I calmed her down while she hugged me protectively. “Nia, he wasn’t in the room, mum just launched one at me, he couldn’t have stopped her, it’s not his fault, honest!”
Nia’s mother came out and saw me, her eyes narrowing in anger, and her arm going around me as she took me into the sitting room. Jamie came back with a teacloth full of ice-cubes, twisted the ends together and gingerly held it to my face. It stung with the cold, but it dulled the pain, and stopped my eye watering.
Mrs. Morrison held me as she took the icepack and gently held it against my eye, but I could tell she was furious.
“Who do this to you, Julie, really?” she asked, and I told her what had happened.
“She hurt own daughter like this, you just little girl, she not deserve daughter, I find big stick, I teach her a lesson! You not hit children! You want to hit child, leave room, count to fifty, come back, still want to hit child, leave room, count to fifty again!”
I was feeling sick and dizzy now, and my eye was throbbing again, so Jamie picked me up and carried me up to Nia’s room, putting me on her bed. He gave me the ice pack and gently, carefully, showed me how to hold it properly, then turned to leave, turning the light down as he went to walk out the door.
“Thank you, Jamie!” I called out, and he looked surprised that I knew his name.
“It’s quite alright, er, Julie. You just lie quiet here; I’m going to talk to your brother properly about this!” he was livid, ready to kill someone, and I called him back.
“Jamie, please, Mark had nothing to do with it, he was in the kitchen! When he heard, he came running in and pushed her away from me, he brought me here because he thought I’d be safe here, he’d never hurt me, I swear!”
Jamie looked mollified.
“Well OK, if you say so. You rest now; Nia’ll be here when she’s finished with your brother, so I think I’d better go rescue him!” He smiled and walked away back downstairs.
Nia came in a few minutes later, sat next to me and stroked my hair. I began to tremble, shock and reaction setting in, plus I still felt sick and dizzy
“Poor Jules, you must be really frightened! My mum’s bloody furious, she wanted to call the Old Bill, have her arrested for assaulting you, Jamie talked her out of it, now she just wants to go to your house and wallop her with a big stick! Let’s have a look at your eye!”
She pulled the makeshift icepack away from my eye and clenched her teeth as she hissed through them.
“Jesus wept! Will you look at that thing! What did she do, punch you? ‘Cos you look like you just got a dig from Mike Tyson! What a bitch! I’ll tell you one thing, you’re not going to school looking like that, the first teacher who sees that is going to call the Old Bill, and you’ll end up in care somewhere two hundred miles away!”
Just then there was a knock on the door, Nia called out to come in, and her dad came into the room.
“Hello Nugget, Hello Julie. My wife tells me you’ve had a bit of trouble today; do you feel like telling me about it?” He sat on the bed and gently lifted the icepack and looked at my eye, his lips compressing into a thin line and his nostrils flaring as anger flared in his eyes at what he saw.
There’s something very comforting about Nia’s dad, so I told him what happened, and he nodded slowly as I spoke. When I finished he looked at me and patted my hand.
“I really should report this; I want to, this is a criminal assault against a minor, and the police should be dealing with her, now, but if I do that, it will probably put you and your brother into the care system, and I don’t think you want that; I know Nia and her mother don’t. I know you’re feeling sick at the moment, that’s most likely a concussion, and you really need to see a doctor. I’ll take you, and Nia, along to St. George’s A & E, report that as a head-clash playing volleyball, and get you scanned, just to be on the safe side. I really don’t like doing this, she should be made to pay for this, but I like the alternative even less, so this is how we’ll do it this time. If it happens again, though, if she hurts you or hits you again, I’m going to the police; you’re too small to take another blow like this, she could have killed you! I want you to stay here tonight, with Nia, so does everyone else, after that we’ll see how it goes. At least you’ll be safe here.”
I tried to thank him, but the fright, and the pain got there first, and I started crying.
He gathered me in immediately, letting me cry into his shoulder while he held me close, smoothed my hair, soothed me, making it all go away. Nia’s dad is a class act, she’s a lucky girl.
I must have fallen asleep against his shoulder, because the next thing I remember is being carried to the car and sitting on Mark’s lap in the back seat, and Mr. Morrison going over the story, that I’d been playing volleyball in Brockwell Park, there was a head-clash, I came back home with Nia and started feeling sick, so he brought me to Accident & Emergency.
