Four
Cecelia
If I close my eyes, I can visualise the fire, see the red-orange flames, feel the heat, watch the melting and twisting of metal and the way the bricks of the house turn black.
I can smell the charred wood and taste ash in my mouth and I can see us, the three of us, admitting we had no choice but to run, to leave with very little.
All I have ever wanted to do is keep Polly safe, to take care of her.
She doesn’t always appreciate it and she doesn’t understand what it has stolen from me, cost me, done to me.
But I’ve never stopped looking after her, even if I’ve had to get a little creative sometimes.
The older she gets, the more demanding she is.
She wants the new phone and the new computer and make-up from the same store the Instagram girls get it from.
And, fool that I am, I get it for her. I want her to have everything.
I want her to grow up and be a better person than I am, someone with a university degree and a good job.
I have always wanted better for her and, in the last few years, as she has gotten older and more independent, I have started to want better for myself.
From my position on the floor, where I have just opened another box, I watch Jason pick up a box to move to the bedroom, lifting it with ease as his muscles stand out.
Neither of us are perfect and we’ve both done things to survive so we never judge each other.
We both understand how horribly unfair life can be.
I look around as I pull out an odd collection of plates, all mismatched. Even the little we have won’t fit into this small space and will have to be left in boxes. Maybe this was a bad idea.
I close my eyes again, imagine heat from the flames scorching my skin and remind myself that I have no choice right now. I don’t have the luxury of questioning my choices.
Because now we’re in this nice suburb where the rich woman, who has obviously lived a life where everything was fair, will rent us a little place. She’ll only charge us a few hundred dollars out of the goodness of her rich woman’s heart.
At least you have a roof over your head. I go back to my unpacking, hoping that Polly is putting her clothes away in the big chest of drawers like I told her to.
Outside it grows dark quickly and I’m somewhat grateful that we don’t have much. It hasn’t taken long to unpack everything. But the furniture in here is too big, the place crowded, and we keep bumping into each other.
‘God, this place sucks,’ Polly says, as we sit with dinner on our laps later, watching the small television we bought where the news is detailing some ridiculous protest. I watch the people and wonder who they are, where they get the time, how they pay their bills.
‘It’s not so bad,’ I reply, biting into my burger, catching the plastic smell of the cheese and swallowing quickly.
I hate fast food but I’m not in the mood for cooking right now.
I’m exhausted. We all are. It’s all happened so quickly.
When we heard we were able to live here, there was a mad scramble to buy some stuff to bring with us, to pack it all up and get Polly into the local school.
The fires were on television and the internet all day everyday while they burned. But people are moving on now, finding something else to think about.
‘It’s good enough for now,’ says Jason with a shrug.
He is holding a paper cup full of the wine we were given.
I want a drink too but I’ve promised myself I won’t whilst we are here, that I will keep myself under control.
It never seems to touch the sides with him.
He can have that whole bottle of wine and chase it with beer and still be fine.
One beer makes me happy and two makes me giggly.
‘Anywhere would be good enough for you,’ Polly states.
Shaking his head, he gets up to pour more wine. ‘You’re so rude. Why can’t you just accept things and behave?’ he asks.
‘Why don’t you—’ begins Polly.
‘Please, please don’t fight,’ I beg them both. Polly gets up and throws the rest of her food away, stomping off to her bedroom and slamming the door shut. She’s a teenager and she doesn’t think beyond herself.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I know I shouldn’t rise to the bait.’
‘I’ll talk to her again,’ I say, even though I know it will do no good. Parenting a teenager is hard work.
‘We have to remember that this is only temporary,’ he says and I nod. ‘I think she’s nice, Stephanie,’ he adds and I swallow my last bite of burger along with my jealousy.
‘Do you think she’s pretty?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘I guess. But I like my woman with more curves.’ He grins and I can’t help smiling back.
After dinner I go outside for a few minutes, stand in the cooling air and look up at the stars. The house is in a suburb I would never have imagined living in, the kind you only see on television when the camera pans across a row of houses and prices in the millions are mentioned.
And Jason is right. She’s nice, the owner. Sweet, naive, obviously just bursting out of her skin to help the poor homeless little family. I should be grateful that this has come up, and I am.
Stephanie thinks we’re an ordinary nice family. That’s what she’s been told. A mum, a dad and a daughter, all in desperate need of a home. Of course, she’s right about the desperate need part: otherwise, there’s no way we’d be here. But I’m not sure I’d call us nice.
We’re trying to be careful because we need to paint the perfect picture. I worry about the way Polly talks to Jason, how she lashes out and how that might be interpreted by Stephanie. But perhaps, from the outside, it looks like any normal teenager fighting with her father.
But Jason is not Polly’s father and we are far from a normal family.
What will Stephanie think when she finds out we aren’t the perfectly nice family she thinks we are?
I have no idea.
But all I can hope is that’s the only thing she finds out.
***
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