Chapter Five

"Ooph!!" I groaned under her surprise hug. "Susie! What the hell?! What are you doing here?!"

She just smiled, very pleased and content with herself - as she'd get whenever she felt she'd done something good for us. That was her 'surprise gift' smile, it often anteceded her declaring her pure and selfless love…

…and this was the first time I dreaded that present. The first time I pushed her arms away, eager to buy my freedom from them, to inquire and demand an answer from her. Did she come back, for me? "Oh no!" was all I could think of as Chris's face haunted my thoughts… No! She can't be back, not now, not when I lied my age, tried to be someone else, not when I was felt so close to…

"Who was that man?"

I opened my mouth to speak before I had thought of an answer. And I was just about to give her a general idea – very superficial, very far from its real importance -, when I heard steps echoing through the empty corridor upstairs. I looked up, startled, in time to see my mother's shoes on the landing, ready to descend the steps. I made a shoosh sign to Susie, and hoped she would understand it to mean that whatever she had seen was now a secret to be kept between us.

Mother came down with her usual authoritarian air – an entitled air as she looked around and moved through the house… an air I should well have accepted, and had no problem with… but the last few months getting by without her made me oddly territorial, too.

"Well, Hello, kiddo!" She was before me before her eyes had stopped wandering – they focused me at last, and she kissed my cheek, looking quite happy to see me, which was odd! As for me… I feigned it as well as I could, but it just wasn't the case.

Not under those circumstances.

And knowing my mother… she wasn't one to respect privacy, or to even acknowledge its importance in their kids' lives – any word hinting at something of the sort would be greeted with drama and hostility. Still, I navigated through her strong character to find a way to ask politely, subtly; very, very subtly – I had trained my entire childhood not to upset her, it wasn't that hard anymore – what she was doing here, and specially without prior warning.

"This is my house as much as it's yours, I can come and go whenever I please!" was her necessary reminder – one she felt the need to repeat because it wasn't quite true: that was my father's house, one his parents had left him, and one they used to live before Susie came along and the family got too big. But she wouldn't linger on the subject now, and the real reason followed soon enough: Susie had made such a lousy job at packing, she was already out of clean clothes, so my mother left her shift early and took the train here with Susie to fix the issue.

"You should have supervised her, of course! You Can't expect a 9-year-old to do a job well done!"

Susie dropped her head, despondent – she hated causing me trouble.

"I didn't know I should."

"Oh, were you waiting for me to tell you that, too?!" she laughed a forced, mocking laugh "Darling, you really need to sharpen up if you ever want to accomplish anything in this life!"

But luckily, that had been the theme of all our previous arguments, so my mother didn't feel like sitting me down for a good earful this time around. I suspect she was rather close to giving up…

"Anyway…" she sung, about to jump topics.

Yes. Of course there was something else, there always was with her! If Susie's clean clothes were all she needed, she'd just call me and make me take the trip myself, because it was 'my fault' in the first place. The lights upstairs must be on for a reason…

I accompanied her to the kitchen, where we sat down to talk. She started feigning casualness by mentioning how the second floor was bigger than she remembered – 'a house in itself, really': it was comprised of two small bedrooms and one bathroom at the end of the narrow corridor. Nothing big about it… specially nothing surprising. She eventually spoke her mind: It was wasteful to have all that empty space lying around, we should make some profit out of it.

"Fine" I shrugged.

"…And since Susie is coming to the city with me, you should come too, then we can put this whole place for rent. The extra money would afford us a lot of comfort, you know…"

I should have seen that coming. When my parents divorced, my father sold most of his possessions and split the money. This house wasn't sold because it was dear to him – instead, he passed it on to us, his children, so my mother would quit her whining. And though she was content enough at first, she wouldn't let sleeping dogs lie, especially when it came to money – and getting more of it.

"No way! You can find a tenant for the upstairs bedrooms, I don't care… but down here, that's my home!"

"But we can get us another home – a bigger one, right by the park…"

"I don't want to go to the city, I want to stay here!! I don't even care about that money, you can keep it all to yourself, as long as you let me stay!"

"Like I'd ever trust leaving my baby behind to share this house with some stranger…" she smiled kindly as she tried to play me, but I had suffered through enough of that, too.

I stood my ground, and of course, drama followed – it always did whenever she didn't get her way. Susie watched us go back and forth with curious, innocent eyes. Though she knew how to fear our mother, she didn't know what an opportunistic bitch she could be sometimes…

"It's not your house, you don't get to decide!" she declared at last, tired of arguing.

"It's not yours either! It's dad's, and he passed it on to us!"

"You don't get to claim your inheritance with both of us still alive, dear…" she sneered.

"If you insist it's not my house, then fine! I'm gonna tell Dad you're using us to profit off the house, he'll kick us all out and claim it to himself, and then all your precious money will be invested into his new girlfriend!!"

Vile words, inflaming ideas… My mother was furious at the mental picture I had just given her, but I myself wouldn't have thought of that: it was just something she loved parroting long before my father ever started cheating on her: she couldn't stand the idea of anyone ever getting something she considered to be hers. She always had to be the top dog… Of course, only recently I had started opposing her. I was not yet accustomed to the outcome: unable to settle for one approach, she began both abusing me and crying dramatically saying I'd disappoint her into her early grave; then she'd turn her cries to Susie and beg she wouldn't grow up to be such an ungrateful little monster as the middle child had.

My muscles were already aching, moved by an uncomfortable buzz of agitation from lying to Chris – and from having him look at me as he did at the door… as she did now: as if I was all wrong! Suddenly, this was too much. I felt it overwhelm me: the heat around my chest, the fury shaking my bones. I screamed. My explosion was not respected, of course it didn't bear the same importance as hers always did – the abuse continued, so I locked myself up in my room and from there I screamed my own insults at her as she called me an ungrateful child who had no love for anyone but myself.

"You're a baby!" she sneered at the door on her way out, seeing as I wouldn't leave my room after an hour or so to pretend nothing had happened and acquiesce to her plots, as she expected me to. "Such a baby! You don't know anything about anything! So help me God…"

I pressed my palms against my ears, shoved my head under my pillow and prayed my heart would stop racing so fast… For one careless moment, I believe I prayed it would stop.

…but luckily, it carried on beating. And I didn't answer the door, didn't answer my mother, didn't even answer Susie when she gently asked me to open – I knew she was too young to know she was being used. Even after they finally left, I lay there and I fumed – so angry, so tired of her disrespect, of her careless words… the only good thing I had to feed the fire of how cold my chest became were those memories, those fantasies and those hopes… but even they distressed me now. Chris was angry at me: he thought I lied about living alone, and it was all her fault!

…But that could be mended – I dried my tears on the back of my hand. It could be explained, if I only got the chance to see him again before the autumn break activities were over. I wasn't a baby, like my mother said. I wasn't helpless… I would show them!