Chapter 4
BY THE AGE of nine, having survived two more years of her parents’ unthinkable behavior, Gabriella had retreated into a world where she could occasionally escape them. She wrote poems, stories, letters to imaginary friends. She had begun to develop a world where for an hour or two at least, her parents and the tortures they inflicted on her seemed to vanish. She wrote about happy people in pretty worlds, where wonderful things happened. She never wrote about her family, or the things her mother still did to her whenever the mood struck her. Her writing was her only escape, her only means of survival. It was a respite from a cruel world, despite seemingly comfortable surroundings. Gabriella knew better than anyone that neither her address, nor the size of her father's income, or the distinction of the families from which her parents came, protected her from the kind of realities that other people's nightmares were made of. Her mother's elegance, and the jewels she wore, and the pretty clothes that hung in her own closet, meant nothing to her. She knew the meaning of life better than most, and the stood early on what was important, and what wasn't. Love meant everything to her, she dreamed of it, thought of it, wrote of it. It was the one thing in her life that had eluded her completely.
People still talked about how pretty she was, how well behaved, how immaculate, how she never misbehaved or answered back, or challenged her parents. As did her teachers, her parents’ friends talked about her lovely hair, her huge blue eyes, how rarely she spoke. Her grades were excellent, and although her teachers lamented the fact that she seldom spoke up in class, and only answered questions in class when directly pressed to do so, she was nonetheless far ahead of most of the other children her age. She read constantly, and had learned early. Just as her early writing did, the books she read transported her to another world, light-years away from her own. She loved reading, and now when her mother wanted to torment her, she threw away her books, and took her pencils and paper away from her. She was always quick to discover what meant the most to her, and to seal off all of Gabriella's avenues of escape. But when that happened, Gabriella sat lost in thought, dreaming. In the ways that mattered, at least, they could no longer touch her, though they never noticed. And for reasons Gabriella herself couldn't explain, she knew instinctively now that she was a survivor.
Eloise often had Gabriella help in the kitchen, scrubbing, or washing dishes, or polishing silver. She complained that Gabriella was still intolerably spoiled, and owed it to them to make herself useful somewhere in the house. She did her own laundry, changed her sheets, cleaned her own room, and bathed and dressed herself. She was never allowed to be idle for a single moment, unlike other children her age, who were left to play outdoors, or in their own rooms, and given books or toys to entertain them. Gabriella's life was still a constant battle for survival, and as she grew older, the ante was upped frequently, the rules changed on a daily basis. Her skill lay in deciphering her mother's threats, determining her mood of the hour, and striving constantly not to annoy her, doing everything possible not to incur her fury.
The beatings still occurred just as frequently, but she was in school for longer now, which mercifully kept her away from home for more hours every day. And inevitably, the sins she was accused of committing were more serious as she grew older. Forgotten homework, lost articles of clothing, breaking a plate when she was doing dishes in the kitchen. She knew better than to make excuses for her crimes. She just braced herself and took what came. She was artful at hiding the bruises in school, from teachers and the few children she played with. She kept to herself most of the time. She couldn't see the children after school anyway, her mother would never have allowed another child in the house to visit. It was bad enough, as far as Eloise was concerned, having Gabriella underfoot to destroy the house, she had no intention of inviting other children in to help her. One child to endure was bad enough. Yet another was inconceivable torture to her.
Only twice in her three years in school had teachers observed something wrong with Gabriella. Once her uniform had slipped up her thigh while jumping rope at recess, and they had seen the appalling bruises on her legs. When questioned, she had explained that she'd fallen off her bike in her parents’ garden, and after sympathizing with her over the enormity of the bruise and how much it must have hurt when it happened, they let it go and forgot about it. The second time had been at the start of the current school year. Both her arms had been badly bruised and one of her wrists had been sprained. Her face, as was almost always the case, was remarkably untouched, her eyes innocent as she explained a bad fall from a horse over the weekend. They had excused her from doing homework until her wrist got better, but she couldn't explain that to her mother when she got home that night, so she did the homework anyway, and turned it in at school in the morning.
Her father remained as uninvolved as he had always been. And in the past two years, he seemed to spend most of his time away. He was traveling for the bank, and Gabriella knew that something untoward had happened between her parents, although it had never been clear to her exactly when it had occurred, or what it was. But for the past six months, they had had separate bedrooms, and her mother seemed angrier than ever whenever Gabriella's father was home.
Eloise went out in the evenings alone a lot now. She got dressed up, and left Gabriella alone when she went out with friends. Gabriella wasn't entirely sure her father knew that, since he was gone so much, and her mother stayed home whenever he was in town. But the atmosphere between them had clearly deteriorated. Eloise made a lot of rude remarks about him, and no longer seemed to hesitate to insult him to his face, whether Gabriella was in the room or not. Most of the comments were about other women, whom she called harlots or hookers. She talked about him “shacking up,” which was an expression Gabriella heard a lot, but she never knew quite what it meant, and she never dared to ask. Her father never answered her mother when she said it, but he drank a lot more these days. And when he did, eventually he left the house, and Eloise came to take it out on her.
Gabriella still slept at the bottom of the bed to escape her, but it was more out of habit than out of any success she'd had in convincing her mother that she wasn't there. Eloise always knew exactly where to find her. Gabriella didn't even waste time hiding now. She just took what she knew was coming to her, and tried to be brave about it. She knew that her only mission in life was to survive.
She also knew that somehow she must have caused the coldness between them, and although her mother never mentioned her name when she berated him, she knew that somehow, in some way, she was to blame for all their troubles. Her mother told her frequently that all her problems were because of Gabriella, and she accepted that now, along with the beatings, as her fate.
By Christmas that year, her father almost seemed not to live there. He hardly ever came home anymore, and whenever he did, Eloise flew into an uncontrollable rage. She seemed, if possible, angrier than ever. And now there was a name she screamed at him constantly. She shouted at him about “some little tart,” or “the whore you're shacked up with.” Her name was Barbara, Gabriella knew, but she had no idea who she was. She could never remember meeting any of their friends by that name. She didn't understand what was happening, but it seemed to make him even more remote, and he seemed to want nothing to do with her mother. He scarcely ever spoke to Gabriella, and most of the time when he was home now, he was drunk. Even Gabriella could see that, and he made no attempt to hide it anymore.