CHAPTER NINE
Our mother’s absence proved to be a sanctuary for Auden. Words poured from his lips as though he had been verbal for years instead of weeks. He was still quiet, but the words came out easy, practiced.
A little over a month had passed since we moved in with our Uncle Brady, my father taking time off work to lead the search for Mary Saint.
Black-suited detectives had ceased their questioning; their investigation reduced to mere posters painted around Rose Chapel. But no one had seen her since that night in North Lane.
Dishes piled up, floors went un-swept, and since Uncle Brady was in and out of jail, I adopted the role of housekeeper and caregiver while my father drowned his sorrows.
The stench of alcohol poisoned the air every night, empty bottles littering the living room floor while my father sat in his armchair, staring blankly at the television screen for hours.
My mother’s disappearance hit him the hardest.
She had abandoned him, just like she abandoned us. I did not know the extent of his knowledge regarding my mother’s affair with Joe, but I never spoke a word of what I had walked in on. There was no point adding salt to the wound.
Unlike our father, Auden thrived without our mother. Colour returned to his cheeks. His smile, once a rare sight, now brightened his features like sunlight infiltrating long-forgotten halls.
He missed her, though. You could see it in the way he flipped through old photographs, or waited by the door, hoping she would return as though she had never left.
I did not miss her.
My bruised wrists were finally healing, the skin able to breathe without the threat of restraints.
Fear was no longer my constant companion, though it was impossible to forget the cold hatred in her eyes as the smoke crawled toward us.
And yet, there were rare moments, as I lay in bed in the late hours of the night, where I yearned for her fingers to comb through my hair, for her voice to filter through the room as she read me a bedtime story. I missed her. But I was glad she was gone.
***
Auden started his first year of school with a vocabulary of a nine-year-old. It had taken me a while to adjust to a world where Auden could communicate his thoughts and feelings, but it was a world I had wanted for him since the moment he first opened his eyes.
Making friends, however, proved just as difficult for him as it had been for me. Despite no longer being non-verbal, he was certainly no chatterbox. He kept to himself in class, and spent his lunchtimes with me, glued to my side until the chiming of the bell.
We were on the way to our usual spot in the woodlands when a ball almost tripped Auden over. I steadied his arm and looked around, sighing as a group of boys from my class ran over.
“Kick it back, freak.”
Jensen Loyd and I had been in the same class since year one. We had never been friends, but we'd been civil. He’d never been outwardly cruel. Not until my family left the church and rumours spread about my mother joining a cult.
“Who are you calling a freak?” I demanded.
“You. Your whole family.”
Although we were the same age, Jensen towered over me, his curved lips directly in my line of sight. His friends hung back, not wanting to get too close to the ‘freakish Saints’.
“We are not freaks,” I said, hands curling into fists at my side.
“I heard your psycho mum tried to get a demon out of you.”
“Shut up.”
“Father Andrej says your family is crazy.”
“Father Andrej is an old cow.”
Jensen’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”
“I said Father Andrej is an old cow.”
“You’re going to Hell for that.”
“What would you know?” I scoffed.
Jensen’s gaze slid to Auden who hid behind me, hands fluttering anxiously in front of his chest. “I know that you and that freak are the reason your mum went psycho.”
Shut him up.
I acted without thinking, hands slamming into Jensen’s chest with enough force to send him to the grass.
“Guses!” Auden’s fingers enclosed around my wrist, pulling me away from Jensen as he rose with a snarl.
His fist struck my nose with a crack, the metallic tang of iron flooding my mouth, blood spattering on the white collar of my school uniform. I staggered backwards, ears ringing as a teacher intervened, sending Jensen to the principal’s office before guiding me to the first aid room.
My father was quiet on the drive home, only speaking to tell me to keep the ice on my nose every time I lowered it.
He didn’t yell at me for getting into a fight, nor did I receive a physical scolding of any kind.
Instead, upon returning to Uncle Brady’s, he sat me down at the dining table and pulled up a chair to apply ointment to my throbbing bruise.
“He called mum a psycho,” I said quietly.
Silence.
“Is she?” I pressed on.
“Is she what?”
“A psycho.”
A sharp inhale was my father’s response.
“Dad?”
“You need to learn how to defend yourself.”
“I started the fight,” I mumbled.
“All the more reason for you to learn how to do it properly.”
“You want me to fight?”
“Of course not,” he shook his head, “but if you are going to fight anyway, I’d at least want you to win.”
***
It was early the following morning when we stepped onto the athletic field near Rose Chapel Public School, frost decorating each blade of grass.
Auden sat with a picture book while my father pulled out two boxing gloves, helping me tug them on before proceeding to arm himself with his own.
“Hit my gloves as hard as you can,” he instructed.
