One &Half Mother -Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ellen went outside the door and strolled through the road. She waved her hands hailing a taxi. Ellen asked the black cab driver to go to the street she remembered where Abeba stayed. It was easy for that driver to drive back to his home. He stayed in the same province where Ababa was. They reached the outskirts of New York faster than she anticipated. Ellen got down on the street the driver advised as an alternate and took a short route to the place. She walked through the narrow road going inside the colony with her brown bulged leather bag in her grasp. Her wavy golden hair was flying in the breeze, and it looked like solid gold with the sunlight.

Women outside their homes were staring at the white girl as they were seeing a rare sight of a rich-looking girl walking through their slum and inquiring about Ababa’s home. Ellen saw the house with blue paint on the walls; she walked into that home. Abeba was sitting outside; she came and embraced Ellen.

The minute she saw her, Ellen began sobbing on her shoulder. Abeba came to know Ellen came with a significant sack of distress in her heart. She hadn’t expected the angel to come to her place. Ababa thought about the moment when she saw Ellen being ignored by Jacqueline for the first time.

“What happened, my kid?” Abeba murmured in Ellen’s ear. There was a long silence between Ellen and Abeba.

Abeba made black coffee for Ellen. Ellen tried many times to stop Abeba walking with her painful knees. But for Abeba, her little angel had come to her home for the first time. She wanted to treat her with all she had. Ellen told about the situations after Abeba left the job. Over sips of hot coffee, she recollected her memories and told her everything she remembered. She finished with the occurrences with her sibling, and she kept Antony’s approach toward her in her mind. She expressed her worries about staying in a home where her drug addict brother wanted to prey on her always.

“I wouldn’t tell you to go back there, but where would you go, my kid, how long can you stay with me, I also have two boys, how long will I be able to protect you?” Abeba worried herself.

“No, Nanny, I didn’t come to stay with you. I want to go back to the orphanage where they adopted me; I am sure I will get a space there till I die.” Tears made their way to her cheeks, “Nanny, please tell me about the orphanage and give me the address; I will go back there.”

Abeba only knew the place where Antony’s relative stayed. She told Ellen, “Maple Valley is the place from where they got you, and it is somewhere in Canada, some hillside valley. I will ask my son to ask someone and tell us the details,” she called a little boy playing near her home and asked him to go and call Winston, Ababa’s younger son who was unemployed and played cricket with small kids full time as a day job.

The child raced to the ground close to the province and requested Winston to go home. Winston returned with a cricket bat on his shoulder; he saw an excellent white young lady conversing with his mom. He felt timid to confront them in this outfit, so he went through the back of his home, changed his clothes and came out.

“How you are coming from inside?”

He didn’t reply to Abeba. Ellen smiled at him; he grinned and turned his face down with timidity at confronting a young lady.

Abeba asked him to go to the nearest church and ask priest about the details of an orphanage in Maple Valley. He shook his head and walked outside toward the church. Abeba was talking about her knee pain and life after coming out of Antony’s home. Her elder son was the only earning member of the family now, and he worked for a pizza hut in New York. His diligent work and care were steering the family, and Abeba griped about her younger son for his flighty mentality toward life.

By evening, Winston came back home with a bit of paper with the address of Moses Orphanage in it. Ellen hurried outside to conceal her tears. Ababa felt her profundity of distress when she embraced Ellen to bid her farewell. Abeba went after her in the street and stopped Ellen. She held Ellen’s hand and thrust a couple of dollar bills in it. She embraced Ellen again. The distress between them promoted heavy tears, and people around them watched them with inquisitive eyes. Ellen didn’t ask Abeba for money, in fact, she had come there to request help from Abeba, but after seeing her circumstances, she didn’t want to hurt Abeba by asking her for some more. Ellen felt relaxed after she saw Abeba.

Ellen endeavored to return the cash to Abeba, yet Abeba persuaded Ellen better about her small sparing, which she had saved to purchase a wristwatch for her elder child. For Abeba, to help Ellen in this circumstance was more important than a gift for her son. She was sure Ellen came out of Aileach with few garments. Watching Ellen moving out with an empty hand, Abeba could not resist taking out her little saving, a few dollar bills. She checked—there were a hundred dollars.

