Obsessed(3)

I was startled for a split second. My mother never put me to bed. That was something Daddy always did. I felt a jolt of jealousy cut through me. When Mom came back down, I was difficult, unresponsive, and angry. When we went upstairs, I glanced at the guest bedroom, but the door was shut, and nothing could be heard from the other side. What were they doing? Why couldn’t Daddy just come and see me?

I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. Mom said good night, but I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my back to her and stared blankly at the wall.

“Elise,” she softly said, settling down on the bed beside me, “don’t be upset.” My mother was always so good at reading me. Nothing escaped her. She rested her hand on my head and stroked my blonde hair. “Your father loves you just the same.”

“Why is that boy here?” I asked her, my voice bitter.

“That boy has been through a lot.”

“But why is he here?”

“Because he needs a place to stay. Your father has been working on his case for a while now, and he’s taken him in.”

“Forever?”

She went silent for a few moments, and then she said, “There are children who don’t have parents to put them to bed or even to say good night to. They don’t have a lot of food to eat. They go to sleep hungry and scared. They’re abandoned, Elise, and they feel pain every minute of every day. Nobody looks at them. Nobody pays them attention. They live in our world and they feel like nobody cares. Do you think that’s right?”

I paused, thinking her words through and feeling the way my heart squeezed painfully. “No,” I answered quietly. “It’s not right.”

“Now you know why Aston is here.”

She left me after that, and I wondered about the boy sleeping next door to me. I tried to imagine myself in his position, abused, without love and an empty belly. I ended up crying into my pillow. It was the first time I had vividly felt ashamed for being so selfish and sick to my stomach about how unfair the world was. I got up sometime later to grab a few tissues from the dresser when I heard my father speak from the hallway.

“It was awful, Jean,” he whispered. “It was nothing like you have ever seen. The house was in ruins. He…He was sleeping in a pillowcase to get warm. They just left him there. For days. On the concrete floor with the cockroaches. And when he saw me…” My father broke down. “He didn’t come to me, Jean. He went on his knees and begged that I wouldn’t…that I wouldn’t hurt him, and when I told him he was alright and safe, he clutched me to him and cried. Every day he’s been on my mind, and I can’t ignore it anymore.”

The tears that had dried on my face were replaced by fresh ones.

That brief moment of resentment I held for Aston being here faded away, and I never felt it again.

*

That first night was eventful. I woke up twice to the sound of screams and Daddy running to check on him. I could hear muffled sobbing in the minutes that followed, and I could picture it in my mind: Daddy holding Aston to his chest, stroking his back as he whispered, “It’s alright.”

I always thought of my father as a hero, but his growing attachment to Aston was more heroic than anything I’d ever witnessed by him. Aston had nightmares for months on end, but they lessened as time went on, and he never told Daddy what the nightmares were about.

After a while, the nightmares woke him up without the shrilling screams. We shared a wall, and I’d hear the bed creaking and his loud agonized breaths as he awoke from them. Then he tried to calm down on his own.

My heart hurt so much, I found myself knocking on the wall every time, whispering, “It’s okay, Aston. I’m here. It was just a dream. I’m here.”

Soon I wouldn’t have to say anything. I’d just knock on the wall and wait for him to calm down, and when all was okay again, he’d knock back. That knock seared me, and I’d smile, falling asleep with my forehead pressed against the wall.





3



Elise

Before he grew and gained his looks, Aston was the silent observer, blending into the background wherever he went. He hardly smiled those first couple years he was with us, and he hardly spoke to anyone but us. For that reason, he was home-schooled in the beginning. Mom worked in the police station with Dad as an administrative secretary, and she cut down her hours and spent it teaching Aston. It was a very difficult task. Aston was initially very slow, and he barely knew how to read even the simplest words. But with Mom’s patience, he flourished, and she’d tell Daddy the hunger Aston had for learning. Education was a bonding experience for Mom and him, and it didn’t take long for her to look at him with loving eyes.