Hidden Moons

Death is the most successful of stalkers. You cannot run from it. You cannot hide from it. No matter who you are, He will find you and persecute you with His gift. All you can wish for is that He is merciful, and yet you do not know the criteria to secure such a deliverance.

Sleep had yet to take me. The racket they were all making in the sitting room bent my ears towards them and away from intrinsic dreams. Father got me out of bed. My warm legs dangled against his sides. I was too big to be carried like this any more, but as he saw me rarely my age passed in front of him slowly.

He deposited me in the sofa. Mother took my hand. My cheeks were hot. “Darling, we need to talk to you about something,” mother said.
I blinked.
Father took over. “We need to make arrangements in case anything happens to us.”
Paulette smiled at me. Tommy smiled at me.
“Would you like to live with Paulette and Tommy?” mother said.
I was not sure that I would. “Are you dying?”
“No, no,” father said, attempting to comfort me, “But we will one day”.
I started to cry.

The conversation developed around me. They decided not only that I would be left to Paulette and Tommy, along with the mahogany hall table and two charming watercolours, but also, that I would live with them for the foreseeable future.

Father had secured a 'married contract', which meant mother could join him abroad. Her face looked upset. I wondered if she was so upset then why was she leaving. She never answered me on this point.

Paulette and Tommy lived by a big chocolate factory. On misty days the smell got trapped under the low hanging clouds and plagued our noses. Their house was modern, not very large, but full of love and clattering joy. Their two children, Christopher and Jasmine, were six and ten years younger than me, respectively. I was to go from being the youngest to the oldest in one foul swoop.

I shared a bedroom with Christopher. I had the top bunk. Like everything about Paulette's life it was sparse. The duvets were brown with white and yellow circles on them. A white-painted desk in the corner had a fold out chair. I spent hours writing at its sloped top. I liked the ink well hole.

The rest of the house was 'workaday', adequate but not opulent. The kitchen had a pine table, with two benches striped down the side. Wipe clean. A cork board covered the whole of one wall, and was decorated with various pictures, notices, etc. There was a small black and white television, hanging from a bracket. No-one ever watched it.

Cupboard were full of junk. Despite mother's meticulous detail to fresh is best, Paulette was one for convenience, mainly because both she and Tommy had full-time jobs. The biscuit tin was everyone's favourite. We were allowed two before we went to bed, along with a glass of milk, but I sneaked more. Everyone in the house was constantly at chewing gum. Paulette complained I sounded like a cement mixer, but I did not really breath through my nose, because of growths, so I had no option other than to gulp air with my mouth wide open.

The radio was the real star of the kitchen. It was always on, tuned to a local station or playing tape recordings. Paulette and Tommy's house was soul central, with the occasional stray into disco. No-one felt ashamed of dancing, so we bopped around the kitchen, singing, waving our arms about, laughing and generally having a good time.

Like most kitchens there was a back door, that led out into a small garden. Paulette worked hard at her garden. She liked it to look nice. She cared what people thought. Out of the garden gate was a big park, that went on for miles, past horses' field and down to a boating lake. I loved that outside space. Having lived in a small apartment, with cramped communal gardens, for a few years, I revelled in the freedom of having somewhere to go and be.

Lots of other children lived round and about. We were never inside. We roller skating, down the paved hill, that would occasionally jam against our wheels and send us sprawling. We skipped. We played cricket and football and a strange game called 'pile on', that involved throw and catch and everyone piling on. Karen Sketchley broke her wrist. Adam did not believe her. She was crying and everything. I walked her home. Her dad had something to say about that.

I found I made friends fairly easily here. It was slightly difficult, because I went to school quite a long way away, and they were all at the same school, but that was almost an advantage, because I had new things to say. Unfortunately, my school life was not very exciting and I embellished it. Similarly, at school, because no-one knew my home friends, I was able to romanticise my social life.

I wrote from very young age. I had little notebooks, that I could hide in my folded hand. In lessons, that were boring, I amused myself by writing stories. Every dinner time friends sat around me as I read my latest scribblings. Sometimes, they were pure fiction, but often I tried to pass them off as facts.

I had a particular attraction to a boy called Adam at home. He was very cool. His father had a beautiful, red sports car. I was not that cool. I wrote of him. He was my puppet. I made him do things he had never even thought of. He was my lover. He did not know that. The girls at school, who assembled to listen to my stories, thought my life was wild and very liberal.

