Elise
Aston was a foster child since he was five. His father murdered his mother and two younger sisters with a kitchen knife. The crime scene was so chilling, so unbelievably scarring, a few officers had to have therapy to get the grizzly images out of their heads.
They’d found Aston unconscious and buried beneath the body of his mother, soaked in her blood and his. He’d been cut up head to toe, but somehow he pulled through, surprising the police with the sound of his hollow breaths. The doctors at the hospital called it a miracle and they celebrated his good fortune. Everybody in the town of Montley talked about it for a couple weeks, about the boy that pulled through, about the boy that God smiled upon yet simultaneously had to call home three innocent souls. And then, like all hot topics, the topic cooled and they stopped caring, and Aston was forgotten.
He entered the foster care system, had seriously bad behavioural issues and bounced from foster home to foster home all throughout town. Nobody knew how badly he was being abused, until Daddy found him neglected and starving, eating his own fingernails in the basement of a foster house that was the drug haven for some seriously horrible people.
That very first night I met him, Daddy welcomed him into our home and introduced him to us. I watched the boy carefully. His baggy pants and shirt were at least two sizes too big. He had long blond hair that ended at his chin. His face was haunting. His green eyes, a shade so vibrant, stood out from his pale skin, and they looked empty. He didn’t say a word to us, and when his eyes caught mine for the split second that it did, he looked away instantly, determined not to meet my eye.
Shortly after, Daddy settled him into the spare bedroom. I wanted to ask Mom what was going on, but she had followed after him. They had a quiet conversation I couldn’t hear, but I was aware of what was happening. This boy was staying with us. A boy that appeared despondent and broken. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. On one hand, I liked my life. I didn’t want interruptions. I didn’t want it flipped upside down. I liked the attention my parents gave me. But on the other hand, he looked sad and alone, like he needed a place to call home. I wondered if that was what Dad had done: given him a new home – our home.
He joined us for dinner. We ate spaghetti, and while we talked casually, there was that tension in the air. My eyes flew to Aston every few moments, watching him like he was an exotic piece of artwork as he picked up the fork and clumsily tried to eat his food. His movements were unnatural.
He was ten, a year older than me, and he didn’t know how to use a fork.
He made a mess. Half his food fell on the table. The first time it happened, he glanced up fearfully at Daddy. Daddy just smiled and said, “Use your hands, Aston, and don’t worry about the mess.”
My jaw dropped. If I used my hands, hellfire would have rained upon me and I’d have been scolded to death.
He used his hands, and his face reddened when his eyes caught mine again. In hindsight, I’d look back and realize how humiliated he must have felt, and I should have looked away and pretended not to care like my parents, but my eyes were too transfixed to him. I couldn’t look away if I tried. I didn’t want to, either. He was all bones, but his face…Man, his face was so beautiful, he reminded me of a prince. A haunted prince.
This boy didn’t have manners. He was like Tarzan come to life; a jungle boy thrown into a different world with no trees to swing from. He used both hands and sloppily dug into the bowl, shovelling the spaghetti into his mouth. I’d never seen someone so ravenous before. I felt full just watching him. I glanced over at Mom and Dad, and they discreetly watched him with broken expressions. His lack of propriety didn’t matter to them in the slightest. No hellfire and brimstone, just sadness all around.
He finished the food in record time, and then he sat there, clenching his stomach.
“Are you feeling okay?” Mom asked him concernedly.
The first words I’d ever heard him say were, “My stomach hurts,” in the tiniest voice.
“You’re just full,” Daddy told him with a forced smile. “You haven’t eaten this much in a very long time. You’ll get used to the feeling, Aston.”
Aston just stared at his empty plate. I’d barely touched my food. My entire body was turned in his direction, my eyes glued to his face. It was rude of me to blatantly stare. I knew that. But…there was something about this boy. Something about his despair I wasn’t used to seeing in other kids. He was utterly tragic.
He caught my eye a few times over the remainder of dinner, and every time they connected, he’d tear away and look back down at his plate. His pale cheeks started to grow red, and after several exchanges, he stopped looking away and kept staring back at me.
