One Hundred Short Stories

10. Innocent

I love it when it’s Autumn.

  I love the way the beautiful, pea green leaves on the trees slowly change colour, from yellow to orange to red to brown. Beautiful Autumn colours. Impossible to replicate. No picture book can quite capture the fascinating shades of colours that litter the ground and swirl in the wind, daring me to jump up and catch them.

  I love the way the leaves wilt. The way the dry, crackly grey-brownness slowly spreads from the centre of the leaf to the very edges, curling them inwards as if to preserve precious warmth.

  But after Autumn, I wonder … where do the Autumn leaves go? One day, you can’t take a single step without encountering one, but the next morning … there’s hardly an Autumn leaf left in sight.

  I asked Betty once. I thought, she is older than me, she goes to school. She will know.

  But Betty said she didn’t know.

  So I asked Auntie Grace. Auntie Grace will know, I thought, because she is tall, very tall and very smart.

  Auntie Grace said that it because they wilted into the ground and were blown away. I didn’t think that was right. I thought it must be because of the fairies.

  They call me innocent, simple-minded. I don’t mind. I don’t know what those words mean, anyway. They whisper amongst each other behind cupped hands, sending guilty glances at me, and sometimes I catch a few words of the conversation. I hear words like, “shock”, “trauma”, and “ever since her mother…” Ever since my mother what? What is a mother anyway? So many things I don’t know … and that is why they call me innocent.

  I live in different places. Sometimes I live in the hospital, with its strong, unidentifiable hospital smell and the uniform beds lacking hand knitted blankets. Sometimes I live with a person they call a caregiver. The person it is varies. Most often it is a lady called Isobel Gardener. Isobel is short, much shorter than other ladies I’ve seen, almost my height, but they say that I’m tall for my age. Isobel always wears flowing, rainbow clothes which I think Auntie Grace disapproves of, and she has the biggest smile you’ve ever seen.

  When Isobel and I visited Auntie Grace once, in her big white house with its silver cutlery and delicate china, I asked her why she wasn’t my caregiver. She is my auntie, I thought. She should look after me.

  When I asked, Auntie Grace gave a small start and spilt her tea onto the pretty white tablecloth, spreading a light brown stain. She glared at me as if it were my fault. “Annie!” she hissed in a hushed voice. “Don’t be so rude!”

  “I’m sorry, Auntie Grace,” I said, looking down at my lap and wondering what I had done wrong.

  “It’s alright, Tabby,” said Isobel, putting her chubby arm around me. “You didn’t realise.”

  People call me different things too. Auntie Grace and Betty, her daughter, call me Annie. Isobel calls me Tabby, or Tabitha. The doctors call me Ellen-Rose, and the nurses call me Little Girl. People I don’t know, who we pass on the street, they call me That Poor Thing and Unfortunate Child. They think I don’t hear them. But I do.

  Once, when I was out on a walk with another caregiver, Ms Sullivan, we met a boy and his father. Ms Sullivan seemed to know the man, so while they talked the boy and I wandered over to a nearby park.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Billy,” said the boy. “What’s yours?”

  I thought about it for a second. “I don’t know,” I finally answered.

  He looked at me strangely. “You don’t know your name?”

  “I have lots of names. People call me what they want. So you can too.”

  “That’s weird,” said the boy, looking at me strangely again.

  “Where do you live?” I asked, trying to veer the conversation back to a familiar path.

  The boy looked right into my eyes and I stared back. He looked scared. But that can’t be right, I told myself. Why would he be scared? Finally he spluttered out the name of the town he lived in.

  “What street? What does your house look like?” I asked, curious.

  He looked me in the eyes one more time. The panic was impossible to miss. He started to run, away from me and back to where his father and Ms Sullivan were, his little feet pounding on the wet grass and sending up sprays of water in his wake.

  “Wait!” I called out to him, running to catch up. “Where are you going? Is this a game?”

  “Daddy!” he screamed, “Daddy, help! She’s a freak! I think she – I think she –”

  We stumbled back onto the pathway where Billy’s father and Ms Sullivan were. They had halted mid-conversation and now the boy was in his father’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably, tears streaming like waterfalls down his cheeks, pointing a shaking finger accusingly at me. He gasped, “Daddy, I think she wants to kill me!”

  Tears welled up in my eyes and I ran back to the safety of Ms Sullivan.

  “I don’t want to kill you!” I cried, now sheltering in Ms Sullivan’s arms. “I just wanted to be friends!”

  The boy’s father looked up from his son with confusion in his eyes. “Rosemarie,” he said, addressing Ms Sullivan, “What’s this all about?”

  “Stay there, Annie dear,” said Ms Sullivan and she walked over to the man. She whispered in his ear and after a couple of minutes his eyes widened in realization. “Oh,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  Ms Sullivan came back over to where I was standing: shivering, tear-streaked and indignant. I tapped Ms Sullivan’s hand and she leaned down so I could whisper in her ear. “What happened?” She just shook her head.

  I caught a glimpse of the boy and his father talking too. “She’s … different, Billy,” he explained in a soft voice.

  We began to walk away in our respective directions, but Billy and his father were still within earshot when I heard him reply fiercely, “She’s a freak!”

  Auntie Grace died a month later. Heart attack, the doctors said. I didn’t understand at first and Isobel had to explain it to me.

  “She’s … dead. Gone. Like – like your mother –” Isobel gasped suddenly and clapped her hand to her mouth, eyes wide.

  Oh. So that’s what happened to my mother.