At home I had certain responsibilities. I had to look after Christopher from 4.00pm until 5.00pm. I liked that time when we were in the house on our own. We ate chocolate cereal mixed with syrup. We played “Gymnastic Gym”. We tumbled about like acrobats. We rode rugs down the stairs like toboggans. I once searched through Paulette and Tommy's bedroom drawers, in an attempt to find something more interesting than 'The Blues Brothers'. I was rewarded with 'The Joy of Sex'.

Staring at the pictures, hand drawn and of people, notably the men, with long hair, I marvelled at their supple abilities. Everything seemed so easy for them. They were having sex, on paper, in black and white. They had no flesh or substance, except for in their furry areas. I was disturbed that the book seemed so brown and beige. I thought sex should be red and black.

Despite mother's holy disgust when she found my masturbating at the age of six, I had continued to do so, in private, secretly. My favourite method was to wedge a pillow between my thighs and lie face down in my bed, grinding my pelvis against the cushioning. I did not know what my clitoris was. I did not touch myself directly. I was never caught.

Paulette and Tommy were not particularly demonstrative. Mother and father were not particularly demonstrative. No-one ever held hands or told anyone else they loved them. It was deemed as unnecessary. Attitude and respect were held in higher esteem. I never heard Paulette and Tommy having sex.

One day, when she was doing the washing, Paulette found a calling card for a stripper's club in Tommy's pocket. She cried for a week. The club was down near the train station. I went. I wanted to go in. I could not. I stood outside and looked at the dilapidated façade. I thought maybe the women inside were perhaps as run down as the outside. I felt a bit sick. I did not know what strippers did or what the men did who watched them. Maybe they had the same jumps in their bodies as I did when I felt sexy. Maybe their stomachs felt like they were melting, like metal ice.

“We need some time alone,” Paulette said.
“Who?” I replied.
“Tommy and I. We're a married couple. Our kids are still quite young, and going to bed early, but you're always around.”
I did not know what to say.
“Can you go to bed at 8.00pm this Friday?” she asked.
It took two seconds for me to realise that I was not wanted, that I was in the way. Paulette and Tommy were not my parents. They had just taken me in while my parents were abroad. I was angry and upset. I cannot remember what I said in response, but Paulette replied “Look, you could of gone to boarding school, but I offered to look after you”.
“I wish I had gone to boarding school,” I shouted back.
“And cost mum and dad all that money.”
“I don't care.”
“No, you never do.”

I went to bed, as requested. Christopher was sleeping. I was not allowed to turn the lights on and read. I lay flat on my back, tears rolling down my face. I could hear the television in the lounge. Paulette and Tommy were laughing. I wondered what mother and father were doing. They were probably eating steak. The faeries had told me when I was little that if I wished for something hard enough then it would happen. I crunched my eyes up until my head shook all over and my top teeth were digging into my bottom lip. I wished very hard, but I did not know who I was asking to make my wish come true. I raced to the big, bay window and pushed the net curtains aside. Right up high, in the sky, was a twinkling star. I stared at it until it went all blurry. I wished and wished and wished, “Mother, I wish you were at home, please come home”. I looked at the star. It was moving, quite quickly, and closer to me. I realised it was an aeroplane and that I had just wished on a headlight. It flashed red against the heavens. I heard it pass over head, its roaring engines thousands of miles away. I got back into bed and cried myself to sleep.

Days continued to happen, one after another. I always knew what day of the week it was according to what we were eating. Monday, egg and chips. Tuesday, the meat from Sunday, cold, with potatoes and vegetables. Wednesday, salad with quiche/omlette/etc. Thursday, hot-dogs. Friday, fish and chips. Saturday, sandwiches. Sunday, roast dinner, meat and two veg.

Routine was very important. I knew where I was, in someone else's house, not part of someone else's family, but living by their rules and rhythm. I felt grateful and resentful all at once, as I shuffled along, according to patterns that did not belong to me, always at someone else's mercy, playing by someone else's time, trying to fit into someone else's life.

I looked at the moon. I knew I could only see one side, Pink Floyd had taught me that much. My life felt like that, as if only half of it was illuminated and visible, and that is was far away from me. I was watching myself from somewhere else. I think that is why they gave me the drugs, so I could feel like I fitted in, with everyone else, so everyone else felt like I fitted in with them. It is not that I was particularly destitute, more that I had begun to exist in books, either that someone else had written or I had written myself. When you have not got anywhere to be you create your own space.

Read more!