Chapter 27

He turned to see his baby brothers running towards him. He wondered what they were doing here.

'Are my brothers dead?' He asked, when they got closer.

“Maybe it’s a good thing if they died, then he wouldn't have to work so much. He thought."

Aubrey gasped. "Wishing your own brothers dead? I'd never do that."

“I know Aubrey, but you have to understand that the burden was too much for him at his young age."

She huffed. "He hasn't gone through half of what I've been through. I mean Anna always gets on my nerves but I don't wish her dead!" She exclaimed.

I laughed. Oh, Aubrey.

I continued.

“His baby brothers told him that his parents were there with his older brothers, so Jesus could heal them. They pulled him into the crowd in a way he couldn’t resist.

Smaller in size, they could move between people’s legs, the force they used to pull their brother along, left the people no choice but to make way for them.

When they finally got to the front, the young lad witnessed as Jesus of Nazareth laid hands on people and healed them of their diseases.

It got to the turn of his brothers, Jesus just spoke a word and touched them. They got up from their sick beds and started jumping. The young lad knew they weren’t joking, he knew they had been paralysed for several days, they could hardly move on their beds.

Wow!" Aubrey said.

"Not only did Jesus heal his brothers, he also healed a man who was sick and had visited various physicians, they told him no medicine could save him. The man was destined to die. It was a miracle.”

Suddenly going to hang out with his friends wasn't top priority anymore, he wanted to see the end of this.

It was the year of the Passover feast and the time for the people to partake in the feast drew near.

When Jesus looked around and saw the number of people who had come to him, the young lad heard him ask Philip, his disciple, 'where shall we buy bread, that the people may eat?'

Philip answered, 'two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them that everyone may eat a little.'

The young lad looked down at his bag that contained his lunch. Normally, he would snicker at the others, run and find a secret place to eat his food, a place where he would not care about a single soul to share his food with, not even his family.

But something had changed within him, after watching all those impossible and wondrous miracles, his heart wasn't stony anymore and he wanted to share his meal. He surveyed the crowd, five thousand people, he sighed deeply, at least it would feed some people.

Not wanting to disturb Jesus, he went to Andrew.

Andrew was well known around there, he was a fisherman before he met Jesus.

He walked up to Andrew. 'If it will help, I have these.' He offered his lunch.

Andrew smiled and surprised the boy, he led him to Jesus. 'There's a young lad here who has five barley loaves and two fishes, but what are they amongst so many?' He asked.

Jesus smiled warmly at the boy. 'Make the people sit down.' He replied Andrew, then he took the loaves from the boy, prayed and blessed them. Then he broke the bread and the fish and distributed it among the crowd, Jesus gave them as much as they wanted to eat.

When he was done and the people had eaten their fill, he told his disciples to gather the fragments left over that none may be lost. The boy was astonished, yes, he had eaten to his fill but surely nothing would remain. Yet, to his surprise, the disciples were able to gather 12 baskets from the fragments of the five barley loaves of bread and two small fishes!

"Twelve? But that's impossible!"

"It's a miracle, Aubrey. It proved to people that Jesus is indeed the prophet who is to come to the world and the young boy had his name written in history...."

“Because he shared?" She cut me off.

I shrugged. "You can say that, but sometimes God uses little things to prove bigger things...." I repeated the words my father had told me, but she cut me off again.

"So, I'll get my name written down in history if I share?

She was missing the point.

"Jessie, from now on I'll share whatever I have with you, so I'll get my name written down in history." She shook her sister awake.

"Goodnight, Aubrey." I conceded defeat as I tucked her in.

"Goodnight, Ophelia."

I surveyed the room and admired my work. While I had been talking, I had picked up the things littering the room. I arranged their cosmetics on their vanity table and their books on their reading table. All the room needed now, was some good dusting, vacuuming and airing to remove the musty smell.

I piled up the laundry baskets and took them out of the room.

