Denial by Stephanie Wilson (the ebook reader .txt) 📖

that I started to write things down – she said that she sometimes did that when she founds things were hard, and that she had too many thoughts in her head. She said that writing them down made it calmer in her mind. That maybe I could try and see if it was helpful.

                I did and it did and I’ve carried on the practice right up to this day. Sometimes I would go long periods without writing down anything, sometimes I would simply draw a picture or a sad face or a happy face. If it was particularly bad day, I would scribble across the page until it was black and the pen was ripping through the paper.

But, in my time at the Carpenters - I would sometimes get the inkling that things weren’t as good as I had thought they were.        

The house was small, and the walls were thin. Sometimes late at night I would hear Belidnda sobbing, and soft soothing murmured by Barry. This happened only occasionally, and I would stick my finger in my ears and pretend that I hadn’t heard it.

In their tiny backyard, they had small swing set. When I arrived it was covered in spider webs and had begun to rust. I loved that swing set and would often swing on it for a good hour, face turned to the sky.  I once caught Belinda watching me on the swing, her eyes were watery and far away, and her lips turned down in a sad grimace.

It was five months in when I began to doubt the permanence of this placement. I wrote it down in my diary – one of the first proper entries I had done.

It goes something like this, though I cleaned up the spelling:

Bell didn’t come get me this morning from bed. So I went to the kitchen and made my own breakfast. They were fruit loops and they are yummy. I heard Bell crying. I went into her room and she was in bed, but all her sheets were red. And her PJ’s too. She was crying. She told me to ring Barry. But I didn’t know the number, so she screamed at me to give it to her. So I did.

Then I hid under my bed because I don’t like the red.

I spent over ten hours hiding under that bed that night. Barry had come home very quickly after the phone call. I could hear Belinda crying hysterically through the walls, even my fingers in my ears couldn’t drown on those sobs. There was also quite a few swear words and curses at the higher powers being thrown around. I don’t handle crying well, but that was nothing to how I handled blood.

As it turned out, Belinda had been trying to get pregnant for a long time, and this was her third miscarriage. Barry had explained it all to me in simpler terms a few days later. At the time he had come straight home and took her to the hospital, first he tried to get me out from under the bed to come along, but I simply screamed at him and covered my ears. So he had asked the neighbour to step in.

I can’t remember the neighbour’s name, but I remember she tried for a very long time to coax me out with promises of cartoons and chocolate, but to no avail. In the end she pushed some toast under the bed along with a pillow and a blanket. And I eventually slept there, only to find myself on top of my bed the next morning. When I am feeling particularly bad, I often wake up underneath the bed – though a lot of the time, I don’t remember going there.

Belinda never did bring up that night. And neither did I. Barry went back to work a few days later, looking very stressed and pale.

Things went back to normal, except Belinda injected herself in to my life more then what was usual. She took me to parks, read me stories half the night, we went to theme parks, we rode bikes together – in fact I think she was the one who taught me how. She would often take me out of school to do these things – a point of friction between her and Barry. I had a vague understanding that something was not right with how she was behaving.

One month later, two things happened.

Belinda got pregnant again, and did not miscarry.

And Barry’s company went bust.

There was a month of Barry’s desperate attempts to find another job, Belinda went to work at her old job at a cafe – but she would only do so for a short period, fearing for the babies health.

Financial issues is a hard thing to process when you’re seven. Though I knew that we were struggling, I didn’t really consider the implication that might have for me – at least not until my birthday.

Belinda had baked me a giant chocolate cake and covered them in candles. She made my favourite for dinner – lasagna and cheesy potatoes. It was a wonderful night, at least on the surface. I suppose if I had really thought about it, I would have found all of the food a bit odd, considering we had been living off very basic and cheap meals for the past month. Corn beef, cabbage – potatoes – that kind of thing.

I noticed, to a degree, that everything seemed very forced, like they sung just a bit too loud. Tried just a little too hard to make me smile.

