The Silent Deceivers

Chapter 6

Martha Dame

For the four days that followed the arrangement of my meeting with Martha I hardly left my room. I was giving everybody the silent treatment. The messages that I received on my phone remained unanswered and I stopped picking up the calls. I wanted to be completely shut off from reality because in my world, my family was still alive and any minute now I would be called down stairs for a lecture about my school work. I knew deep down that it wasn’t healthy but at that moment I felt like my life was a shipwreck sinking into the deepest darkest part of the Atlantic Ocean. I was holding on to anything that I could to keep me from drowning. I was going to have to go into care, I knew that. I couldn’t change it. It was fate. But I didn’t have to open the door to it.  It didn’t have to embrace it. If I didn’t go into care the only other option I had was to move to Australia and live with Auntie Beatrice. I didn’t want that and I’m pretty sure she didn’t either. We have never been close to our family overseas; we hadn’t seen most of them for years. We saw Auntie Beatrice for a holiday every two to three years but that was it. Don’t be fooled but the name she wasn’t an Auntie, more like a monster. Everybody has that family member that they dislike right? She was even worse than my mum. With Auntie Beatrice there was always something wrong with you or what you were doing. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She came down on Austin like a ton of bricks, nothing he did was ever good enough but he still liked her. I don’t know why but he did. It was probably because after he had done it her way, she would reward him with petty gifts/rewards. She had given up on me a long time ago.

Do you ever feel like the whole world is against you? That nothing is ever going to go in the right direction for you? That’s how I felt! It was two days before my meeting with Martha and I was woken by the sound of the phone continuously ringing. I answered the call to hear a voice telling me that Sam had been rushed to hospital and was in a critical condition because he had been involved in an accident at work. I didn’t know any other details all I knew was that he could be in hospital for a number of weeks. Could my life get any worse? The answer to that was yes. It could get much, much worse. I called up Martha and told her about the situation I was in and she said that I had to have a responsible adult present when she arrived to discuss the Oakley Care Home visit. I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to persuade her that I didn’t need one but that didn’t work. So I laid down the ‘you’re a responsible adult’ card and that didn’t work either. I sighed and hung up miserably as I realised that I had no other choice, I was going to have to call Auntie Beatrice. My tone throughout the entire call was anything but pleasant.  After I was forcefully interrogated to admit that I had not completed the funeral preparations she agreed to come within a heartbeat. I gave myself a little pep talk later on that day about how I was not going to let her walk in and take over everything, the arrangements Sam and I had already made were staying put whether she liked them or not.

Auntie Beatrice arrived just after nine pm and the first thing she said to me was how stupid I was for not completing the funeral arrangements. She had not even set foot inside the front door. A heart of stone. No sympathy. No tears. No comfort. It bit my lips to refrain myself from screaming ‘I just lost my parents and brother in a car crash and all you can do is criticize me? Stupid old hag’ at her.

She wasn’t even grieving. I thought that maybe, just maybe in these circumstances she would actually act like an auntie and like she actually cared. I thought wrong. Instead what I got was a sharp, insulting tongue and an empty hearted hag as cold as stone. I tried to escape to my room many times during this rant but she never seemed to notice when I backed out of the room. Every time I made it near to the top of the stairs she appeared right behind me telling me to sit back down and behave myself, like I was her dog. We sat down for about two hours and heatedly discussed the final few arrangements for the funeral because apparently they couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning. Half way through I gave up trying to put my ideas across because they were all too immature and pointless. I didn’t really listen to any of what she was saying to me after that, my brain just decided to switch off. Around half past one the next morning I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and headed for the door. As I climbed the stairs two at a time I could hear her shrill of a voice screaming at me to get back down stairs that instant. I ignored her and slammed the door so hard it felt like an earthquake. I didn’t get any sleep that night. I was to frustrated and angry at Sam. How could he do this to me? I began to sink deeper. This was the night I first decided to take my pain out on myself not my bedroom wall. My emotions became unbearable. It was entirely my fault. I felt so alone. Isolated. Unwanted. Unloved.