Mona Lisa Awakening

Chapter Nine

Helen had been my human mother's name. Her and her husband, Frank, had taken me home from the orphanage. I had called them Mama and Papa. They'd been an older couple in their fifties with no children.

Helen loved curling my hair and arranging them into two pigtails that swung and bounced as I moved. She loved adorning my dark hair with pretty pink ribbons or blue bows. Those had been her favorite colors. "Give me good old-fashioned pink or blue any day," she'd use to say with a laugh that shook her plump, solid frame as she'd cuddle me in her big arms, enveloping me like a soft, huge teddy bear, squeezing me against her generous bosom. I still remember how she smelled. Like talcum powder, love, and laughter.

She bought me a goldfish named Joey that wriggled around awkwardly in a bowl and had big, fat cheeks that fascinated me to great end. With her big hand over mine, she'd guide me in pinching up little flakes of fish food and dropping them into the water before I snuggled into bed each night. I would watch Joey wriggle his fat body around, greedily gulping down the flakes while Helen read me a bedtime story.

Helen's pain started when I was four. A sharp twinge in the lower abdomen that made her bend over and gasp. I put my hand over her belly and my palms warmed and tingled for the first time.

"Mama. Bad here."

"Yes, baby. Some bad gas. But it feels much better now."

The pain had gone away but had come back six months later, hurting so much that she had to squat down. And I realized even then that that bad thing inside of her had grown just a little bit more.

"Bad inside," I said. "Mama go see doctor."

"Ah, baby, you've got magic hands." She kissed and buzzed my hands, blowing air against it until the funny noise made me giggle. "Now why should I go see a doctor? They just find things wrong with you."

Quiet and steady Frank, a postal worker, finally started to worry when I was five-and-a-half years old. The pains were growing worse and coming more often. Ignoring his wife's blustery protests, he finally dragged Helen to the doctor but by then it was too late. Colon cancer. It had spread to the liver and lungs.

Helen underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments and I fed Joey on my own each night. There were no more bedtime stories. She grew gaunt and laughed less frequently, though she still cuddled me. I'd lay my hands on her and she'd sigh and say, "That feels much better, baby."

She lasted a year, ten months more than what the doctors had predicted for her. When she was gone, Frank was an empty shell and I was sent from the only home I'd ever known.

The discreet tap on the door pulled me back from past memories. "Yes."

"It's time for dinner, milady," Amber said through the door.

"You go on. I'm not hungry."

He opened the connecting door and I caught a glimpse of Miles's curious eyes and shiny blond hair before Amber closed the door behind him. "Why are you sitting on the floor?"

I shook my head mutely. How could I answer him when I didn't even know the answer myself? My eyes fell on the bed where Gryphon and I had lain, propelling me into motion. I scrambled up, tore the sheets off the bed and pressed them into Amber's large arms, mumbling, "Please have them wash these."

"Yes, milady." He left and I sank back down against the wall and closed my eyes.

I was ten when I bought a goldfish with the money I'd earned from weeding and raking neighbors' yards. It had fat cheeks and wriggled around arrogantly like a little empress in the round bowl I had also purchased. I named her Josephine in memory of Joey. I'm sure he would have liked her.

I'd drop in a pinch of food for her each night, watch her gulp and gobble down each flake, and cleaned her bowl and gave her fresh water each and every week. I shared a room with two other foster girls younger than I. They'd been taken in by Mr. and Mrs. Jackson for the government check issued in the mail to them the first day of each month for their care, same as I.

Mrs. Jackson was a thin woman, perpetually tired, who had worked hard all her life, and it showed in the stoop of her shoulders and in the dullness of her lank hair. Her faded blue eyes regarded us children as extra hands meant to help with the extra work that we brought along with the government check. I'd been with them for several months and had been content to look after the other two girls, my responsibility since I was the oldest. Dutifully, I performed the chores assigned to me.

Things changed, however, when my breasts started to bud and develop later that year. Mrs. Jackson refused to waste any money buying me a bra and Mr. Jackson started looking at me there strangely. He began taking more of an interest in us, kissing little Carlotta and shy Nicole and tickling them on his lap.

