Rowan In The Oak Tree (2 page)

Peyton, already cowering behind the door, cringed as
the big woman hit his madam repeatedly about the head. Rowan started to wash
faster, hoping it would make the right amount of noise desired, but her
maman
only hit harder.

“
Yer
gonna
brek
ma things if
yeh
throw
i
’ ‘round like
tha
’,”
another blow landed on Rowan’s left ear, her neck snapped to the right. “Do it
propeh
or
yer
straigh
’
in
yer
bed.”

It was all
Rowan
could do not
to look at the oven clock to see what time she’d be sent to bed tonight. She
bent her head towards the sink, face nearly in the bubbles so short was she,
and scrubbed the dishes in what she hoped was a quiet fashion, but not so quiet
as to be accused of not doing a proper job. She swallowed her sobs with a
miserable gulp, and washed the last plate. Putting it on the drainer, she
reached for the tea-towel in order to dry her hands.

“Don’t
yeh
go drying
yer
hands,
yer
not
finished!
” The volume of her
maman’s
voice seemed to know no bounds.

“But, mummy –”

“
Do’t
yeh
‘but mummy’ me!
Yeh
git
those pans
done, an’
afta
tha
’
yeh
can clean
th
’ oven, then
sweep an’ mop
th
’ floor where
yeh
and
yer
mangy dog ‘
ave
been
rollin
’ ‘round on it,
yeh
filthy whore!’!

The insult flew over Rowan, like water off a duck’s
back, but only because she knew nothing of what she was being called. She knew
it was an insult because of the vehemence and venom with which her
maman
said it. Rowan was too tired and too upset to point
out that she’d swept and mopped the floor only that morning, and that she was
always told to leave the pans ‘because they are Le
Creuset
and you will drop them on your toes’. She declined also to mention that before
now she’d been told to leave the oven as she couldn’t reach it properly to
clean it all, and it was a gas appliance so it was unsafe for her to go near,
in case she pushed one of the buttons by mistake.

Rowan had thought to herself that her
maman
did secretly care when she’d given those warnings,
but now she’d been given the jobs to do, she felt like her
maman
did not care for her at all. She didn’t feel grown up for being asked to do a
‘grown-up’ chore. She felt like a slave, like the girl in the children’s movie
she’d been allowed to watch one time when she was ill, and wished for a fairy
godmother of her very own to come save her.

Unlike other girls her age however, Rowan knew that
dreams didn’t come true, and wishes weren’t granted, and that she would never
be invited to the ball, much less be able to go. She put her hands back in the
dirty dishwater and picked up the cloth. Looking at the heavy pans, she
resigned herself to her job, and lifted the first pan into the water carefully
so as to wash it clean of the previous night’s dinner.

Each pan was bigger and heavier than the last, and her
maman
watched with a scrupulous eye as she struggled
to lift each cast iron weight over the edge of the sink without bashing it on
the side. Once finished, she got down from her stool and moved it to one side
to better access the cupboard under the sink where the bleaches and cleaners
and other foul smelling chemicals lived, and pulled out the oven cleaner. She’d
not seen the cream used before, and was starting to read the label with her
maman
snatched it away from her.

“
Yer’ll
not
be
needin
’
that!
Yeh
wa
’
naugh’y
,
so
yeh
can do it
th
’ ‘
ard
way!” She handed
Rowan an old butter knife with a sinister smile and stormed out of the kitchen,
cussing and swearing as she went.

Rowan watched after her with a confused expression.
How was she to clean the oven with a butter knife? Would it be the same as
sweeping the patio with a toothbrush?

She moved her stool close enough to the oven so that
she could open the door and reach inside. Somehow she was going to need to get
to the back of the oven to clean the mess up back there. With the oven being on
the wall this wasn’t going to be an easy task.

She jumped as she heard a creaking noise; the door to
the hallway from the kitchen had moved. Upon seeing Peyton’s glistening black
nose peeking through the gap between it and the fridge, she smiled. Her daft
puppy’s eyes shone in the dark shadows behind the door and the smile on Rowan’s
face spread into a grin. Peyton was very good at encouraging her stubborn
streak, and his shiny deep brown marbles had given Rowan an idea. She got down
from her stool and crept across the kitchen dramatically. She knew she didn’t
need to creep for her
maman
would never hear her
footsteps, but to do so made her feel much better, like she was playing a
game.  She lifted up a dining chair with the ultimate stealth, and leaned
back to take the weight of it on her chest. Wobbling with the effort, she
carried it across the kitchen to the oven, where in slow motion she put it on
the floor, trying so hard not to make a sound. The chair was easily twice the
height of her stool, so standing on it would make the oven easier to clean. She
climbed up on it carefully, and grabbed the knife from where she’d left it on
the sideboard next to the oven tower. Leaning against the tower she reached
into the oven to start scraping at the crud on the surfaces. When the metal of
the knife’s blade hit the burnt-on food, it was very loud, but when the blade
touched the metal inside the oven, the oven floor and sides, it was so loud
that she flinched, expecting her
maman
to come in any
second and shout at her. When no one came, Rowan pressed harder with the tool
and pushed the edge underneath the charred bubbles, bringing them off the
surface with a hollow ‘pop’. The release of each bubble brought with it an
intoxicating wave of smells; bacon, chicken, sausages. The smells of her
maman’s
cooking, the smells of food she dreamed to eat
herself instead of the beans on toast made for her when her
maman
could be bothered.

