“Mom!” I yell down the hall.
I run through my house, carefully dodging the rubble on my way to the back room where my mother is crying. I call out to her; Calix is close behind me calling as well, he sometimes calls her ‘mom’ with his Australian accent that makes it sound like ‘mum’.
I burst through her bedroom door, she’s sitting at the foot of her bed clutching a box of tissues, and my little sister Zula is comforting her. Zula is 12 years old, but she is wise beyond her years. Throughout the years of her life my parents have tried to protect her from the world by not telling her the important things that make it bad; poverty, hunger, global warming, kidnapping, war, domestic violence…and when they thought they had her fooled, she would smile to herself keeping inside the fact that she knew better, that she would never let them pull the wool over her eyes. Now here she is, hugging her distressed mother, comforting her, she is strong and wise because she made herself that way.
“Mom?” I say softly.
She looks up at me, her face is bruised and battered and cut like she’d been hit. I don’t want to believe that my dad, her own husband, had done that to her. I expected her to bury her head in her hands after me seeing her like that, but her expression grew worried.
“Casey!” she exclaims. “What happened to you?” I had forgotten about my own beaten face, but I do not want to talk about me.
“Forget about me, what happened to you? What happened to the house? What did Oliver do?”
“Your father didn’t do anything, not to me…he just…he got really angry with you after you left and he…” she gestures to the rest of the house with a wave of her hand but can’t form any words, now she hides her face.
I look at Zula, she knows what I’m thinking “I was in my room, I locked the door. I only came out when I couldn’t hear anything, and I…” she squeezes her mother tighter. Calix pushes past me and kneels down beside them, speaking soft, reassuring words. I don’t go to them.
I look back out to the house, down the hall. I walk by the fallen pictures and broken pots, each room is demolished in some way, all except a small room, door slightly ajar, a fist sized hole that dints it but nothing on the inside damaged. Zula must’ve been terrified but at least she was safe. I keep walking to the front of the house where the kitchen, dining and living rooms join, it’s the worst here. Photo frames smashed, paintings ripped, holes in the walls, tables and chairs hturned up, things thrown all around the room. He sure did a thorough job. Astrid is in the living room, she’s crouched down over something.
Grandma Sophie sits quietly outside on the porch swing; it must be bliss inside her head. I walk over to where the DVD player sits in shreds on the stove top, a snapped ROM-COM disc amongst it all. A toppled book case lies on the floors with the books scattered absolutely everywhere. By the kettle is a book with its pages ripped and cover torn. ‘Lonely Girl,’ it’s mom’s favourite book, she has a great care for books so this will hurt her. Scattered in pieces are the remains of what looks like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ I always hated it when mom would read it in the living room, Oliver I think hated it the most judging by the way it’s so violently shredded.
I take Lonely Girl off the kettle and turn it on; I get the tea ready for Grandma Sophie. Astrid comes over from where she was crouching, she’s holding a broken picture frame carefully in both her hands, and she seems captivated by it.
“Is this you? Your family?” she asks. She shows me the picture of me when I was 6 years old, my mum and Oliver are both holding baby Zula, I’m sitting on Grandma Sophie’s lap to the left of Oliver, and my older sister Keely is beside mom clasping her arm tight. The photo was taken when we were all on a picnic at the Summerville Park by a friendly stranger. It’s the only picture of us all as a family, where we are all truly happy.
“Yeah that’s us,” I say without looking at Astrid, she goes back to looking at the picture. Keely is 19 now, she was 9 in the picture. Keely left home one day after she turned 17 and we haven’t seen or heard from her since. All I got was a text from her, a reply to my many texts and calls, all it said was ‘sorry, I had to’ and that was the last piece of evidence that she even existed anymore. I feel like ripping the photo from her hands, like this is our moment and she’s spoiling it. I don’t know what she’d do if I snatched if from her though, so I stay quiet and still.
The kettle clicks off and I pour the boiling water into the cup. Astrid speaks to me with her eyes still glued to the picture. “your grandmother is very nice, she makes a lot of sense to me and that makes me feels less…” she searches for the right word, she settles on one “scared I guess”.
I look at her in disbelief “Really, my granny made sense? All she does is talk nonsense all day; nothing says makes sense.”
Astrid looks up at me. “Not true, she’s a very wise lady with some very valid points, and she listens to me. It feels good to have my own opinions acknowledged.” She lowers her head and goes back to looking at the picture. “If I do have a family, I don’t think they’ve ever made me feel special. That’s if I have a family, I feel like I don’t even have that.” She looks at me with wide eyes. “Why can’t I remember anything? What happened to me?”
“I’m asking myself the same thing,” I mumble as I carry the tea out to Grandma Sophie, I keep my eyes away from Astrid. She follows me out.
“Here Grandma Sophie,” I say, she turns her head to me and smiles.
“Oh, thank you dear. How’s your mother?” she sips her tea.
“Distraught, how could you sit out here and be so calm about all this?”
“Well it’s not like I could’ve done anything Casey, why worry about something that’s out of your control? Why worry at all? I’m an old lady; I’ve had plenty of days to worry about nothing.” I hate how she makes so much sense; it’s the wrong kind of sense, the kind of sense that doesn’t deserve to be right.
Astrid sits on the swing beside Grandma Sophie. “Why did you call me Astrid? Of all the names or nicknames, why did you call me that?”