Haunted green eyes glued to my cheerful blues with a look of surrender. I smiled kindly at him at some point, and his eyes flickered down to my mouth, examining the way my lips widened. It was almost like…like he didn’t know what I was doing.
After dinner was over, Mom led him back upstairs to show him around and settle him in. Daddy stayed seated in his chair, focused on a spot on the wall over my head. His breathing changed, and his eyes watered again.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” I asked him, worried.
He looked at me warmly. “I’m okay, butterfly,” he answered hesitantly.
I glowed at the nickname he used for me. Butterfly. I was his butterfly. My chest warmed and I nodded in relief. Moments later, Mom called out to Daddy and he got up and hurried upstairs. There was a small commotion. I slid out of my seat and stopped by the foot of the staircase, listening in.
“He wants you, Arthur,” Mom told Daddy. “He won’t talk to me. He said he wants you.”
“Alright,” Daddy responded. “Go down, put Elise to bed. I’ll take care of Aston.”
I was startled for a split second. My mother never put me to bed. That was something Daddy always did. I felt a jolt of jealousy cut through me. When Mom came back down, I was difficult, unresponsive, and angry. When we went upstairs, I glanced at the guest bedroom, but the door was shut, and nothing could be heard from the other side. What were they doing? Why couldn’t Daddy just come and see me?
I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. Mom said good night, but I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my back to her and stared blankly at the wall.
“Elise,” she softly said, settling down on the bed beside me, “don’t be upset.” My mother was always so good at reading me. Nothing escaped her. She rested her hand on my head and stroked my blonde hair. “Your father loves you just the same.”
“Why is that boy here?” I asked her, my voice bitter.
“That boy has been through a lot.”
“But why is he here?”
“Because he needs a place to stay. Your father has been working on his case for a while now, and he’s taken him in.”
“Forever?”
She went silent for a few moments, and then she said, “There are children who don’t have parents to put them to bed or even to say good night to. They don’t have a lot of food to eat. They go to sleep hungry and scared. They’re abandoned, Elise, and they feel pain every minute of every day. Nobody looks at them. Nobody pays them attention. They live in our world and they feel like nobody cares. Do you think that’s right?”
I paused, thinking her words through and feeling the way my heart squeezed painfully. “No,” I answered quietly. “It’s not right.”
“Now you know why Aston is here.”
She left me after that, and I wondered about the boy sleeping next door to me. I tried to imagine myself in his position, abused, without love and an empty belly. I ended up crying into my pillow. It was the first time I had vividly felt ashamed for being so selfish and sick to my stomach about how unfair the world was. I got up sometime later to grab a few tissues from the dresser when I heard my father speak from the hallway.
“It was awful, Jean,” he whispered. “It was nothing like you have ever seen. The house was in ruins. He…He was sleeping in a pillowcase to get warm. They just left him there. For days. On the concrete floor with the cockroaches. And when he saw me…” My father broke down. “He didn’t come to me, Jean. He went on his knees and begged that I wouldn’t…that I wouldn’t hurt him, and when I told him he was alright and safe, he clutched me to him and cried. Every day he’s been on my mind, and I can’t ignore it anymore.”
The tears that had dried on my face were replaced by fresh ones.
That brief moment of resentment I held for Aston being here faded away, and I never felt it again.
*
That first night was eventful. I woke up twice to the sound of screams and Daddy running to check on him. I could hear muffled sobbing in the minutes that followed, and I could picture it in my mind: Daddy holding Aston to his chest, stroking his back as he whispered, “It’s alright.”
I always thought of my father as a hero, but his growing attachment to Aston was more heroic than anything I’d ever witnessed by him. Aston had nightmares for months on end, but they lessened as time went on, and he never told Daddy what the nightmares were about.
After a while, the nightmares woke him up without the shrilling screams. We shared a wall, and I’d hear the bed creaking and his loud agonized breaths as he awoke from them. Then he tried to calm down on his own.
My heart hurt so much, I found myself knocking on the wall every time, whispering, “It’s okay, Aston. I’m here. It was just a dream. I’m here.”
Soon I wouldn’t have to say anything. I’d just knock on the wall and wait for him to calm down, and when all was okay again, he’d knock back. That knock seared me, and I’d smile, falling asleep with my forehead pressed against the wall.