Chapter 26

It was a miracle I found where to sit, as Aubrey pulled me towards their clustered couch. She turned the TV on and settled down on my lap. Jessie sat beside me, occasionally puffing on her inhaler. So that's why she had a scarf pressed to her nose, the poor girl was asthmatic.

The sound of pots and utensils notified me that Anabelle was in the kitchen, I wanted to help her out, but Aubrey refused to get off my lap, besides the show we were watching was hilarious. I couldn’t remember the last time I watched TV. Even though there was a large plasma screen in the lounge of the Piacere house, I hardly came out of my room, even if I did, there was always a fight of who wanted to watch what, the volume being too high or too low. I did not want to get involved, so the television was useless to me.

Anabelle walked in with two bowls and dropped them on the center table.

"Jessie, Aubrey, it’s time for dinner."

Jessie picked her bowl from the table and started eating.

Just one look at what was in the bowl and Aubrey scrunched her nose. "Yuck, oats!"

"Aubrey!" Anabelle tried to be stern but failed woefully. Her voice sounded like she was begging Aubrey to eat up.

"Forget it Anna, I'm not eating." She crossed her little arms across her chest defiantly.

Anabelle opened her mouth to say something and from the look on her face, they weren't going to be nice words.

Time to intervene.... Again.

"It’s okay Anabelle, I've got this." I told her.

She looked at Aubrey one more time and stomped off, angrily.

Jessie, obviously used to the arguments between her older and younger sisters, chuckled. "If Anna couldn't get her to eat, I'm not sure you can." She spoke quietly but I heard her.

I observed Aubrey who stared at the bowl of oats with so much hatred that she would disintegrate it if she had heat vision.

"I get the point." I replied Jessie. "Be a dear and pass me the bowl."

I turned Aubrey around so she would face me. Jessie brought the bowl and handed it to me. I picked the spoon, shoveled a moderate amount and tried to spoon feed Aubrey. She turned her head left and right away from the direction of the spoon.

"No!" She told me, plainly.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Jessie laughing. When she noticed I was looking at her, she shrugged. "I told you so."

Okay Aubrey, you asked for this. Time for tactics, deceptive tactics.

I dropped the bowl on my lap, like I had conceded defeat, then I put on a very sad face. "Aubrey, it took your sister a lot of effort to make this for you. Does that not mean anything to you?"

She huffed. "It doesn't take any effort, she makes oats every day. I'm tired of it." She said in her tiny voice.

This was going to be harder than I thought, there was no way she was going to believe me if I said oats were beneficial to her, since she ate it every day.

An old trick popped up in my head.

"So, since you don't want to eat oats, what do you want to eat?"

She put her finger on her chin, tilted her head a thinking posture. "Pizza! Or take out! Chinese? No, not that, maybe one of mum's specials." She concluded, her voice dropped as she put down her head.

Jessie looked away at the mention of her mother.

"Why don't we tell your sister you want to eat one of your mum's specials, so she can make it for you."

Aubrey laughed. "Anna can't cook."

"Really?" I feigned surprise. "Your sister is a great cook."

Jessie turned to look at me questionably. Aubrey playfully shoved my head. "No silly..." She laughed, then looked in the direction of the kitchen. "...Anna is a terrible cook." She whispered.

"Oh?" I played along.

"Yes. There was one time she set the kitchen on fire when she was trying to prepare fried chicken. Jessie had to sleep outside because of the smoke."

I looked at Jessie who nodded in affirmation.

"And then one time she baked cupcakes, they were so hard I lost a tooth." She opened her mouth for me to see. True to her word, there was a hole in her gum where a tooth was supposed to be. I hope it was a milk tooth, not a permanent one.

"Those cupcakes were harder than stone." Jessie remarked, softly.

Six words: Not Equipped To Handle Two Kids.

"That's too bad. I'm guessing your mum wasn't a great cook too."

"No! Mum is a great cook. Tell her Jessie!" Aubrey exclaimed.

Jessie smiled but the corners of her mouth were downturned. "Mum could make something out of nothing and she could make everything. Dinner was never boring for us, there was always something new on the table. Dad called her the kitchen magician." She spoke in a low tone and wiped a tear away.