I raised my fists in the air, hesitation circling me like a wolf assessing its prey. It didn’t feel right. It felt like something the Devil would want me to do.
“What is it, Augustus?”
“Fighting…isn’t it wrong?”
“Sometimes,” my father nodded, hands dropping to his sides, “but if we want to protect ourselves and those we care about…it’s necessary to learn the basics.”
I must have looked unconvinced, for my father chuckled and ruffled my hair before gesturing for me to start throwing punches. I did.
“What do you know about the Sons of Thunder?” he asked, taking each of my blows without moving an inch.
“Like Thor and Loki?”
“Augustus!” He scolded me, shaking his head. “The fact that you know more about Norse Gods than your own God is concerning.”
“Who are the Sons of Thunder then?”
"The Sons of Thunder," my father started, gesturing for me to strike his gloves harder, "were two of Jesus' disciples—brothers, actually. James and John."
"Why is everyone in the Bible named James and John?" I grumbled.
"There are plenty of other names," my father chided me.
"Okay," I shrugged, "so why were this particular James and John called the Sons of Thunder?"
"Well, when Jesus and his disciples were refused accommodation by Samaritans, James and John asked Jesus if he wanted them to call fire down from Heaven to destroy those who rejected them."
"What did Jesus say?"
"Jesus told them not to strike them down, of course."
"Why did the Samaritans refuse them anyway?"
My father waved a dismissive hand. "Jew-Samaritan tensions. That is beside the point. My point is…James and John were determined to defend themselves and Jesus. It shows us that maybe, when necessary, we should be like the Sons of Thunder."
I shook my head, confused. “But Jesus told them not to.”
“Yes,” my father agreed, “but he did not shame them for having that thunder inside of them, instead, he gave them that title. If he wanted to banish it, he would have, would he not?”
I hesitated, weighing his words before nodding.
We trained for an hour. Then again the next day, and the next. Sometimes before school, sometimes after.
Once satisfied I had the capacity and the skills to defend myself and Auden, he turned to the bottle once more, seemingly having nothing left to do, no goals to achieve.
Depression claimed him. And then the cancer did.
I was eleven when he got the diagnosis. Liver cancer.
A malicious cell that spread through his body, swimming through the bloodstream to invade his blood vessels and lymph nodes.
Their colonisation weakened him, but I was assured that once he received treatment, he would never pick up a drink again.
My father lied.
Bottles of whiskey littered the living room floor, the air heavy with a bitter stale scent that soaked into the walls. His chemotherapy was in the morning, and by the time I returned home from school, he was passed out in his armchair, dry vomit on his shirt.
Uncle Brady was released from prison a week before my father’s condition deteriorated. He refused hospital treatment, no longer attending his chemotherapy sessions or doctor’s appointments. He’d given up.
Although Brady was not the nurturing type, he supported his older brother by guiding him in and out of the bathroom, showering him, and organising his medications. It meant I had more time to prepare meals, clean the house, and raise Auden.
One afternoon, as the sun drowned in the horizon, Uncle Brady and I sat on the front porch, a comfortable silence drifting between us. He took a long drag of his cigar, releasing the smoke to disappear with the wind.
Brady looked a lot like my father. They shared the same dark brown curls, grey eyes, sharp nose and thin lips. The black ink decorating his whole left arm, as well the long, jagged scar on his right cheekbone, were the only notable differences between them.
There was a lot about Uncle Brady I did not know. My mother had never liked him, and since he was in and out of jail, he was never around for family holidays. But he was here now, and that was all that mattered.
“You doin’ alright, kiddo?” Brady’s question pulled me from my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I lied. “You?”
“Fuck no.”
We sat in silence for a long moment before I asked, “Do you think he will make it?”
“I dunno, kid. The cancer has spread,” he sighed, “and once that shit spreads…it’s harder to kill. Your father…might not be around for much longer.”
The words plunged into me like a knife. It was not surprising, and yet, hearing it said out loud made it all the more real. My father was dying. And there was nothing I could do. I could not stop my mother from leaving, and I could not stop my father from dying.
“Okay…” I breathed out, hands clenching and unclenching into fists on my lap. “...we just…we need to pray harder. We haven’t been to church for a while. Mum always said that if we turned to God he will–”
“Fuck God,” Brady cut me off. “Fuck religion. People like your Ma…they think they’re saints, God’s obedient soldiers doing his bidding, but they’re a bunch of god damn hypocrites.”
A twisted grin spread across his face, and in that moment, he looked nothing like my father. He looked like a corrupted version—like my own face shifting to a demon in the mirror. “If there is a God…I’ll always root for the Devil. At least he doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not.”
Maybe Uncle Brady was right. What had prayer ever done for me?
That is right, little monster. God has abandoned you.