Circling Carousels (9 page)

The next morning, Candice awoke in a strange bed, in a strange room, with her new friend Kimberley in the same room in a bed of her own. She had a smashing headache and felt really awful, so she reached into the pocket of her jacket for her medicine. For the first time in months, she was without them. She was sure she had them the previous night, but now they were missing and Candice flew into a panic. She began searching in fear, in dependence, in a state of absolute terror, pulling out the pockets of her jeans and her jacket, searching the bed and under the bed and moaning loudly at her inability to find them.

Kimberley was wide-awake now and, feeling pretty lousy herself, began to set up some of her own medicine. It came in the form of a fine white powder she began to snort. Candice found her behaviour odd, as she didn’t seem to be the kind of girl who would be addicted to drugs. This started Candice wondering—if Kimberley was okay and if she was such a nice person, maybe it wasn’t so bad to use a little of this stuff. When Kimberley offered to share a little, she accepted just to take the edge off until she was able to get more of her pills from Marcus. She and Kimberley spent much of the day together, and when Marcus came to pick Candice up and take her home, she was still flying.

Candice got up from bed the next morning and wanted to see Kimberley again. Coming downstairs, she found Marcus was still home and so were her beautiful girls. It must have been the weekend, she realised, so she sat down with them for a moment, but couldn’t stay still. She got up and went to the bathroom, tidied herself up a bit, and beckoned to Marcus from the doorway, telling him that she’d like to go see Kimberley. When Marcus asked her why, she admitted she had fun with her and would like just a little more of the stuff that Kim gave her last night. Marcus looked at her and a strange smile came across his face. “So you liked that, did you?” She admitted she did. He said, “You know, you don’t have to see Kimberley to get a little of that. I can get you some if you like.” She nodded and said she would like that. So it began.

The next weeks were spent with Candice in a constant state of being somewhere else. She was mostly unaware of her surroundings, and anything she did see seemed strange and hard to sort through. She tried very hard to reach out to her children, but they seemed far away from her and oddly inaccessible. Marcus would sit with her often and have a little of the white powder himself, and she really enjoyed the togetherness it brought them. Far from the promise he had made to Bonnie, he was now supplying his girlfriend with any drug she desired.

Candice truly had no idea what she was doing to herself. She just trusted that Marcus would take care of everything, and he did. Parenting was now outside of Candice’s range of abilities, so Elsie and Marcus became Sienna and Crystal’s caregivers. Marcus went to great lengths to explain that they must never speak of their mother’s condition to anyone else, and he added the very frightening reason they must keep silent. He told them stories of children who had been taken away from their mothers because they couldn’t take care of them anymore and how some evil people called child services could make it that they would never see their mother or him again. He told them of two little girls he knew who had to go live with horrible people—foster parents, he called them—who would beat them every day and make them work on their farm all day every day and hardly ever feed them. This scared them completely, certainly enough to follow Marcus’s instructions, and they kept the secret well. Even when Bonnie would call, they would feign happiness and tell her everything was absolutely wonderful.

In time, the girls would get older and wiser and grow a little in their knowledge, from seminars at school about how to say no to drugs. They would walk home from school, talking about the very real probability that their mother was using these terrible life-changing things. Getting close to eleven years old now, their lives were in a settled and very normal routine, except for the total absence of their mother’s influence in their lives. She was there, but not there—present but not really present—and they had become used to it. Marcus was good to them, and when they came to him one afternoon with the material from their
anti-drug campaign and their worries, he was honest with them. He really couldn’t hide the truth from them, and when they questioned why he didn’t try to help their mother, he said that he had tried time and time again. They believed him.

The truth was that Marcus liked things the way they were now. Candice was compliant and never complained about anything. She never wanted for anything as long as he kept getting her the substance she desired. He was able to have her in his bed anytime he wanted without a problem at all. There was no question now of whether he cared for her, and he didn’t have to treat her in a loving way because she could tell no difference most of the time. He could simply have his way with her and toss her aside. Every now and then, when she resisted, he would simply slap her until she was obedient once again. It was kind of like having a wife, but not having to deal with talking, love, or respect. Marcus found it quite to his liking.

Sienna and Crystal were worried about their mother, though, and Marcus was careful to restate that they could never tell anyone. When they got a bit too forward in their questioning, he would lock them in their room and tell them to think about their mistakes until he returned for them, so they learned not to ask.

Chapter 14

I
t seemed to Candice that she was hurting herself more these days. She would often look at her distorted face in the mirror and see bruising. She would look down at her body and see red marks and welts, but she could never be sure if they were real
or not.