"I bet you're ticklish, too, Lisa," Mr. Jackson would say and try to tickle me as well. I'd dart out of reach and though he'd laugh, his eyes would be mad.

He'd have the girls sit on his lap, give him a kiss on the check, and reward them with a candy bar.

"Your turn, Lisa," he'd say, and wave the chocolate bar tantalizingly before me. I'd shake my head, knowing only that his smile never reached his mean eyes.

When my breasts grew to the size of small peaches, he grew more surly and demanding. My chores were doubled and I barely had enough time each day to finish my homework.

"The garbage's not taken out, Lisa," he bellowed one day after coming home from his construction job dirty and sweaty and reeking of beer.

"I was going to take it out after I swept the kitchen floor," I said with wide apprehensive eyes, broom clutched in my hands. Mrs. Jackson was wearily peeling potatoes and didn't even spare us a glance.

"You useless piece of trash!" Snatching the broom from me, he jerked me by the hair into the living room where little Carlotta and Nicole were watching TV. They glanced up at his mean red face and fled to their room. "I'll teach you to be lazy," he said, breathing heavily as he put me across his knee.

I didn't fight him as his big hand lashed my bottom again and again. It wasn't the first time I'd been beaten. But when his hand lingered over my rear, stroking the sensitive painful flesh and one of his fingers slid down my crease, I struggled wildly and twisted out of his lap, falling onto the floor. He leaned down with glittery eyes and threatened in a mean low voice, "You better be nice to me, little girl, or you'll be sorry."

Christmas came and Mr. Jackson put on a fake white beard. Carlotta and Nicole sat in Santa's lap, gave him a kiss, and got their candy cane.

"Your turn, Lisa," the fake Santa said. His breath, as usual, stank of sour beer.

Bracing myself, I gingerly sat on his lap and pecked him quickly on the cheek. He gave a ho, ho, ho. Under the guise of giving me a hug, he ran a hand over my breasts. I jumped off his lap, candy cane in hand, and saw the knowledge of what he had done in Mrs. Jackson's weary, resigned eyes. She bought a bra for me the very next day during the after-Christmas clearance sale. "Don't make him mad," was all she said.

He came home early from work one day when Mrs. Johnson was out of the house grocery shopping. Carlotta and Nicole's school-books were spread out on the kitchen table, their school bags at their feet, and I was helping them with their homework.

"What's this crap?" Mr. Jackson roared, his eyes drunk with alcoholic outrage. "I don't bust my back all day to come back to this mess in my home!" He kicked their schoolbags out of the way and with one violent swipe, swept the books off the table, sending them flying. The girls darted out of the kitchen but he snatched my arm before I could run off.

"Clean this garbage up!" he shouted and shoved me to the floor. I scrambled on my hands and knees, picking up the scattered books and loose, flying paper. Only when I heard his breathing grow harsher and his heartbeat quicken did I look up from the floor and catch him staring down my shirt, which had gaped open in my bent position. My only bra was in the laundry.

"Whore!" he breathed and I froze.

I broke for the door, too late. He lunged and tackled me back down, scraping my elbows and banging my head hard enough against the kitchen floor to addle me a bit. Yanking up my shirt, he started roughly pawing my breasts, squeezing them painfully.

"No! Get your hands off me!" I screamed. Instinctively I jammed the heel of my palm into his nose, sending him staggering back.

"Bitch!" he cursed, clutching his bleeding nose. "You'll be sorry for that."

He made good on his promise. Josephine was dead the next day when I returned from school. Her fishbowl had been upended and she lay orange and lifeless in a puddle of water, her fat belly still, her eyes unseeing.

I never dared keep anything for myself after that, even when I moved on to other homes. I learned a painful lesson that day: Don't love things. Don't grow attached to things. It hurts too much when you lose them.

A young housemaid fixed my bed with clean sheets, eyeing me curiously. She came and went and I barely noticed. I shut down my senses, went somewhere deep inside where I hardly felt anything. Nothing hurt when you couldn't feel it.

Time passed meaninglessly by. At some point I dozed off and big, gentle hands lifted me up, put me onto a soft mattress, and covered me with a blanket. I continued to sleep and dream.