The pain of losing a parent at ten, it tugged at my heart strings.

"So, why is Anabelle a horrible cook? She must have learnt one or two things from your mum."

Jessie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right."

I waited for her to give me an explanation but Aubrey beat her to it.

"Mum is always right, always." She emphasised with her cute baby voice. "She would scream and shout for Anna to come help out in the kitchen but Anna would never listen. She was always texting or talking on the phone with Chad." She puckered her face and put her tongue out like the name made her want to throw up.

I laughed at the expression.

"One day, mum got so mad she told Anna to learn something useful because she wouldn't be always here." Aubrey said.

"How right she had been." Jessie remarked softly.

Aubrey looked down at the bowl of oats and frowned at me. I smiled sweetly at her, because half the bowl was gone.

My plan had worked.

While Aubrey was talking, I took the opportunity to shovel oats into her mouth. She had no choice but to swallow because she wanted to talk. The other half would finish with the same technique.

"Your sister told me your parents worked, what did they do for a living?"

"Dad was an accountant, and mum a cleaner." Jessie answered.

I noticed she had started referring to her parents in past tense. How hard that must be for her.

"Every day when dad comes back from work, he would play snakes and ladders or monopoly with us." Aubrey talked on happily at the mention of her father.

We talked for a long time about places the family would go to have picnics, their favourite season of the year, favourite sport, favourite colours, so long that Aubrey never noticed she had finished her bowl of oats.

Anabelle walked in. "Jessie, Aubrey, it's time for bed."

I checked the time. It was a few minutes to 9pm! I had to get back to the piacere house.

Jessie obediently stood up, but it seemed that Aubrey's favourite thing to do was defy Anabelle.

"Anna, can we stay up a bit? It’s too early and I-"

"Aubrey, it is 30 minutes past your bedtime. You have school tomorrow."

"I don't want to go to school tomorrow, Anna. I want to stay up late and watch Scooby Doo and Looney Toons and-"

"Aubrey..." That was a warning.

"Anna?" She replied her sister, not scared at all.

Oh boy, if I didn't do something now things were not going to be pretty in the next five seconds.

"Hey Aubrey, sweetie, you wanted to show me your room, right?" I got down to Aubrey's level.

"Yeah, I remember! Come on!" She pulled me along.

Before I left the living room, I turned back and mouthed a, 'you can thank me later', to Anabelle.

Aubrey pushed a door open and pulled me inside.

If I thought their living room was a mess, it was nothing compared to their bedroom. It was a hundred times worse, it looked liked ten hurricanes had passed through. You would have to wade through their things to get to the other side of the room.

Aubrey didn't seem to mind but Jessie blushed in embarrassment.

When I looked at the bed, I cried to God to have mercy. It was as occupied as the floor, if not more.

"How do you sleep on that?" I pointed to the bed.

Jessie shrugged. "Just make a little space, take some things down and you're good to go. You get used to it."

For the love of God!

"Back off." I told them, then I brushed everything off the bed to the floor. Luckily, I didn't break anything because it was mostly clothes, shoes and toys.

The sight of the sheets was heartbreaking. It was dirty, stained with little patches I presumed to be sweat and saliva, as well as, a large patch in the middle, which was no doubt urine.

I looked back at the girls with pity. "When was the last time you changed these sheets?"

Jessie looked away. "Six months ago."

I yanked them off, pillowcases included.

"Please tell me you have a clean one." I turned to them.

"I'll go and ask Anna." Jessie walked out.

I opened their wardrobe, only to find it empty. I checked their chest of drawers, empty too.

It was no surprise since all their clothes were on the floor.

"Aubrey, where are your PJs?"

She looked through the stuff on the floor, occasionally throwing things randomly, until she picked out two sets of PJs, one belonged to Jessie while the other one belonged to her. Like their sheets, their PJs looked like they were worn the previous day or days.

"No Aubrey, I mean clean PJs."

"We don't have clean PJs, none of our things are clean."

Jessie walked in with clean sheets. "I found this in our parent's room."

I took it from her and dressed the bed. "So, everything on the floor is pretty much dirty?"

"Yes."

"Alright. It’s time for bed. Jessie, go shower first."

