#47 Family
(A/N: This one's very depressing, you have been warned. What's even more depressing is most of it's probably true. The song is Concrete Angel by Martina McBride, I altered some of the lyrics to better suit the story but not drastically)
He walked to school every morning. That meant walking through little village streets, where mothers were already busy starting their housework, throwing up clouds of dust and crumbs.
Sometimes he'd turn his face to the smells of breakfast that still lingered, and pretended his own stomach didn't ache with hunger.
He walks to school with the lunch He packed
Nobody knows what He's holding back
None of the children around here wore long sleeves without a good reason. He never wore anything but. It was the only way to hide the bruises. He didn't understand why he felt the strange need to hide them.
On some level, he wanted one of the mothers who saw him every day, walking alone to the school, to ask him why he was covering his arms up like that. He wanted one of them to ask why his father never walked him to school.
Wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday
He hides the bruises with a smiling face, oh
He often watched the other children arrive to school. He wondered why they all looked so happy. He wanted his own mother to walk him to school like theirs did.
But she wasn't there anymore.
The mothers did notice him, of course, a sad, lonely little boy with no parent standing beside him. Hiding around corners like he was scared of being seen. And a lot of them gossiped to one another that they'd heard Kane Jeevas went out drinking every night, leaving his son alone.
The ones who lived nearby whispered that they sometimes heard crying from the house at night.
None of the kids spoke to him, even at so young an age; they could sense something different about him, and didn't want to get sat at the back of class, out of sight most of the time. Not that he was stupid, he was a very bright boy, but he just… felt so tired. He'd sit to write an answer, and his mind would wander to the clock, and how much longer he could stay away from home.
The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask
The teacher walked up and down the rows, and often paused to look at him.
Of course she'd been taught during training to recognise signs of abuse on a child, the distracted look in his eyes, the fearful jumping at loud noises, the way he covered his arms.
But she didn't think that was enough evidence.
At night, he'd sit alone in a corner of his room, scrubbing at his eyes until they were red-raw. Wanting his mother to be there and hold him, kiss his cheeks and tell him she loved him. Tuck him into the bed and tell him stories about better places.
Bearing the burden of a secret storm
Sometimes He wishes He was never born
Tell him that she'd never let anyone hurt him.
But she died. And though his grandmother had offered again and again to take the little boy off his hands, Kane Jeevas insisted that he could take care of his own son.
In reality, of course, he was a bully, and Mail was an easy target to take out his rage towards the world that he felt had done him wrong.
Through the wind and the rain He stands hard as a stone
In a world that He can't rise above
He tried so hard to be a good boy for his father. When there was food in the house he'd attempt to make a meal for them both. He stayed very quiet and didn't take up much room, and he never ever begged his dad to pick him up and tuck him in at night, even when he really wanted someone to care about him.
But his dreams give him wings and He flies to a place
Where He's loved, concrete angel
But the meal was always wrong somehow, and he was always in just the corner his dad wanted to sit in, or he was showing off by sitting and reading some book or another, and he was a horrible little brat just for being born.
Sometimes, after stumbling home from the nearest bar after they threw him out, Kane even yelled at the boy that it was his fault his mother had died.
Somebody cries in the middle of the night
The neighbours hear but they turn out the light
Across the road a woman heard her neighbour's door slam shut and winced, knowing that meant that Kane Jeevas was back home.
Her husband quietly pulled the curtains and windows shut, hoping to block out the noise of someone being struck.
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate
When morning comes it will be too late
Next door to the house two strong young men (easily strong enough between them to hold Kane Jeevas back) are house-sharing until they get on their feet, they hear the first yell of rage and glance at one another, knowing full well what that noise is. One of them remarks that someone should do something.
It doesn't occur to them that they should do something.
On the other side of the Jeevas house there is a single mother with two little girls. She hears Mail start to let out choking sobs. She bites her lip and hurries to her girls' rooms, tucking them in and kissing them in their sleep, and she thanks the lord that nothing like that will happen to her children.
She never thinks that perhaps someone should stop it happening to that child.
A statue stands in a shaded place
An angel girl with an upturned face
He was very lucky. Matt always said that years later, after councillors and teachers and even Mello had their time to pity him and talk to him about what happened.
Mello never understood how he could say he was lucky.
So Matt took him to a graveyard, and specifically, to the grave of a girl.
He pointed at it and said to Mello, "Her name was Bella, see? See all the little stone angels they carved in it for her?"
Mello had nodded mutely.
"I bet you'd think her parents must have loved her."
A name is written on a polished rock
A broken heart that the world forgot
Matt shook his head. And he explained that this little girl's mother and father had, in equal share, battered her to death. For no reason other than their own lives were going down the crapper and she was an easy target.
He explained that people saw her every single day, her teachers, her neighbours, even her own grandparents, they all saw her and noticed how sad she seemed, some even saw her deep bruises.
Not one of them tried to help.
Matt explained that he had been lucky, because his intelligence set him apart, and Watari had rescued him.
Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above
He continued, pausing only to take a shaky breath, Bella wasn't overly intelligent. She was a sweet little girl who never hurt anyone in her life, who liked ponies and whose favourite colour was yellow.
And her short life was spent being afraid of people she should have been able to trust without question. Not one person in her life thought to try and rescue her.
And now she was just another statistic, another number on the list of children murdered by people they wanted to love.
And, Matt whispered, he knew it was hard to step in and say something, but he'd been one of those kids, and during the nights when he cried himself to sleep, wishing he was never born, he wanted nothing more than for someone to make the pain stop.
But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place
Where she's loved, concrete angel
Finally, he whispered to Mello, as the tears came and he couldn't stop them for anything in the world, what little family she had either couldn't scrape enough cash together to pay or worse, simply wanted to sweep her under the carpet, as if she'd never happened. They didn't give her a headstone. Just a plain plaque in the ground with a name and a date.
So he'd paid for one for her. He was making good money, hacking for hire, he'd come across her name in one of the lists of statistics, and he didn't want them to be able to forget. He didn't want anyone to forget that once there had been a little girl called Bella, with dark hair in a ponytail, whose favourite colour was yellow and who loved ponies, who was murdered by her parents.
It wasn't right, He mumbled into Mello's comforting shoulder. He had been so, so lucky, but he could have been saved so much sooner, and Bella could have been alive, if just one person had tried to save them from their families.