"It's bad enough, Rita with the kids we've got," the woman was blonde and
she looked pleasant enough, rotund and smiling. "Jim's just working from
job to job, the shipyards sometimes need him," she leaned a little on the
verandah of the house as she spoke, "sometimes they don't."
Rita scowled, "I'm not keep him, Virgie. Lord knows the father couldn't stick around for it. He's runty, that one. I don't want him."
"Well what are you going to do? Just abandon him at the side of the road? Lord's sake Rita, you've lived next door to the woman for ten years!"
"We both know she's crazy, going on about how Tom Riddle is the father of her baby, she named the boy after him! I don't want to have that sort of family living in my house! It was bad enough being next to her, with her mannerisms. but the child living with me?"
"Why is he here anyway?"
Rita sighed and pulled another shirt from the depths of her washing machine. "They sent him to live with a friend of the mother. Supposedly they were trying to sell him to Chinese meat merchants, but you know how people talk. Guess they just didn't want him, so he shows up on my door stoop with a carpet bag."
"Have you tried an orphanage?"
Rita looked affronted. "An orphanage?"
Virgie shrugged, sitting down on one of the milk crates that lined the broken down verandah. "Nobody wants him, Rita, and they aren't just like kittens, you can't drown 'em when there's too many. What's it to you if you just hop him off to the nuns at St. Jerome's."
"They wouldn't want that one Virgie; there's something odd with him. The way he looks at you. it's eerie."
"It'll keep him out of trouble, at least. A place to go, he'll get a good Catholic upbringing, maybe keep him from turning out like his Mam."
"I suppose it might work, but don't they train the children at St. Jerome's to go into nunneries or enter the priesthood? I can't see him ever amounting to anything useful."
From the doorway, dark eyed Tom Riddle Jr. watched the conversation, tears biting at his eyes and a leather bound book clutched in his hand.
+++
This family's name was Kahana. Mrs. Kahana was rotund, firm looking. Her jaw was big and there was a fine dusting of black hair on her upper lip. Mr. Kahana was tall, much taller then other men seemed to be. He mostly wore his shirtsleeves and smelled of fish and juniper.
The nights he smelled mostly of juniper were the worst. Sometimes on those nights, Mrs. Kahana would come up behind him crying, "stop it, Hadeon, please stop it!" and Mr. Kahana would turn the belt on her, his gin-addled eyes flaring and short bursts of air shooting from his mouth like steam.
Tom would lie on the battered wooden floor breathing heavily. He wished he were bigger. Older. He wished that he could rip the belt from Mr. Kahana's hand and inflict the same punishment that he had endured. He wished that he could inflict it a thousand times worse. He wanted to hear Mr. Kahana bellow in pain. He wanted to display his dead body in the air, warn others of the power instilled in the diminutive body of Thomas Marvolo Riddle.
He thought of the stories in the papers, shoved asides because the news about a man named Hitler were more important. The stories were small, only two or three paragraphs. About shameful women found in the dark alleyways of London streets; bludgeoned or mutilated. Molested. He didn't know what molested meant; it sounded contemptuous. Like reducing a human being to a mere plaything. Tom Riddle, living as a Kahana, would someday be reduced to a four-paragraph blurb about a bludgeoned boy stuffed in an alley. Molested.
+++
Tom clenched his teeth together when he saw the door creak open. There he was again, silhouetted against the fluorescent lights lining the hallway. He moved swiftly into the room, avoiding the cots where Guy and Isaac lay asleep. "Hello, Tommy," the priest whispered sitting down on the bed. Tom inadvertently rolled towards him as the ancient bed creaked and tilted towards Father Marcus. Closing his eyes, Tom desperately tried to pretend he was asleep.
"I know you're awake," Father Marcus whispered, "I can see your eyelids flickering." He reached for the moth-eaten sheet and peeled it away, revealing Tom in his ragged nightshirt. Tom lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, pretending that he could see the night sky outside as Father Marcus chuckled and muttered something to himself.
His lip was in pain; he was bleeding. He tensed more as he noticed this, before realizing that it was his teeth that had caused the incision. He suppressed a sob, lying there in an orphanage in Whitechapel, his nightshirt bunched up around his waist.
When Father Marcus left, seven-year-old Tom Riddle pulled the sheet over his body, curled into the foetal position and cried.
+++
There was a letter. On his ragged cot. Tom looked furtively around the room, wondering why none of the other boys saw it. Why none of them had pounced on it, ripped it apart and destroyed its sanctity before he had even seen it. He took the envelope in his hands, felt its weight. He opened it slowly, savouring the idea that someone had written to him. About what, he didn't know, but he didn't care either. Tom Riddle was somebody.