She walked into the bathroom en suite and closed the door. While she was bathing, Aubrey and I took the time to sought through the things on the floor. So, by the time Jessie walked out we had cleared the clothes into two large laundry baskets and gathered other things to the corner. We would attend to them later.

"Time for you to shower." I picked Aubrey up, who squealed in my arms.

When we got to the bathroom, I put toothpaste on the pink brush she gave me, while she got on a chair that helped her reach the sink.

When she finished brushing, I got her down, undressed her and put her in the shower cubicle where I shampooed her hair and cleaned her up.

I got a towel from the rack and dried her up. I contemplated on dressing her in her dirty PJ but she would catch a cold if she didn't put anything on. In the end, I helped her into it and we left the bathroom. Jessie was already settled on her bed. I brushed Aubrey's hair and tucked her into bed.

I turned to leave when she called me back.

"Ophelia?"

"Yes, Aubrey?"

"Please tell us a bedtime story."

Bedtime story? "Aubrey, I don't know an-"

"Please, just one." She pleaded with a voice I couldn't refuse.

I racked my brain for a story I could remember as a child. I thought for a very long time before I remembered one.

I think I was six then. Dad came back from work and gave Luke's mum the evening off so he could spend time with me and put me to sleep.

Almost drifting off to sleep in his arms I heard him say. "This story is called the feeding of the five thousand."

It was really funny to me because I had never touched a Bible in all the 20 years of my life, but I knew most of the stories within it but what baffled me the most, was how dad, a Mafia head, who I was sure had never touched a Bible either could quote the Bible. I had heard him admonishing his men on most occasions.

Luke's mum had said it was because my grandfather was a clergyman. I had never seen a picture of him, or heard Dad talk about him.

I remembered my father’s soothing voice, the words he had used and that was what I used to put Aubrey to sleep.

"Two thousand years ago, by the sea of Galilee, there lived a young lad. He had four siblings, two older brothers and two younger brothers. His parents were very poor, so he had to go out with his older brothers to work for extra income.

While his brothers worked various labour jobs, he would go out to the sea and work with an old fisherman. At the end of the day, the fisherman would pay him from the little he made from the sale of his fish. When he got home, he would give everything he had worked for to his mother so she could prepare the evening meal. Sometimes he would bring back one or two pieces of fish that the old fisherman would give to him.

As time went on, the boy's heart became hardened against his family because of the taunts his friends would throw at him.

They wouldn't let him play with them because he had nothing to give or contribute when they wanted to buy treats.

So, whenever the old fisherman gave him his day's wages, he would give only a meager sum to his family so he could spend the rest on his friends and be respected.

One day, one of his older siblings fell sick, putting more burden on him, not only did he have to provide money for food, he also had to provide money for medicine.

But he had made up his mind not to give more than what he had made up his mind to give because he desired the respect of his friends more than the wellbeing of his family.

Because of the situation with his brother's illness, his younger siblings who were less than five ate very little or hardly ate at all. They were malnourished, very hungry and would always come up to him where he worked by the riverside because they knew he could provide.

He sent them away heartlessly, even when he had a piece smoked fish in his bag. His heart was so hardened that he wouldn't share his food with his baby brothers.

"That's so sad, poor babies." Aubrey said, her baby voice filled with pity.

"Yes Aubrey, poor babies. But that's not the worst part, his other older brother had fallen sick too. now, all the burden of providing money for food and medicine was on him."

I continued the story.

"One day, while he was fishing with the old man, he noticed a great multitude. He ignored them but the crowd grew bigger and bigger, it was hard to concentrate. The old man had caught nothing of value, except two small fishes which he smoked and gave to the boy.

"Your problems are greater than mine boy, take that home to your family."

In his bag, he had five barley loaves of bread which he had brought for lunch. Accompanied with the two small fishes, he had bigger plans other than sharing them with his family, he would give them to his friends.

He followed the old man who stopped to ask someone in the crowd.

'Do tell me, what is going on here?'

'It is Jesus of Nazareth, he performs great miracles, that is why people are gathered here.'

The young lad had heard of Jesus of Nazareth, of all the amazing miracles he had performed. No matter, he had better things to do than fight his way through the crowd.

He walked away but someone shouted his name.

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