"Are you leaving, Ophelia?" Aubrey asked.

I thought she was asleep. "Yes, Aubrey."

"Please don't go, stay over, please."

I thought about it, no need to worry her. "Alright, Aubrey." I replied, even though I knew I wouldn't.

At least I was off the hook, I said, 'Alright, Aubrey.' Not, 'Alright I'll stay over, Aubrey.'

I opened the door and found Anabelle leaning on the door frame. Was she eavesdropping?

I quirked an eyebrow.

Caught, she blushed.

She took the baskets from my arms and led the way to another room, which I found out to be the laundry room. And it was filled to the brim with clothes in hampers, dirty clothes.

I picked a white panty covered with brown stains, no doubt menstrual blood. I looked at Anabelle who looked away.

"Anabelle?"

"I don't have time to do the laundry." She answered quickly, before I even asked the question.

"Then what do your sisters wear to school?" I asked.

"I wash what they wear to school the next day but I don't have time to do all their laundry."

"Yours too." I remarked as I dropped the panty in a basket.

She blushed.

"Come with me." She said.

I followed her to the kitchen and stopped by the doorway. If you're guessing dirty, you're close. It was something much worse than dirty, if such a word existed, then it was what I'd use.

Dirty plates were heaped up in the sink, some had already turned bases for fungal and bacterial growth, don't get me started on the smell.

Not wanting to be rude to my host, I entered the kitchen and sat on the dining table. I placed my hand on the table to steady myself but withdrew them quickly. The surface was sticky and covered in something I could not phantom.

I placed my hands on my lap instead. Anabelle placed a bowl in front of me.

With the state of the kitchen and a couple of rooms I'd seen, I didn’t think I could stomach any food. I looked up and opened my mouth to reject it, but the look on her face told me she knew what was running through my head.

I closed my mouth and thought of the effort it took her to prepare this for me. I looked at the spoon and the bowl to ensure that it was clean.

I sighed deeply, picked the spoon and put food in my mouth. Now, I knew why Aubrey refused to eat up, what had I forced the poor girl to eat? I could feel Anabelle's eyes on me and with great effort, I swallowed. My gut reaction was to push the bowl away, then I remembered my first attempt at cooking. I was eleven and had nearly killed Luke but he didn't push my bowl away, he ate up, even if it was poison. I smiled at the memory and forced myself to finish the bowl of oats. Anabelle relaxed and joined me on the dining table.

"It has not been easy taking care of them." She said, with a sigh. "It wasn't like this before." She waved her arm around, talking about the kitchen.

"The first week they died, we cried ourselves to sleep every day, knowing we'd never see them again." She sighed deeply. "We recovered a little, a month later, we were able to go to school and do a lot of things we would not have been able to do if our parents were alive."

I quirked an eyebrow, surprised. "Things like?" I asked.

"Go out whenever and wherever we liked, come back whenever we liked, sleep by 3am, eat whatever we liked, shop till we dropped. They left us a lot of money and their lawyer was able to procure it in cash for us when I asked."

I sensed an 'until' in this story. I had finished my food, I walked to the sink filled with plates, rolled my sleeves up and started the cleaning process, Anabelle joined me.

"Until three months ago when the finances dropped, I couldn't afford to go to school anymore so I dropped out. Then, I realised the money our parents left for us was money they saved up for rainy days." She scraped leftover food pieces into the bin while I washed.

"I was the Queen Bee of Rayville high, head cheerleader, so it came as a shock to everyone when I dropped out before I could conclude my last year. A lot of my classmates were sympathetic and a few dropped by to visit."

I remembered Aubrey's statement. "Was a certain Chad amongst them?"

The look on Anabelle's face was priceless. She blushed.

"Aubrey. What did she say about him?"

I shrugged. "Nothing."

"I'm surprised, she didn’t. Aubrey hated Chad."

A thought clicked. "Is he your boyfriend?"

She blushed again, this time it up went as far as her ears.

