Delilah Des Anges - The Other Daughter

By Delilah Des Anges
Delilah Des Anges 2011
Published by House of D Publications & Lulu.com ISBN: # 978-1-4478-3903-3
All rights reserved

Other books by this author published by House of D Know Your Words (with Al Kennedy & Amy Kreines) Shots in the Dark
Kissing Carrion (with G K Blekkenhorst) Hamilton
Pass the Parcel
For the Love of a City: Poems for and About London Tiny Fictions #1
Tiny Fictions #2
Tiny Fictions #3
Tiny Fictions #4
How Not To Write By Someone Who Doesnt Protect Me From What I Want
Tiny Fictions 2011

Other books published by House of D Help: Twelve Tales of Healing

For the town I left behind, too.

S

o many stories begin this way, with the return of the absent child to the bosom of the family home. They speak of how the child has changed too much to ever be at home there again, or they speak of how, after many years in the dreadful embrace of the

wider world, the child has come to understand that the old ways were the only ways they could live under. It depends, you see, on who is telling the story the child, or the welcoming bosom of home.

Five hundred yards from her house, Polly stamped on the brakes of the jeep and tore the keys from the ignition, draping herself over the steering wheel like a recently-shot corpse. She stared across the intervening space the yards of empty, arid land spewed out flat under a bruised sky and took a moment to steady herself. The old knot of bile had already tied itself within her, though the sky stayed disappointingly free of carrion birds or omens of ill fortune. Anything that might give her an excuse to turn the ancient vehicle around and head back towards the civilisation of bigger cities and warmer climates than Buttfuckville, Nowhere, was mockingly absent.

Polly watched the sky a little longer, her breath fogging her glasses along the bottom rim. Theyd no doubt seen her coming it wasnt like there was a spot of cover along the edge of the road, and it wasnt like anyone ever came down this road just for the hell of it, either and seeing her stop in the road like this was going to give them pause.

Let them pause. Let them think shed blown a tyre or stalled the jeep like an idiot girl. She hunched her back over the centre of the steering column and slipped her hand down the front of her shirt, pulling up something small and distinct on a string. Wouldnt do to have that out in front of the family, would it? Polly opened her mouth wide enough to swallow a kids head in one go, and dropped the necklace down her throat. The end of the chain caught on the lone blunt tooth at the back of her jaw, and she turned her head back and forth, feeling the choking sensation start to rise.

It was vile, but the necklace wasnt going to fall into her stomach this way, and it wasnt going to get spotted this way either. At least, the indecently thorough men at immigration hadnt been able to find it, and if they couldnt find it the cursory, avoidant eyes of home wouldnt see what they didnt know to look for anyway.

In the back seat one of the bundles stirred, and Polly started the engine abruptly.
The remaining five hundred yards flittered away like so many frightened crows, and all too soon she was standing outside the jeep, outside the peeling paint on the door, in front of the tarnished brass knocker that had been the envy of the distant town back when this place wasnt owned by her family. It looked like a lions head in some lights, a mans in others. There had been a page on it in the local library
the skill and artistry involved in making such an ambiguous piece of sculpture.
There had been annotations on the page talking about how ambiguity was a sin and things that were neither fish nor fowl were condemned and rightly so by the Good Book and the FDA, but this was Buttfuckville in mid-Nowhere. It was normal.
They still hadnt come to the door, though she knew full well they must have seen her. That they were watching from the upstairs windows and from behind the curtains in the kitchen, watching the way she and long-fled friends had watched people approach up the drive, with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation and excitement. And suspicion, if the car was new or the visitors wore suits. The kind of suspicion that rapidly turned to egg-hurling.
They had to be waiting for her to knock on the door.
Polly glanced back at the jeep the bundles were still again in their cradle of cheap knock-off designer clothes and assorted crap and stroked her throat. Fine, shed knock. Fuck them. They wanted this doing with the right amount of ritual and fucking majesty then so be it.
She lifted up the knocker and let it fall with a creak and a pathetic little thump against the soft wood. Someone hadnt been oiling the hinge. Probably hadnt bothered making someone else do it after shed left, because they were just that anal about doing things the right goddamn way. Polly lifted it again and slammed the lion-mans head into the painted near-punk so hard that a circular piece flopped away from the door and onto the doorstep, taking with it a hail of paint flakes.
There was an answering thud inside the house, and she stood back, arranging her hands on her hips, pulling her lower lip out of her mouth and setting her expression to something less sharp and solid than it had been for the last hundred miles of road.
Oh, look who it is, mumbled the face in the shadows. The owner did not seem particularly impressed, his bathrobe wrapped around his shoulders as if conferring the role of king to him; his face was slack down the right side, but the eye that glittered in it stabbed Polly from head to toe just as effectively as the more lively left. Nice of you to bother showing up.
So you missed me, then. She made a big show of wiping her boots on the unmarked welcome mat a new addition; it had been an upturned hard-bristled brush in her day and peered into the gloom beyond the front door while her brother stood breathing hard and impatiently just inside the shadows.
Back just in time for elections, Rafael noted, his slippers shifting grit about the stone floor as he backed away from her, into the kitchen. Very clever.
Youll have to be a bit more specific than that, Polly said allowing herself a thin smile that actually bore some amusement in it, if no actual warmth. Ive been away . Whats going on? Why should the elections be any more than the boring rigmarole you used to hide in the attic to avoid getting involved in?
Rafaels left-face gave her a sneer while the right-face contrived to give her a look of pure hatred without flinching one of its deadened muscles. Bit of a tie.
So what? Polly looked about at the stained ceilings and the cupboard doors hanging loose and crooked from their hinges. At the banisters that looked more like the broken-toothed smile of a drunken bum than ever before, and the door to the understairs cupboard that had never been painted over, the crackling and peeling unable to conceal where nails had gouged at the wood on the bottom of the door. Its not important. The town is fuc sorry, the town is tiny. Being mayor of this place is like having the right to rule over six preschoolers and a cat; why would anyone care ?
Youve been away, Rafael said shortly, the look of loathing on his right-face not fading a speck while his left-face sank into doughy aimlessness. Youve forgotten how important it is here .
Youd be amazed how unimportant things like that turn out to be when you have a full tank of gas. Polly bit back the rest of her remark and sank into the nearest chair. It gave off a cloud of dust not unlike kicking a large mushroom and stank of cellars, but it beat standing up for the rest of the conversation, and her leg was starting to hurt across the seam. She studiously avoided looking at the sink.
It matters here, Rafael said in the tone of one concluding a sermon. Seth and Sean Oakes