He read slowly, sounding out the letters. The nuns made him read a psalm every day. He was getting better at it. Certainly better than when he had lived with the Kahanas. Greedily he read the letter, as if it were a chocolate cake that he and he alone was allowed to have.
Hogwarts. Hogwarts? He wanted to cry. He had been so sure that it was a letter of importance. A letter informing him that his real mother had been found. That she was a comfortable, plump woman with fat arms and an apron stained by years of cooking. Instead, there was a note telling him that he was a wizard. He wished it were true. He could go downstairs and blast each nun and priest away. He could punish them for their sins, for they were indeed worse than he. He could send them to their penance. Let them burn for everything they had done.
The more Tom thought about it, the more he wished it were reality. He imagined destroying the whole orphanage, the slums around it. He imagined wiping the whole of the Abyss from the world. Like the picture on the newspapers, of faraway lands with musical names, Sobieski, Prague, Budapest, all bombed, rolled over. Mutilated. Molested.
When reality happened, he thought that maybe all the "Hail Mary"s had paid off.
+++
Witch. Wizard. Muggle. They sounded so foreign, but they marked another letter. A letter in his vault, sad and small as it was. So this was his mother. This pathetic woman who wrote several pages to him, whining about her difficult pregnancy, attempting to assure him that she loved him despite the fact that she promptly died and left him alone to face the world. Most importantly, she told him of Salazar. His ancestor, they shared blood. Tom Riddle, the dirty eleven year old who was punched and kicked, too thin and too short, he was a descendent of the most powerful wizarding family ever known. Granted it was the only wizarding family he knew of at the moment, but it gratified him to no end. Slytherin. Snake- tongued. Muggle-hater.
Tom Riddle was half-muggle.
He wondered if that would dilute his blood. Would stop the effects that Slytherin blood had. He didn't want to be muggle. Not for the first time, he cursed his father. He cursed his dirty, common, muggle father. A father who left his mother and left Tom, who became the bastard child of nobody.
He wished he could open his body and drain out the muggle blood. Let himself become the all-powerful Slytherin that his forefather had wanted. He wished he could show this new self to every muggle who had ever pushed him too far. He fingered his new wand; it had a core of phoenix feather. Phoenixes were said to live forever.
He wanted to harm people. He wanted to do to them what they did to him, only worse. He wanted them to fear him. Bow to him. Kneel at his side as they had forced him to do. He wanted to leave them dead in alleyways, bludgeoned and mutilated and molested. He wanted them to fear him.
Rita scowled, "I'm not keep him, Virgie. Lord knows the father couldn't stick around for it. He's runty, that one. I don't want him."
"Well what are you going to do? Just abandon him at the side of the road? Lord's sake Rita, you've lived next door to the woman for ten years!"
"We both know she's crazy, going on about how Tom Riddle is the father of her baby, she named the boy after him! I don't want to have that sort of family living in my house! It was bad enough being next to her, with her mannerisms. but the child living with me?"
"Why is he here anyway?"
Rita sighed and pulled another shirt from the depths of her washing machine. "They sent him to live with a friend of the mother. Supposedly they were trying to sell him to Chinese meat merchants, but you know how people talk. Guess they just didn't want him, so he shows up on my door stoop with a carpet bag."
"Have you tried an orphanage?"
Rita looked affronted. "An orphanage?"
Virgie shrugged, sitting down on one of the milk crates that lined the broken down verandah. "Nobody wants him, Rita, and they aren't just like kittens, you can't drown 'em when there's too many. What's it to you if you just hop him off to the nuns at St. Jerome's."
"They wouldn't want that one Virgie; there's something odd with him. The way he looks at you. it's eerie."
"It'll keep him out of trouble, at least. A place to go, he'll get a good Catholic upbringing, maybe keep him from turning out like his Mam."
"I suppose it might work, but don't they train the children at St. Jerome's to go into nunneries or enter the priesthood? I can't see him ever amounting to anything useful."
From the doorway, dark eyed Tom Riddle Jr. watched the conversation, tears biting at his eyes and a leather bound book clutched in his hand.
+++
This family's name was Kahana. Mrs. Kahana was rotund, firm looking. Her jaw was big and there was a fine dusting of black hair on her upper lip. Mr. Kahana was tall, much taller then other men seemed to be. He mostly wore his shirtsleeves and smelled of fish and juniper.
The nights he smelled mostly of juniper were the worst. Sometimes on those nights, Mrs. Kahana would come up behind him crying, "stop it, Hadeon, please stop it!" and Mr. Kahana would turn the belt on her, his gin-addled eyes flaring and short bursts of air shooting from his mouth like steam.