It took one definitive moment, when she wandered out into the lounge room just as the children came home, to tell her that indeed she was hurt, bruised, and broken. As Crystal and Sienna came into the house, they stopped in their tracks, took one look at her, as she collapsed to the floor, and sat by her side stroking her head until Elsie came home from the store. Elsie found them crying and wailing as their mother just lay there completely unresponsive, coloured in shades of black and blue on the lounge room floor. She took care of it. Elsie had become very used to taking care of the effects Marcus had on Candice, and today was only different because the girls had now seen it firsthand.

She honestly didn’t know what to say to the girls. She wanted to be honest with them, but she was told she would be fired if
she did, and she simply couldn’t do without her employment. She knew Marcus was abusing Candice, and she knew exactly why, for she had heard him yelling at her and trying to force her to wake up enough from her stupor to be what he needed her to be. He would hit her until she was alert enough to have sex with him, and then he would leave her bloody and bruised for Elsie to fix. It had become a normal ritual for the housekeeper, and although she hated it and hated Marcus for his cruel abuse of the woman he got into this state in the first place, she felt she could do nothing about it. She also knew what Marcus did for a living, and she hated that, too.

Elsie had considered leaving because she was so angry at what Marcus had done. Essentially, he had bought himself a concubine and children, and when the concubine, so full of the drugs he had supplied her, could no longer function, he would bash her into a state so that he could have his way with her. It was a constant nightmare.

Elsie
was
pleased with the way he looked after the girls. He wasn’t as loving or caring towards them now, but he did provide for their needs, and Elsie did the rest. Marcus did seem to favour one of them, though, which Elsie found strange. He had taken more of a shine to the slightly eldest of the twins, and Sienna was the one he would talk to more and give more gifts to, and he was more inclined to ask her what she would like to do or eat for dinner. Crystal was met with more cross answers, more temper flares, and less attention, but Crystal and Sienna were quite different in their personalities, even though they were identical in their looks, so, as often happens, a favourite seemed to have been formed.

Elsie had fallen in love with these two angels, and she really cared for Candice as well. Sometimes, it was just too hard, and she wanted to do something about it, like phone the police, but for the most part, she was afraid of Marcus. She knew only too well what he was capable of, and it worried her. She could hear the beatings and Candice’s screams and cries, and she saw the results so plainly in front of her, like today. So she stayed silent and cleaned up his messes.

She wasn’t allowed to take her to the hospital. According to Marcus’s rules, she was to clean her up herself and put her back to bed with some more pills. Elsie certainly didn’t agree with it, but she did as she was told. This day, because the twins had seen what a terrible state their mother was in, was harder, and the best that she could do was to explain that she had fallen down and tended to hurt herself so much more now because of the medication she was taking. The girls, now very sure that illegal drugs were the root of all evil, believed Elsie. They trusted her word, and although she felt awful for lying to them, she knew the little darlings needed no worse a picture than they already had. They helped her to take her back to the bedroom. Elsie put an icepack on the bruising, and they fussed over her painful body, trying to help the best they could. Crystal and Sienna stood crying at the side of her bed. They had a horrible feeling that things were never going to be any good for their mother and never the same for their family.

They were correct. When Marcus arrived home, the twins were in bed, but the next morning, they came to him with their questions. He sat them down and carefully, meticulously, explained what had been happening—well, his story of it anyway. He told them of her self-harming, her unhappiness, and the increasing drug use. He told them he would never hurt her and that she had done all this herself. He blamed falling, slipping in the shower, and hitting her head on purpose against the wall. In this way, all manner of awful pictures were conjured up in Sienna and Crystal’s heads. Not once did he tell the truth.

The twins went to school very sad and concerned, and they talked of the future, but a future of uncertainty, should their mother no longer be alive. They hardly ever saw her anymore. She gave them no attention, even when they were in the same room. Even though they were sad that she may not be with them for long, they were also frightened and worried that they would be left with no one at all and nowhere to live. They wondered if Marcus would keep them should their mother die, and then they thought of how much they loved her and how they missed the wonderful person she once was. They remembered
the good times, although they were now a dim memory, and they remembered feeling so happy, but all that was gone. They reminded one another of the really frightening incidents when she was so scary, when she cut off all their hair, and when she hit them over and over. They blamed the drugs—it wasn’t her fault—it was the drugs and the drink. Crystal and Sienna had learned a very hard lesson, and they both agreed never ever to try them no matter what.

Only in their dreams, from that day on, could the twins see their mother as she once was, in those days when they lived in their grandparents’ house and when all was well. They remembered the love in her eyes when she would pick them up and hold them when they came running to her from the school bus, and they remembered when she would read them bedtime stories and stroke their hair until they fell asleep. They still loved her so much, and with all their might, they tried to think of a way to save her, to make her better, to get some help for their once beautiful mummy.

It was her love of her mother and her desire to get her help that got Crystal into trouble with Marcus, and his already pronounced dislike for her only became worse.