Danielle Steel - The long road home

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.

On Christmas Day, Eloise never came out of her room. John had been gone since the day before, and didn't return until late that night. There was no tree that year, no lights, no decorations. There were no presents for her, or any of them. And the only Christmas dinner she ate was the ham sandwich she made herself on Christmas Eve. She thought of making something for her mother, but she was afraid to knock on her door, or draw attention to herself. It seemed wiser to keep to herself and stay well out of the way. She knew how angry her mother was that her father wasn't there, particularly on Christmas Day. She was nine by then, and it was easier to understand what had happened, though the reason for her parents’ hatred for each other was not entirely clear. It had something to do with the woman called Barbara, and undoubtedly something to do with her as well. It always did, always had, according to her mother. Gabriella understood that very well.

When he came home late on Christmas night, the argument they had was not confined to their bedroom. They pursued each other around the house, shouting, and throwing things at each other, and knocking things down. Her father said he couldn't take it anymore, and her mother said she was going to kill them both. She slapped him, and he hit her mother for the first time. But instinctively, Gabriella knew that whenever the fight ended, she would be the one to take the brunt of it. She wished for the first time in a long time that there was a safe place to hide, a place to go for protection, people she could turn to. But there was no one, and she knew that all she could do was wait and see what happened. She had known for years that there were no rescuers, no saviors in her precarious life.