Tom would lie on the battered wooden floor breathing heavily. He wished he were bigger. Older. He wished that he could rip the belt from Mr. Kahana's hand and inflict the same punishment that he had endured. He wished that he could inflict it a thousand times worse. He wanted to hear Mr. Kahana bellow in pain. He wanted to display his dead body in the air, warn others of the power instilled in the diminutive body of Thomas Marvolo Riddle.
He thought of the stories in the papers, shoved asides because the news about a man named Hitler were more important. The stories were small, only two or three paragraphs. About shameful women found in the dark alleyways of London streets; bludgeoned or mutilated. Molested. He didn't know what molested meant; it sounded contemptuous. Like reducing a human being to a mere plaything. Tom Riddle, living as a Kahana, would someday be reduced to a four-paragraph blurb about a bludgeoned boy stuffed in an alley. Molested.
+++
Tom clenched his teeth together when he saw the door creak open. There he was again, silhouetted against the fluorescent lights lining the hallway. He moved swiftly into the room, avoiding the cots where Guy and Isaac lay asleep. "Hello, Tommy," the priest whispered sitting down on the bed. Tom inadvertently rolled towards him as the ancient bed creaked and tilted towards Father Marcus. Closing his eyes, Tom desperately tried to pretend he was asleep.
"I know you're awake," Father Marcus whispered, "I can see your eyelids flickering." He reached for the moth-eaten sheet and peeled it away, revealing Tom in his ragged nightshirt. Tom lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, pretending that he could see the night sky outside as Father Marcus chuckled and muttered something to himself.
His lip was in pain; he was bleeding. He tensed more as he noticed this, before realizing that it was his teeth that had caused the incision. He suppressed a sob, lying there in an orphanage in Whitechapel, his nightshirt bunched up around his waist.
When Father Marcus left, seven-year-old Tom Riddle pulled the sheet over his body, curled into the foetal position and cried.
+++
There was a letter. On his ragged cot. Tom looked furtively around the room, wondering why none of the other boys saw it. Why none of them had pounced on it, ripped it apart and destroyed its sanctity before he had even seen it. He took the envelope in his hands, felt its weight. He opened it slowly, savouring the idea that someone had written to him. About what, he didn't know, but he didn't care either. Tom Riddle was somebody.
He read slowly, sounding out the letters. The nuns made him read a psalm every day. He was getting better at it. Certainly better than when he had lived with the Kahanas. Greedily he read the letter, as if it were a chocolate cake that he and he alone was allowed to have.
Hogwarts. Hogwarts? He wanted to cry. He had been so sure that it was a letter of importance. A letter informing him that his real mother had been found. That she was a comfortable, plump woman with fat arms and an apron stained by years of cooking. Instead, there was a note telling him that he was a wizard. He wished it were true. He could go downstairs and blast each nun and priest away. He could punish them for their sins, for they were indeed worse than he. He could send them to their penance. Let them burn for everything they had done.
The more Tom thought about it, the more he wished it were reality. He imagined destroying the whole orphanage, the slums around it. He imagined wiping the whole of the Abyss from the world. Like the picture on the newspapers, of faraway lands with musical names, Sobieski, Prague, Budapest, all bombed, rolled over. Mutilated. Molested.
When reality happened, he thought that maybe all the "Hail Mary"s had paid off.
+++
Witch. Wizard. Muggle. They sounded so foreign, but they marked another letter. A letter in his vault, sad and small as it was. So this was his mother. This pathetic woman who wrote several pages to him, whining about her difficult pregnancy, attempting to assure him that she loved him despite the fact that she promptly died and left him alone to face the world. Most importantly, she told him of Salazar. His ancestor, they shared blood. Tom Riddle, the dirty eleven year old who was punched and kicked, too thin and too short, he was a descendent of the most powerful wizarding family ever known. Granted it was the only wizarding family he knew of at the moment, but it gratified him to no end. Slytherin. Snake- tongued. Muggle-hater.
Tom Riddle was half-muggle.
He wondered if that would dilute his blood. Would stop the effects that Slytherin blood had. He didn't want to be muggle. Not for the first time, he cursed his father. He cursed his dirty, common, muggle father. A father who left his mother and left Tom, who became the bastard child of nobody.
He wished he could open his body and drain out the muggle blood. Let himself become the all-powerful Slytherin that his forefather had wanted. He wished he could show this new self to every muggle who had ever pushed him too far. He fingered his new wand; it had a core of phoenix feather. Phoenixes were said to live forever.
He wanted to harm people. He wanted to do to them what they did to him, only worse. He wanted them to fear him. Bow to him. Kneel at his side as they had forced him to do. He wanted to leave them dead in alleyways, bludgeoned and mutilated and molested. He wanted them to fear him.