ASTRID S.
As usual, no copyrights infringements, all rights belongs to authors and producers.
I have a name that begins with the first letter of the alphabet.
It is a family tradition from my mother's side.
My father not opposing.
I'm the first, the oldest, the start of my family.
Now I'm the only one.
I'm sitting in a room without enough memories of growing up here.
My father is with me, this man with sad blue eyes, who looks at me afraid to miss any single move of his girl, as he calls me.
We're alone.
We were a family before. Two will never return.
All we have now are scattered books on a shelf, belonging to somebody else, who will return.
I hated that place at first, it was cold and grey.
The man who took care of us was older than my dad, sharper.
Not smooth like my first dad was… when he was at home.
The other dad spent more time with us, he lived in a two floor wooden house, too big for a man alone.
Me and Anna played hide and seek when he was out for shopping or visiting the white haired old lady.
I'm Agnes, I wear a hooded mantel, like the figure in a poem I found in an English book.
I walk around and nobody sees me.
Nobody thinks poor little Astrid is able to become me.
I feel powerful.
I do not belong to this place, when I'm 18 I'll go away and nobody will stop me.
I have nothing to loose and nothing to return to.
But I want to see the house I remember from my past, I will be able to find it, somehow.
Anna woke up from a bad dream screaming mom's name. I asked her to be brave. Mom was dead, like dad. She could not understand what dead meant so I explained her they were flying over our heads and she spent hours looking up.
I hear Dad today talking on his phone, it's the woman he always talks to. She's away for a while, he says.
I have a picture of her on my phone, I copied from dad's.
The woman who saved my life.
She's blonde and has a scar on her chin. When Dad speaks about her, his eyes got a different light. I think he miss her a lot.
He tells me she is his best friend. I do hope she returns soon, so Dad can have always that special light.
I find a white pill in a kitchen drawer while I look for a ice spoon. It smells different from the painkillers I had to take for my leg. I ask dad what it is and he takes it off my hand and threws it in the sink like it was burning.
I question him and he hugs me so strong I crush against his ribs.
Frank told me mom and dad were in a marriage trouble and wanted to divorce..
But this woman we have in the house now is different.
Dad must have some troubles in finding mates.
She doesn't touch dad a lot, I see. And she doesn't touch me either, like my new friends' mothers do.
I do not like to be touched nowadays, but I remember dad was more partial to hug all of us.
They sleep in the same bedroom and once I heard them having sex, I'm sure. They try to hide it from me; I've read a lot, I know what sex means, I imagine how they touch in bed.
Anna's tombstone. I feel so alone now, I've lost everybody.
Anna is with Mom and dad now, why I'm allowed to live?
Is there a purpose in for my life?
Agnes says it's Frank fault, he will pay for letting Anna die.
I draw Dad and Saga, together.
I heard them last night, my door was not full closed.
Talking about a lost child. And it was not Anna, it was theirs.
Dad wanted it, she refused and now has some regrets.
So I ask Dad if we are a family now and he tells me it is not so easy to explain.
I'd like again a mother and a sibling, I say.
He sits on a chair and observes me for a very long time, in silence.
He never let any body enter in our house while I was away, except her, so he is sorry but he cannot offer me a better mother than Saga.
Maybe a sibling, although at her age it is difficult, he still had the hope.
But Saga gave me life twice, in finding and saving me, so for dad she is indeed my second mother.
Frank trial starts and I don't want to see him. Saga believes I have the right to know and to avoid him for ever, like she did with her own father. And mother, evil parents.
She had been starved and beaten and kept cold and more so many times she lost count, and also her sister.
It is a revelation for me, she had been a big sister, too, and she misses hers like I miss mine.
She says we share the same pain and I am happy she is now with me
Christopher lips on mine were like butterflies, were danger and hope and something more that could not be. Because we were in a place that was not ours, not meant to be.
He is waiting under arrest for his trial but I cannot go and see him, I'm another girl now, I've changed my life and I do not want to look back.
Frank wanted to control me and I was no more a little girl. When he went to work I took the mantel and hid in my secret place, where Agnes could create her other world, without him.
Nobody could see me there, and once a woman who insisted too much about my whereabouts had her tyres flat after Agnes worked on them.
He points a weapon at me.
The old hunting rifle he keeps in a locked closet.
Outside men scream, inside smoke fills the rooms.
Shots.
I run, I hide, I'm terrified.
Frank wants to kill me.
Incoherent words, loud voices.
Then silence and a masked man finds me.
He's police. I remember something.
Police is good. Mum. Trust police.
The masked man leads me outside, out of the white fog.
Police is safe.
There is a tall man in the garden. He looks at me, he come closer, he has a crutch... his eyes, his face.
Police is Dad.
He's not dead.
When Dad takes me to the therapist, I don't want to talk about Frank.
It is too painful to bear it, because that man lied to me for eight years.
Later at home the realisation hits me hard, like a car would.
I scream and fight against Dad, my rage is too strong and he is scared of me, of Agnes, he stares at me like I was another girl, not his.
I hit him, I want to make him pay for what Frank did to us.
Saga come to our help, she grabs my arms and keep me still, her grasp is strong and secure, then she hugs me and calls me Jennifer between my hair.
We embrace each other.
I have a family again.