"Yes."

"Your parents were cool with it?"

"Mum was, Dad and Aubrey weren't, and strangely, Jessie was indifferent."

I never had a boyfriend before, the one time I brought someone close to one home from London, Luke threatened the guy, scared him half to death and chased him away. My father never said a word about the incident, sometimes, I think he was behind it.

"He always came home with me after school, we studied together in my room, then joined the family for dinner before he went home. One day after studying, we got a little bit carried away...." She trailed off, her face became the same shade as that of a ripe tomato. "Aubrey walked in on us to call us down for dinner while I was…in polite terms, eating his face out."

I stopped washing and turned to stare at Anabelle wide eyed. "Are you kidding? Did she tell on you?"

"No. She walked out, never said a word about it."

I thought for a while. "That doesn't sound Aubrey-like." Now, I understood the hatred and the disgusting face she pulled when talking about him.

It was Anabelle's turn to stare at me, wide eyed. "You've just been with her for a couple of hours and you know what she's capable of?"

I shrugged.

"She insisted on sitting close to him at dinner, then she dumped a whole bowl of chili sauce onto his lap, pretended to help him clean it and smeared some more on his white shirt and managed to get some into his eyes as well. She made everything seem like it was a mistake, she even cried."

I laughed.

"Chad adored Aubrey, and after what she saw, he was ready to do anything to please her. He shrugged it off but I know Aubrey like the back of my palm, Jessie suspected foul play too, even though she had no idea what was going on.

Oh Aubrey, if not for your age, I should have recruited you into the Empire Cartel. The girl was a bundle.

"Does he still come over?" I asked.

All emotions died down instantly, and her colour came back.

"No." She answered, coldly.

"Why? What happened?" Surely, he wouldn't leave because of that small incident.

"We broke up." She sighed deeply. "When our finances dropped, Chad helped out a lot. He would give us his pocket money for the day, and we were able to feed for a day or two with it. He changed suddenly after a while, he gave us money but started expecting things in return. I didn't understand then, to me everything was fine. Shit hit the fan when I realised I had become a cheap whore. He would sleep with me, drop some money when he was done and leave."

What!

"That douche bag."

Tears were free falling from her face.

"Then I got a text from my friend, a fellow cheerleader. She sent me photos and a dreadful description of what was happening in school. Turns out the very day l left school, Chad told everybody we were done and started dating Constance; my rival. I confronted him about it, he never tried to defend himself. He told me that he was all I had left, that if I ended the relationship my sisters and I would starve, can you imagine that?"

I hugged her, not minding my wet hands. "Oh, Anabelle."

The statement she made when we first met, made sense now. She disentangled herself and we started working again.

"Well, I proved him wrong. I broke up with him, then I sold everything he bought for me, every single gift. Finally, I sold my phone so I wouldn't make the dumb move of texting him to come back. We survived for two weeks, when I exhausted the last cent, I knew I had to get a job. I searched, but no one wanted to hire me. Only the brothel agreed to hire me as a cleaner and I didn’t know it was a brothel until I started working." She blushed, then wiped her tears away. "Then I found you."

When we were done with the dishes, I refilled the sink with clean soapy water and handed a dishcloth to Anabelle, indicating I wanted her to wipe all surfaces clean.

"We exhausted the money you gave to me, it didn’t last very long, that's why I had to look for work again and luckily, the ice cream shop hired me."

While she set out to work, I searched the cupboards and found them empty, devoid of food apart from a tin of oats. I got a broom I found in the corner and started sweeping.

"I'm curious Anabelle, what did you use the money to do? The money I gave you."

She stopped working for just a second. "Well, since we were due for our rent, I paid it up and paid for another year. At least we would have a roof over our heads even if we didn't have food to eat. I also had to pay back all the debt I owed, I also went to the hospital to get my head checked, like you suggested. Then, I had to go to a pharmacy to get Jessie's drugs and inhaler. She's been having more attacks lately, I don't want her to run out of inhalers, have an attack and die."

