Subtlety

Staring at the teddy bear Lisa wondered how she came to be here. It was Sunday, but of course, days didn’t really matter anymore. Sunday was Church day, she had to put on her Sunday best and they went along to the tiny chapel. The chairs were all arranged and music blared out of the speakers, it always seemed so loud to her. Graham guided her to their seat and they waited. A man would come and take the service, Lisa was never sure who he was and they weren’t the services she remembered from when she was small. Now, they were very different, the music, the place, everything.

Graham was her stepfather, he’d moved in with her and her mother when Lisa was only five. She seemed to adjust well to him and the family became a happy one until there was an accident. Lisa’s mother had apparently fallen down the stairs and broken her neck, it was a clear-cut accident, devastating to Lisa, as she didn’t understand why her Mum would leave her. She had no concept really that it wasn’t her fault, she started blaming herself, she thought if she’d been at home, and not at school then she would have been able to help her, it was the illogically broken mind of a seven-year-old.

Her stepfather found it harder to get Lisa to go to school, each day she was afraid something would happen to him while she was away, she would say to him through her tears ‘but what if I come home and you’re not there, like mummy’. He just had to keep reassuring her that he would be and gradually things improved and their lives got back to some kind of normality. Graham worked a normal nine to five job, Lisa was at school and she had Dana who looked after her until her father came home from work.

From the outside, things seemed ok considering what this family had been through but things began to change subtly, so slowly in fact that even Lisa didn’t notice. Graham said to her, ‘you’re old enough now to help around the house’, which at the age of eight wasn’t unusual, but gradually a few chores became everything in the house, the cleaning at first, then the cooking. She didn’t know how to cook, so he showed her, he wasn’t cruel; he kindly showed her how to do all of it. How to cook things perfectly, how to bake, how to clean the house properly; gradually, though, as she got older, there were punishments for getting it wrong, at first missing meals, then her hands would be hit with a belt; then there were beatings.

After a short while they moved house to a rural area, the house was large with an annexe; Lisa was no longer registered for school. She was ten now and grown up according to her stepfather. She was ready to take on the responsibility of a household, there was no need for school, so she spent the whole of her day cooking and cleaning. The house had stables too and Graham bought a horse. Lisa loved the horse, she asked Graham when he arrived ‘Can I name him daddy’, he said she could. He was dappled in colour and she called him Crumble because it looked to her as if all his colours had crumbled together. She learnt to ride him and once a day when she was out with Crumble she felt free, however, she didn’t really know what she felt free from. This had always been her life, she didn’t know anything different, she knew that she was always tired and that there was something missing in her life. She loved her stepfather but she felt lonely, remembering the times she’d once had with friends at school, if she ever did ask about school, her stepfather told her the local school was too far away to attend and that she was needed at home.

One evening, a couple of months after her eleventh birthday, Graham called to Lisa, he had something to tell her. ‘Lisa’ he said with a soft voice, ‘now you are eleven there are new things for you to do, up until now you have taken care of the house and have done it very well, even looking after Crumble. Now you will have a new job, you will have to take care of daddy too’. Lisa was confused, hadn’t she always taken care of daddy, ever since mummy didn’t come back. He carried on, ‘I have to take a bath and I need you to wash my hair for me’; this was where Lisa’s life changed completely. She only washed his hair that night.

Today was Sunday and the Chapel was a private one, in the Annexe, the minister, not a minister at all, it was all a game, just for Graham. Every day was now just a game for him. The outfits she wore while cleaning were now different, each day he would pick out her clothes for her, he no longer worked away from the house, so was a constant presence.

As before, she grew accustomed to the way life developed, subtly changing a little day by day. Graham was clever, he never forced anything, he coerced, he loved, he persuaded, until what was wrong seemed normal. Lisa never slept alone anymore; she was now fourteen and was accustomed to waking at dawn, getting ready for a new day, cooking and cleaning, entertaining, or attending chapel.

There had been new developments recently as a new part of the house had been built, Graham, who had worked as a builder before, had done the work himself. He made it into a film studio and so for several hours a day Lisa now started her first job. It was nothing to her, of course, at least nothing new, for it was not always Graham who shared her bed, it was not always Graham who left her side in the mornings as she stared into the eyes of her Teddy Bear.