Chapter 1
People sparkle around me making sense of nothing but how much. Then people offered me money to sleep with them and as I am not a prostitute I always said impolitely no.
A nobody telling all them sires no and their Missus who do you think you are?
“You refusing the English child when they are the masters?”
“Why”?
“They are our protectors,”
“Then they should not ask such dumb questions I do not sleep with them because I am saving myself for something better.”
“Well save on.”
“Yes that is my dowry,””
“Dream on.”
“No one would marry you no one worth their salt because you are cursed.”
“I am who said I am cursed Auntie that is a lie nobody would curse me I am a child.”
“The mother and grandmother and the whole family cursed you because your granddad killed my child.”
“She is as alive as possible.”
“ He tried to rape her.”
“Is that why I work so much?”
“You must work harder to repay what your granddaddy did.”
“He did not he did it to someone else,”
“He tried to rape my child and now you are cursed there is no other words to say about that.”
“How much does it cost to repay that?”
“A lot.” Sighed auntie and she should know she was a lot older and wiser than me.
A whore in the making they all snigger at me I was in so many fights went and came back with dirty and torn clothes. I did not make it my business as the fights got worse with the boys inclined to fight for their girls I was in danger. That is what grandmother said I should be taken care of.
“How,” I asked I should never ask questions again. Oh, my sore head.
You are a character everyone said about me.
I thought that was a compliment.
“You should not leave the house you are condemned to become that,” Uncle would yell at me as if I had done something frightful.
The shuttered women in the town meant their relatives got there first and they were condemned to live alone without sunlight and die of premature old age.
The shutters would lie behind a world of grief and death and ill will. They were women who had no one to turn to because their families let them down.
The shutters then led to being boarded up and they would be consumed as if buried alive. They could not leave their homes and did not want to because everyone jeered at them and made funny faces all the lads and lassies did too.
I was in there asking not much and jeering like the rest of them then I would see their tears and fight for the right of behaving badly and even wickedly. We were in constant argument about whether it was right to sleep with one's parents or not.
I slept with my auntie they all jeered.
“I don’t I sleep with her only to see if she is breathing.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because…”
I had been in some frightful situation I had walked into a murder and did not want the suspect to seek me out. I was so puzzled as to what to do and sleeping with my auntie was the best way of getting some sleep.
When one is hyperactive as a child sleeplessness is near and the whole thing was two people who needed to couple made me the gooseberry. They were receiving support and money for me. They were not doing it for nothing but still, they hated having me there.
What one does to make money.
I never do anything to make money except what has to be done. There is still in some part of me that refuses to accept all that had happened.
“Your grandmother spoilt you,” Was the constant refrain there was no way I did anything like behave like a spoilt child.
“I am not spoiling for a fight.”
“You are a figure of fun,” sighed Auntie, and that stuck somehow it stuck because was it true.
Long years later there was something inside me that refused to accept this. That I was somehow a clown in the making because had nothing no prospects and not much of a life to look forward to. A reject is a dejected person. I tried to be happy all the time. I was in some way to be in something like a romantic mood.
“No time for romance,” Zeks said,” we have to eat to work to get ahead.”
“Fidel don’t we?”
“Sure.”
“There he is in complete agreement.”
“I will be hanged if I don’t.”
He nearly got hung because he had killed a Greek in a club fight. The cousin took over his life and the recovery was miraculous. But the man had died. See it is confusing.
The Greek youth had died but the money grandpa spent meant he was taken alive. His resurrection was a sure thing a man could become from the dead and live.
Then he turned up. He was spat at for being a traitor to his family. Disowned but he got wealth.
Alive? He could startle his family with a child and rename himself money meant the business. Stones meant nothing.
He was an imposter and the judge was bought and the rest of it. That justice had been done.
“Well done,”
Cooked like crispy bacon.
“An innocent man may have been hung if there had not been a hung jury.”
That his father Durmush looked a bit smug.
“I did not understand it and nobody else has to this is a private novel.”
So what had happened?
Nothing he was proven innocent and he was then sent to London where all the other innocents live.
When he disappeared.
I was married off to that type of family and did not get a cent. Because the whole marriage was not legal and would have been disallowed.
So my stepson adopted me and I was his child from then onwards. I do not want to think about all the implications.
