or the situation, but my heart wanted to sing, so I sung to you, that was the first thing I did. I didn’t say hello. Mum was there with me when I gave birth to you, the midwife passed you to my arms and I started to sing and you stopped crying for a moment. So I called you Melodie. My beautiful baby. I was always just happy you never had to know him and you could live a happy, safe life. One I would love to know about. If you wouldn’t mind telling me? To have you here, to see your face. It’s more than a dream come true.’ She started to choke on her words a little and cough almost.
‘What was it? The song?’
‘You are My Sunshine.’
Mama had never told me that. She had been there and she never said. She haD sung that to me whenever I was frightened or sad. I rubbed my face, my hands were covered in black from my mascara, I couldn’t imagine what I looked like. My mother went and got me a box of tissues. I’d always desperately wanted to know why she had chosen the name Melodie, I never thought I’d know the answer.
‘It’s just so overwhelming to find out that your father is an evil bustard and your mother is an innocent victim’ – I blew my nose – ‘when you’ve spent your whole life imagining your father was a clueless teen and your mother was a selfish slut. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that!’ I stuttered.
‘Perhaps it would have been better if that’s what you had always thought. Instead of the truth of that horrible man. I’m glad my parents never knew the truth. I wouldn’t want to have caused them more pain.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ I had to snap this time. ‘They loved you and nothing would have hurt more than not having you in their life, nothing.’ I grabbed her hand to reassure her and for a split second I saw the flinch in her body language at suddenly being grabbed, then her relax when she looked at me.
I asked a lot of questions. Perhaps too many questions. I don’t know why but I had to know. Perhaps in an attempt to suffer as she had, in the knowledge of the truth. She told me of the abduction. How he grabbed her hair, kicked my pram and threaten to kill me if she didn’t shut up. She was always more afraid of the possibility he would go back and hurt me than the things he would do to her. She stopped fighting back early on as the beatings wouldn’t last as long if she let him get on with it. She had been hospitalised on multiple occasions. Mostly bad cuts, like the silver line on her face; on close inspection there were many. But that wasn’t all: broken ribs, wrist and fractured cheekbone. He died seemingly suddenly, finding out very late on that he was riddled with cancer; he had been the smoker in the house and it caught up with him. She didn’t have much money as he never let her work or have access to money. Although he bought the house outright, he gambled most of his wage away. When he died she found accounts with a little bit of money in, she got a job in a supermarket, first as a cleaner, then on the checkout. She didn’t have any friends and kept herself to herself. She didn’t come back for me because she thought I’d be better off without her and she thought her parents didn’t want her back, that they had never looked for her. I didn’t understand why, not really but then I hadn’t lived through everything she had been through.
When I said goodbye to her, it wasn’t particularly late but I was exhausted. Holding my hands tightly, she said, ‘Do what makes you happy while you can. That’s my advice with Anton.’ I squeezed her tightly.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered in her ear, and kissed her cheek, soft with the scent of sweet almond. ‘I like your necklace, it matches my ring,’ I said. She pressed her fingers over the round opal and silver chain.
‘Mum and Dad got it for my sixteenth birthday.’ She displayed it between her bitten nails.
‘Same,’ I said and showed her my ring. We smiled for a moment with nothing else that could be said. She had to work over the next few days so I agreed I would visit later in the week. As I drove away, I couldn’t believe she was real, let alone who she was and what she had been through. My mind felt pitch black, back in the wardrobe I sat in as a child; it didn’t feel like a comfort anymore, now it was a vacuum with a new type of grief.
Chapter 14
When I got back, I had a message from Ant – a little blue emoji heart. I wondered why blue. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, so I sent the same back to him. I started to draw a bath, only to change my mind. I needed to wash off the horror of the day, a cold shower felt like a better option. My phone buzzed, Anton:
Please let me know you’re back safe x
I stood in the shower. Still and cold. Eventually I made my hands wash my hair and I got out shaking. A stark contrast to the heat of my mother’s home. I needed to distance myself from it all. From the knowledge of who had a hand in my creation.
Back safe. Speak
tomorrow x
Yes, he did make me happy. Very happy. I needed to drink. I wanted my grandparents. I found myself sat in my car heading to Agios Stefanos. The place where I felt close to them and it would be acceptable to be drunk. My hair was still dripping on my shoulders when I arrived. I instinctively went to Vicky’s. I marched straight to the bar.
‘You’re not Stavros!’ I said as Nico turned round to face me. The bar was quiet, only two tables taken.
‘Can’t keep away from me.’ His arrogant smile was really starting to get on my last nerve.
‘Seriously, why are you working here?’
‘I work in most bars when people need nights off.’
‘I’ll go somewhere else.’ I tapped the bar and walked away. I couldn’t be bothered with him. I wanted to wallow. Wallow in all of my loss, my grandparents, my brother and the thirty-one years I lost my mother because of that man.
‘Wait! It’s from me! Here, ouzo! You can’t leave it, I’ve poured now.’ He knew how to stop me in my tracks.
‘Fine. Thank you.’ I downed the drink, ice painfully hitting my teeth. I slammed down the glass.
‘Another! It’d be rude not to drink. Or we could play I have never?’ He laughed as he pushed the glass along the bar.
‘Will all my drinks be free?’
‘All from this.’ He shook the half-empty bottle at me. I wasn’t going to turn down a fast drink. I drank again and he refilled. This time I took my glass, walked out of the bar, around the curve of the swimming pool and over to the corner of the paving to listen to the sea below. I stood leaning on the rail, focusing on the simple times I’d had. Eventually I was staring at the melted ice at the bottom of my glass. Three ouzos had warmed me, but it was time for another; I was looking for oblivion again. I could hear footsteps coming up next to me. I knew it was him, only he could have such a cocky stride.
‘Good timing.’ I held my glass out to Nico who had brought the bottle to me. My face was pressed into my other hand leaning on a pillar. Maybe I was swaying. He’s eyes wandered along my skin as he poured.
The Little Blue Door Page 14