Once all the bubbles of burnt fat were free, she swept
them into her left hand with her right, and slowly got down from where she
teetered on the chair. After putting them in the bin, she sneakily patted her
pretty puppy on the head and made her way to the sink to get the cloth so she
could wipe out the oven and make it sparkle.

After wringing out the cloth into the sink to the best
of her ability, for her young hands were not strong like an adult’s and could
not do a proper job, she carried it across the kitchen to the chair, dripping
as she went. She had climbed one-handed onto the chair and leaned right into
the oven to start wiping from the back when Peyton started to whine softly.

Knowing it meant the wrinkle was coming, Rowan dropped
the cloth in the oven bottom, jumped off the chair with silent feet and
hurriedly carried it back across the kitchen. She put it down as quietly as her
hurried hands would let her, and ran back to take her place on the stool,
picking up the cloth to scrub just in time.

“Aren’t
yeh
done yet,
yeh
stupid baby?” Her
maman
demanded, looking inside the oven.

She smacked Rowan on the side of her head, hard,
causing Rowan’s head to hit the oven tower with a bang. Peyton sat bolt
upright, teeth bared, but made no sound. He knew not to make a sound when the
big woman was about; or else he’d get a kicking.

Rowan bit her lip on the inside, and fought back
tears. She could feel herself getting angry, and her chest rose and fell hard
and fast as she kept her anger inside her. She forced her gaze to remain on the
floor; she’d be called obstinate if she dared look her
maman
in the face. She didn’t know the meaning of all these strange words her
maman
used, but the tone in the old tree’s face gave it
away that they were not nice words, that they were words meant to hurt her.

At that moment the outside door clicked open, and in
walked Rowan’s daddy-long-legs. He took one look at her and smiled a lopsided
smile that did not reach his eyes, before looking at her mother. Rowan’s
maman’s
face had changed as soon as the door had clicked,
changed from fire-breathing venom-dripping dragon to the perfect portrait of
the sweet little woman who ran the household. Rowan hadn’t noticed the change;
she’d been looking at the inside of the oven door and trying to compose
herself.

“I’ve
jus
’ bin
showin
’
ar
Rowin
’
‘
ow
to look
afta
th
’ house like ah do. ‘
Ow
to keep
i
’
nice an’ clean.”

Rowan smiled inwardly. Much as the walking wrinkle had
changed her expression, she couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice;
there was a trace of her accent, which she very rarely used around the tall
man.

Her
maman
seemed to have
noticed her slip up. “How has it been at work today dear?”

Daddy-long-legs removed his coat and scarf and threw
them onto the back of the chair Rowan had just been using and followed the tree
with feet from the room, but not before pinching Rowan’s bottom as she leaned
into the oven to continue cleaning it.

*****

His footsteps were soft on the carpeted landing, but
they echoed like a gong in a cave to Rowan, who heard him coming as she did
every night. He’d wait until he suspected she was asleep, and would then come
into her room at night, apparently to check on her and make sure she was
sleeping soundly. Once he reached her door at the end of the landing, he paused
outside it a moment. Rowan wondered what it was he was thinking; if he’d decide
to leave her in her apparent peaceful state of sleep, and go back downstairs.

Rowan’s door creaked open and he stood there in the
doorway holding onto the handle tightly, making sure, as she did whenever she
tried to sneak to the bathroom  in the night, that it wouldn’t creak it’s
loud squeal on the way back up. The light from the landing shone into her room
around him, making it impossible for Rowan to see his face. She didn’t like
that she could see his face; though her eyes were open only tiny slits she
could see him in his entirety, from his
slippered
feet to his fuzzy gelled hair. His shoulders and head were aglow with the light
from behind him; to Rowan he looked like the saints pictured in the books she’d
read at school, but she knew that no saint would have done what he was here to
do.

He stepped into her room, and asked her if she was
awake. Though Rowan knew her being awake didn’t matter to him, and that he’d
continue what he’d come into her room to do anyway, she feigned sleep. She
hoped that this time things would be different, and that he’d see her sleeping
and leave her be.

He knelt down by the bed and stroked her face, moving
a hair away from her mouth in the process. Rowan’s eyes struggled to remain
closed; she hated anyone but Peyton touching her face. She tried hard to
imagine her beloved puppy was licking her and kissing her, and that that was
the sensation she could feel. As always during his nightly visits, her
imagination failed her and she was left to feel him stroking her face and
licking his lips hungrily, like a spoiled dog before its
favourite
meal of beef and gravy.

She knew better than to cry out. She knew he’d only
hold his hand over her mouth and nose so hard she’d see spots. And she knew
that no one would come in response to her calls. No one ever came. That upset
her more than what he did to her when he was in her room on a night time.

It upset her more than when he would remove her
teddies from the bed before he touched her; like he knew that they were eyes
who could see what he’d be doing. Like he knew that they were souls who could
tell if they knew what he was doing.

He put the teddies to one side, face down and facing
away from him, and climbed over her, where he lay on the bed beside her and
cuddled her like she was his own personal teddy. His body touched hers all the
way down and through the many layers between them she could feel his boy bits
growing.

He buried his face in her hair and kissed her head
repeatedly, while slipping his hand under the covers. Finding the waistband of
her
jama
bottoms he slid his finger underneath them,
and tickled Rowan’s bum at the very top. Rowan held perfectly still as he snuck
his whole hand under her
jamas
, where he squeezed her
bottom so hard she was forced to bite her lip to keep from crying. He shoved
his hand in further and pushed his finger between her legs.