I was in Casualty for about 2 hours; Nia stayed with me in the examination cubicle for about an hour, then they wheeled me off for an MRI, and another hour while the imaging people got the scan results processed, and the attending came and spoke with Mark, as my next of kin. Apparently, there was no tearing or blood vessel damage, it was a straightforward concussion, but there was a crack in my cheekbone, so they gave me some painkillers and told me to get a few days’ bed rest. By this time my eye was doing an impression of a Picasso sunset painted on a balloon, swollen up and out, all purples and bright reds, with black for added effect. To say I looked grotesque would not be overstating it.
On the way back, Nia told her dad that I would be staying with her for a few days, that I couldn’t go to school looking like that, and he just nodded, and that was settled. I ended up staying a week, Mark letting the school know I was ‘ill’, and coming to see me every afternoon after school, and I spent the days doing girly things with Nia’s mum, discovering how it should be between a mother and daughter, something I never got to do at home, simple, banal things, like brushing my long hair properly, something Mark never managed to do right, and he never had the time to do it right anyway.
Mark told me that mum had gone back to being daily drunk, she’d not asked about me, and I was glad that I was off her radar. One thing that puzzled me, what she’d meant when she said that I’d made him leave. Who was she talking about? I asked Mark for an explanation.
He looked baffled. “Look, Jules, I don’t know for sure, but I think she was talking about dad. What she meant, though, search me. He left before you were born, and I don’t remember him except he had hair the same colour as yours, I was only three or so; that’s all, sorry.”
I had to go home sometime, and much as I wanted to stay forever with Nia and her lovely family, I had to face my own personal demon. Mark collected me, carried all the stuff he’d brought for me over the last few days, and I reluctantly said goodbye to Nia and her mum. Mrs. Morrison asked me to stay.
“You stay with Nia, she needs someone here, Huyn’h never here, she lonely and you safe here, I promise, no one punch your face or hurt you here!”
She was still mad as hell, still wanted to lay into mum with something heavy, but I needed to go home, get this over with. Besides, Nia was in denial over Jamie’s latest girlfriend, whom she hadn’t met, (because Jamie very wisely kept her well away from the house) but already hated with a passion, and kept trying to get me to pump him for information about her, so I wanted to get out from the middle of that.
Mrs. Morrison hugged me. “Ok, if you really want go, cannot stop you, but you need family, you welcome to join mine!”
Nia’s dad was just as sweet.
“You know, Julie, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want, and I do mean that; two kids here is already bedlam, one more isn’t going to make a difference; bedlam is bedlam!”
I thanked him for his kindness, but told him I really had to go.
“Well, Ok, but if you need to run, run back here, we’re always open for business!” he grinned. Like I said; a class act.
When I got home, mum was already there, making dinner, straight and sober, and flicked a glance over me like I’d never been gone. There was no mention of her assaulting me, no hint that she acknowledged my black eye as something she’d done, or any hint of an apology; it was like she’d denied to herself it had happened, and decided to believe that version.
Dinner was… odd. Mum directed all her remarks to Mark, spoke exclusively to him, lavished attention on him, served me food as though I was invisible, gave me seconds without asking me if I wanted any, but danced attendance on Mark. I could see he was uncomfortable with the attention, he definitely wasn’t used to it, and his ears were pink by the end of the meal.
When we cleared up, mum hung around while Mark and I cleared the leftovers and loaded the dishwasher, still directing all her conversational efforts exclusively to him, which didn’t bother me; I was used to her ignoring me until she’d had a skinful, but Mark was clearly uncomfortable with it; affection or attention from her had been in short supply for years, and he was having a problem reconciling it with the woman who’d punched me out a few days earlier.
Mum kept it up, until eventually Mark started responding. I didn’t blame him, God knows, it was time she paid some attention to him, and he needed someone, even if it was her; it didn’t trouble me; I had Nia and her family as a bolt-hole if I needed it, so we eventually came to an unspoken agreement about how our family worked; Mark was hers, Nia’s mum was mine, and we went on from there, mum ignoring me, still drinking, and Mark still watching her carefully if she was alone with me for any reason.
As I got older, Mark became more involved with me; I was maturing, and he finally felt he could talk to me, instead of just look after me, and our relationship became more adult for it; he’d talk about his latest girlfriend, ask me if I was dating or not (usually not), tell me I was pretty and that I should go out more, meet someone, instead of just hanging in my room and avoiding mum, or joke and banter with me, sit with me when mum wasn’t around, and play-fight with me, always winning because he outweighed me by a significant margin, but never getting rough. He still called me ‘Tink’, and told me I was a fairy princess, though, I never got rid of that tag…
What I did start to feel, though, was a distinct attraction to him, something I pushed down and suppressed; this was my brother, for God’s sake! It never quite went away though…