“That name has a great meaning for you; it suits you to a tee. From what you told me about yourself I could tell ‘Astrid’ would be perfect.”
“It suits me? Does it mean lost or insane or frantic? That’s what I assume you got when I told you about myself” her tone shows she is offended.
“You have little faith in yourself my dear, you say you are lost, insane and frantic, but that’s not what I got from your description. You told me of how you overthrew Casey and could’ve snapped his neck if you wanted to, and you did by the sound of it. You told me how you flew through the trees like they weren’t even there, you heard a car coming down the road before it was visible, and you found your way here with little direction given to you. No, I don’t believe you are lost, you may have been frantic for a split second, but you’re definitely not insane. You are an extraordinary woman, like no one I’ve ever met in my long life, and that’s what ‘Astrid’ means, unusual strength and beauty.” Astrid looks stunned, she was hanging on Grandma Sophie’s every word, amazed by what she heard.
“Wow” she says “I…didn’t think of myself like that but…thank you Mrs Finch” Grandma Sophie is full of surprises.
“So, you know about what names mean?” I say, “What does mine mean?” Grandma Sophie replies to Astrid, not me. She turns her head and speaks in an inaudible tone. Astrid nods like she understands. "So…what does it mean? What about mom and Zula and Keely and Calix…and Oliver? And you?” again, she just smiles and turns to speak to Astrid. It’s longer this time, probably explaining all the names I mentioned, then she presses her finger to her lips and Astrid nods once more. This is very annoying, I give up.
I walk back into the house; I’m still shocked by the mess. Calix has turned the table back on its legs and has gotten a chair from the window for my mom to sit on. Zula is in the kitchen making coffee and fetching a cookie. I feel hopeless in this situation; my friend is doing a better job at comforting my own mother than I am.
I take a chair from the place where the television should be, but two legs are missing and one is broken. I think I’ll stand. I walk back over to the table by my mom. “What happened?” is all I can ask.
She looks at me with sad, terrified eyes. “You had a fight…you and Oliver…I don’t know what it’s about but it must’ve been pretty bad.” I dropped a bottle of scotch, he got so mad at me and demanded I clean it up and pay for another one; I got a bucket of bleach, vinegar and methylated spirits and was going to throw it at him, but a slight thought flew into my head that I could blind him, and instead threw the whole bucket. He’d never except that I cared about him enough to not blind him, I tried to blind him! I didn't tell him of my breif consideration for his wellbeing, and it agitated me that he ranted on about my inconsideration. So it escalated from there, about everything else we’ve fought about.
Mom continues. “I heard him screaming after you to get back in the house, when I came out he threw the deck chair out at you then came back in the house and started wrecking everything.”
“What happened to you?” I ask
“It wasn’t his fault, he was in the middle of his rampage when he made his way down the hall, and I thought he would go into Zula’s room, I was so relieved when he found it locked. He went into my room and I followed him, I just poked my head through the door as he threw the lamp in my direction. I blocked it, but i still got a good knock.”
Calix buts in, “Vevina,” he says softly. “Where’s Oliver now?”
“I don’t know; I was dazed for a while. All I remember is him looking horrified and then making a beeline for the door.” We just sit in silence for a while, finally Zula speaks. “Is he coming back?”
“I don’t know.” I hear a distinct tinge of sadness in her voice. Could it be that his possible permantent departure is upsetting her the most? I'm glad he's gone, she should be too.
Mom lifts her head to the door, “who’s this?”
We all turn; Astrid is standing silently in the doorway. “You didn’t tell me what happened to you, please tell me” she says in a defiant tone, like an official's order that I must obey.
I ignore her, “that’s Astrid. That’s not her name, she can’t remember it. I found her in the forest; she can’t remember anything so I brought her back here. I was kind of hoping we could take her into town but…doesn’t matter”
“Well, if she’s lost we can just call the police”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t, and I’d also prefer it if you would acknowledge that I’m here when you talk about me.” Astrid says in that tone of hers.
***
We’ve just spent the last three hours putting the house back together, putting things back in their place, dropping outside the things that are broken and throwing away the things that are beyond repair. Mom has calmed down quite considerably and Zula is back to her carefree self. We all sit down and write up a list of the things we need to buy again, laughing at all that’s passed. I like these moments as a family, not quite complete but still a family, and a happy one. After that we play UNO. When mom asks me again about what happened to my face, I tell her I fell and she leaves it alone.
It takes me a while before I realise Astrid isn’t around, she’s sitting back out on the porch swing. Calix sees her alone and jumps up to call her inside, but she denies his offer with a wave of her hand and a ghost of a smile. She has that picture of my family in her hands again, and something else. She puzzles me.
Mom gets up off the sliced open couch, and walks over to the kitchen to put her coffee cup back. She looks out the window as something catches her eye. Calix and I put down our UNO cards and join her to see what she’s looking at. “What are you looking at?” I ask in a cheery tone.
I get a good look at her, her expression looks like she’s seeing the end of the world blasting towards her and there’s no time left to run, a look of peaceful hopelessness. Or it could be grateful happiness...“He’s coming,” is all she says. I look out the window to see a car driving up the long driveway, dust exploding from behind. I look back at Calix; he sees the fearful look on my face, he shakes his head and gives me an expression of worry and denial.
Daddy’s home; and nothing those Russians did could be worse than what’s going to happen to me now. I’m gonna die.
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