I heard them talking when they were doing the dishes. I was reading a new book they had brought me (can’t remember what it was exactly). If I ever have my own kids, I will be sure to remember that just because kids are playing, doesn’t mean they can’t hear what you’re saying.

‘We need to tell her,’ said Barry. He sounded sad but certain.

‘And we will, but tonight is her birthday for God’s sake, let her have the night.’

‘You can’t put it off for much longer, it’s not fair.’

‘Shhhh!’

I continued to pretend that I couldn’t hear what they are saying. But I think on some level, I knew what this meant. I was going to leave.

A few days later they told me, but I was prepared by then. They sat down on either side of me on my bed, whilst I played with a doll and resolutely refused to look at either of them. I knew what was coming and I was damn well not going to make it easy for them. They told me that they had to move back to their home town and stay with Belinda’s parents for a while, until they got back on their feet. They were going to lose their home, and they had no more savings.

They said they couldn’t take me with them, not right away.

They said they would keep in touch, and once things became more stable they would send for me.

They explained it all for a very long time, I think because I had refused to acknowledge them they thought that perhaps I didn’t understand. But I did. I was going to a new house.

They were leaving me behind.

Belinda even informed me that because she was pregnant now, she couldn’t work – that she had to focus on looking after it. It was definitely a mistake for her to tell me that because in my eight years old brain I had thought that the reason I was left behind was that baby, (it was a girl, her name was Melody – they had sent me a card when she was born). They had their own child now, so they no longer needed me. They picked this indefinable lump in her belly over me – and her telling me that simply confirmed my suspicions.

When my social worker came to pick me up, Belinda went in to give me a hug but I pulled out of it – ran down the steps, and hopped into the car. I looked out the window for a second, and I could see Barry hugging what looked to be a sobbing Belinda, whilst the social worker was attempting to talk to them.

I hated them, especially that lump in Belinda’s belly. If it wasn’t for that baby they would still take care of me. I refused to answer any of their letters, or any of their phone calls. They tried for a few months, and then they became less frequent until eventually they stopped calling all together. I had convinced myself that I did not need them. That I was better off.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I accept that perhaps I had acted unfairly, that their reasons were legitimate and understandable. Situation changed, and of course they would focus on their own baby. I do believe that they would have kept me if things had turned out differently, if I had forgiven them – quite frequently I regretted not returning their messages.

That is not to say that I still don’t believe that the baby changed things. I believe that for Belinda, I was filling the void that her own child would fill. That she wanted a family very much, but was struggling to have her own, that I became a little bit redundant with the birth of that baby.

Despite the heartache, I learnt two important things from those eight months: For every home I would ever go into, I was never there for me, I was only there to fill some kind of need. Whether it be financial, logistical or simply to provide them with the self-righteous idea that they are good people, better than others, for taking on a delinquent troubled child.

This was easier to swallow then the second thing I learnt.

The only family I would ever have, the only people who would put me first, was the one that I lost when I was six.

Chapter 4

 

There was a mahogany coffin, sitting at the front of the church. The church was empty and dark, I can’t recall seeing any pews, or windows or lights or even an alter. But it was a church, I knew this in the way that you just know things in your dreams.

There was only the coffin, lit from its own invisible light, sitting there waiting. Then there was me. Standing in the back, hands sweating, heart pounding.

As I watched, the lid creaked open with a terrible groan that I felt right to my core. I had to go look, I didn’t want to, but I had no control over it. This was why I was here and it was necessary.

So I walked towards it, step by slow step. The coffin seemed to get closer faster than you would expect, only five steps away. I wished to stop walking. I wished to turn around - but I couldn’t. It was like there was puppeteer above, jerking me feet closer towards the coffin.

Four steps.

Then there was another noise, a wet tearing and ripping. It was an indecent sound that made me feel as if I was listening to something wrong and unnatural. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Three more steps.

I wished to wake up.