The more attacks were as a result of her living environment, it was too dusty.

"Then, I had to settle things for their school. Immediately I was through with that, we ran out of money."

I threw the trash into the overfull waste bag and picked a mop.

"What about food, Anabelle?"

"Food?" She asked, confused.

"Did you purchase any groceries at all?"

"No."

I sighed deeply, resting my forearm on the mop. I looked at her. "You're doing your best, Anabelle but clearly your best is not good enough."

She frowned at me. "What do you mean by that?"

"Anabelle, you have two sisters, young kids that should have a variety of food to choose from..."

"But they understand the situation we're passing through!" She cut me off.

I held up a hand to silence her. "Yes Anabelle, they do and I applaud them for that but you must remember that they are growing kids and they need real food to survive." She was about to interrupt again, I held the hand up higher. "Wait, let me finish. Take Aubrey for example, what do you think is going to happen if she keeps rejecting her oats every day?" I didn't wait for her to reply. "She'll be extremely hungry, lack energy, become malnourished and all these will push her to eat food outside. She's going to start looking for a way to get money and that'll lead us to a whole book of bad habits and social vices she'll pick up as she grows older. Is that what you want?"

"No." She answered, frowning.

"And Jessie, you're lucky to have her. She understands things she's not supposed to understand at her age. Even if she won't succumb to the temptation of eating food outside, you have to consider other things."

She waited for me to continue.

I did. "Like her health for example. Why do you think her attacks have been coming frequently?" I waved my arm around. "Look at this place Anabelle, the living room, their room and all other places put together, the place is just a living death trap for Jessie, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. It’s too dusty, untidy and one day when it'll be too much for the poor girl to handle, she'll suffocate in her sleep before she can process what's happening."

Anabelle shivered and started crying.

"You did the right thing to get her drugs and inhalers but it’s better to deal with the root cause of a problem than just the surface symptom. They do say, prevention is better than cure."

I looked at the sobbing girl in front of me.

"Paying the rent too was a good idea but considering other factors, I believe it should have come later. I'm not saying you did a bad thing, you did great. Now, you are your sisters' mother, father, older sibling, relative, friend, so you have to start acting the part."

"I don't know where to start from." She sobbed, loudly.

"It’s okay, you'll get there. After all, you have me." I said with a small smile. Then it dawned on me that I had just offered help to three kids I barely knew.

From the look on Anabelle's face, I knew it was a decision I wouldn't regret.

We continued our work after she had calmed down, restoring the kitchen to a state of cleanliness.

"I thought you said you have no siblings." She asked me, after a while.

"I don't." I replied.

"Then how do you know so much about this, taking care of others."

When you grew up in a large family filled with boys and grown up men, you’d get the drift. But I bit my tongue, she didn't have to know about the Mafia, so I opted for a much safer answer.

"Intuition?"

She shrugged.

We finally finished and I checked the time. It was eleven minutes past midnight!

"Anabelle, I really have to get back to the Piacere house, it’s really late."

"I understand."

I picked up the trash bag on my way out. "We'll do the laundry and vacuum the house another day."

When I got out of their flat, I said. "Make sure you lock up. Goodnight, Anabelle."

"Goodnight, Ophelia." She said, but I didn't turn around until I had heard the sound of locks.

I deposited the trash in the bin outside and jogged down the remaining distance, back to the Piacere house, fully aware I was being followed, no doubt by Desmonda's goons.

I reached the house in record time, because I ran most of the way and jogged the rest. The house was quiet, dark, no light on inside, alerting me that everyone had gone to bed.

I prayed silently as I turned the door knob.

Click.

It opened.

Thank God. I had no idea what I would have done if they had locked me out.

I crept inside the lounge and closed the door as quietly as I could. I was about to sneak up the stairs when the lounge lights came on.

"And where do you think you're coming from?"

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