Chapter Two
Renee
I had been a fool getting tangled up with Charlie Swan but I really thought he might make something of himself. I should have known he was a small town boy with a small town mentality destined to remain in a small town until the day he died. I guess it didn't really sink in until I found out I was pregnant. We'd taken precautions and God knows it wasn't as if he was my first yet none of the others had knocked me up. Stuck in one horse Forks I couldn't find anyone who could help me get rid of it so I was forced to go through with the pregnancy becoming progressively more sick of seeing Charlie with that stupid goofy grin that spread across his face every time he talked about our baby. He was making plans, he'd got a job in Forks and wanted to look at a house here for Gods sake, Had he forgotten all the plans we made, all the places we were going to visit, all the exciting things we had organised for our lives? Well, he may be happy to stay here in this dump but I wasn't, I wanted some fun, to live not stagnate, which meant I had to leave but I wasn't going to be the penniless little runaway, not this time. Charlie Swan owed me and he was going to pay. The only trouble was that if I wanted money from him I would have to take the kid with me.
I went to see a lawyer and explained that I needed to get out of an abusive relationship but without any proof of abuse that was a non starter so I went to a different lawyer and tried a different tack. He fell for my soulful eyes and after a couple of drinks and an afternoon at a motel, Bella stayed in the car asleep, I got the paperwork sorted. I squeezed Charlie for as much as I could without complications and angled for full custody of my precious baby, my money maker for the next ten or fifteen years if I played my cards right. Dear Anthony even found me a place at a women's hostel run by a friend and agreed to represent me in court. Charlie ever the soft touch agreed to everything, he didn't really have that much choice, after all the kid was his and when I got my decree absolute Anthony and I celebrated while one of the other women from the hostel agreed to babysit the kid. I wanted to get as far from Forks as I could and eventually landed on my dear mothers doorstep complete with Grand daughter. She may have thrown me out again if I'd been alone but even that bitch wouldn't see her Grand daughter on the streets and I stayed there a while until I got my first few payments. I never told her who the father was or that I'd got married, it was none of her damn business anyway and I certainly didn't tell her about the money.
I worked at a hotel cleaning for a few months while she acted as unpaid babysitter but then we had a row about money, what else? And I took the kid and moved on. The car finally gave up the ghost in Boise Idaho so I found a cheap rental and got a job cleaning motel rooms which had its perks. There were always lonely guys looking for a little company and in six months I'd saved enough money to replace the car and move on again but before I did Charlie found me complaining he hadn't been allowed to see his daughter like the court said he could so I agreed he could see her at the weekend and he was really excited so I got a kick out of moving a few days beforehand so the place was empty when he got there. He kicked up stink but I just said he'd got it all wrong and what could he do? The court wouldn't hand the kid to him, he had a full time job.
I had to pay a babysitter while I worked part time but it was money I hated spending so when I settled in to my next new rental in Salt Lake City I started leaving her locked in her room with some food and drink and her toys while I worked. It went OK for a couple of months until a neighbour threatened to tell the authorities so I had to give up my job but by then I had a few "friends" who didn't mind paying for my company so I decided to bring them home. That way their payments, added to Charlies alimony, meant I could live pretty well. I had nice clothes and plenty of booze and I ate out most of the time. Cooking was never my forte although I had tried when Charlie and I first got married.
Some "friends" stayed on but of course they didn't like a kid hanging around so I just put a lock on her bedroom door. By the time she was three Isabella, or Izzy as I called her, could make a mean sandwich and get herself drinks, wash herself and she knew when to disappear. If she was a good girl she got a hot meal or some candy and if she was naughty she got a slap round the leg and confiscation of her books and toys. She watched TV sometimes if I was sleeping in after a heavy night and the little bitch was learning her letters from Sesame Street or some such shit. Of course her daddy was real proud when I sent him a photograph of his precious kid which she wrote her name on the back of and sent her money for clothes and ice cream. That was fine by me, it meant I had extra money in my purse and she wasn't old enough to complain, or stupid enough, she knew what she got if she upset mummy. He visited once and took her shopping and for dinner which saved me more money and I got extra out of him for a pet, she wanted a dog for fuck sake! I borrowed a friends puppy for two days then told her it died and pocketed the money but he was getting picky about her surroundings and the company I kept so we moved on without telling him, Lincoln Nebraska this time to make it harder for him to find us, especially as I didn't have to work any longer.
Things got a little easier once she started school cos I had the place to myself during the day to entertain and when she got home she did the tidying up to earn her dinner. I don't know if she got sick of burned offerings or what but she started getting her own meals by the time she was six, mainly TV dinners cos that's all there were in the freezer, she knew better than to touch the stuff I bought for myself and my "guests". If she was hungry other than dinner there was usually bread in the place and milk unless I forgot to shop but the little store on the corner wasn't that far and I usually had some change in my purse for cereal or milk.
Having a little girl around wasn't without its problems, a couple of times I had to warn guys off, they never came back again but apart from the occasional slap when she got in the way she got off lightly enough. I did come back from the hairdressers one day to find Tim had climbed in through a window and was trying to get into Izzy's room which she'd apparently barricaded with a chair under the knob and I had to chase him off but when I yelled at her to open the door pulling on the knob it opened easy enough and none of her furniture was out of place so the bastard must have been drunk and pulling instead of pushing. Still I put a bolt on the inside of her bedroom door and told her to bolt herself in if I were out and anyone came to visit. Of course Charlie started bitching about his visitation rights again, I thought I'd gotten far enough away that he wouldn't want to be travelling all that way but he made the effort and again started telling me that I wasn't keeping the kind of company he wanted his daughter around so we moved on again. Of course it cost him, if he wanted his kid in better surroundings then he'd have to cough up more money to pay the more expensive rent. He bitched a bit but it was pay up or shut up and he paid up.
Deciding that the only way to shut him up was to be far enough that he couldn't afford to visit regularly we settled in Phoenix. By the age of eight Izzy was doing the housework, cooking, laundry, and still got good grades at school. I felt like sending her report cards to her father asking for some money as she'd done so well but it would only encourage him to visit so I decided against it. I had a good life here, friends, a social scene that was fun and lucrative, and time to spend doing what I wanted. I had almost saved up enough for a holiday in the Keys when Ralph came along. He was a truck driver with a wife and three kids at home in Utah but he took me on holiday to Baton Rouge for two weeks. I don't know what he told the wife I didn't bother to ask just left Izzy enough money to get some food in and left her a list of chores to do and things not to do, like let anyone in the house or tell them she was on her own. I guess maybe forty dollars wasn't much but she managed, after all school was on recess so she didn't need money for the cafeteria, not that I gave her much anyway, and the place was spotless when I got home with a laundry load that took her all evening to get washed and in the dryer. I hadn't forgotten about her, I bought her back some leaflets about the places I'd visited knowing she'd enjoy them but instead she started whining about not seeing her daddy and moaning about having to do everything in the house, as if I should be cleaning up after her! She'd obviously forgotten what a smart mouth got her so I gave her a good slapping and locked her in her room without any meals for a couple of days. She bitched about needing the toilet so I threw in a bucket, that shut her up.