Ellen kept the cash securely inside the brown bag and strolled through the footpath. Abeba watched her little angel in the nightfall until she vanished from her eyes. Ellen reached the railway station and booked her ticket to Maple Valley Station.

The massive locomotive entered the station. Ellen felt she was carrying a stone inside her heart. She sat in her seat close to the window. Ellen shut her eyes. Her sixteen years living in New York were blazing inside. Ellen reviewed her memories sitting in the cold alone outside the motel. She whispered to herself, “It is cold,” and took out her sweater from the lumpy brown bag. Ellen wore the dark sweater and supported her head on the hard corner of seat and side of the train. She reviewed her recollections with Daddy, Mommy. Her first gift. Her brother.

The train began to move from the station. Ellen felt something snared in her heart and pulling her back home. However, she didn’t open her eyes. She cried inside.

***

Antony had returned home and thought Ellen had gone to her companion’s home. Antony went to his room and dozed, still hungover. Jacqueline and Daniel returned at night. Daniel found the letter at the dining table, and he shouted. Jacqueline read it with a shock. She woke up Antony by shaking his body exceptionally roughly. She looked very frightened from the depths of her heart; Daniel began crying loud. Anthony didn’t have any idea of what was happening around him for a few seconds in the wake of awakening.

The letters from the paper were chuckling at him. Antony couldn’t read it altogether; his psyche was unstable. His heart was making loud sounds. He feared Jacqueline might hear his heart beats. Antony didn’t say anything; he didn’t know what to say. Jacqueline was yelling at Daniel to keep quiet. Daniel was still weeping.

“Call the police. Save her,” Jacqueline yelled to Antony. Antony was thinking something different. If Ellen says anything to the police, then what would happen? Jacqueline would spit on my face. How will I face Daniel?

Daniel was also thinking the same thing Antony was considering at the same moment.

“Call now,” Jacqueline screamed.

“Wait, wait, Jack, calm down. You separated her from us, right? Now, why are you acting so weird?” Antony started contending with her. “You made your son separate, and you made Ellen a housemaid, and now, for whom are you showing these tears?” Antony’s voice made the building silent.

Antony kept Jacqueline quiet and made her think everything was her mistake. They didn’t rest the day; they waited for the first light to go to her friend’s house.

***

Ellen kept her eyes closed—nothing but darkness outside and inside. There were a few fellow travelers—most of them were students and sightseers to Canada. Yet, she didn’t even try to look at them. She kept her eyes shut and pondered over her life. Friends. She thought after getting some job, she would come back and apologize to them for abandoning them without saying a word.

She thought if she had told them this, they wouldn’t have allowed her to go alone like this in the night to a strange place. They wouldn’t have let me go; they would have battled for me, that’s what they always did since childhood to individuals who called me a vagrant and to the individuals who harried me in school. Tears began streaming down her cheeks. She opened her eyes and glanced at her adjacent seats. They were empty; that made her relaxed. Over the night, she recalled her life from the first moment, which she still remembered.

***

The telephone rang continuously in the midnight at Aileach. With incredible dread and nervousness, Anthony got on the call. Abeba was on the other side. Her musing and stress over Ellen and her family didn’t let her sleep. She was considering the situation in Aileach. She didn’t like Jacqueline as Ellen’s mother. However, she saw a mother in her. As a mother, she just saw how another mother would feel about a missing child in the family. That made her mind up to walk to the nearest telephone booth.

“Ellen will not come back to your home, Sir. She got hurt a lot in her mind, try to discuss among family why it happened, and please don’t worry about her. She went to a safe place.”

“Is it accurate to say she is with you, Abeba? Can I please converse with her?”

“No, Sir. She came here before she left from New York to Maple Valley, where you got her from.”

Antony put down the telephone and strolled to the couch. He had failed in something for the first time in his life, to be a decent Father. He felt like he must admit and apologize to Jacqueline. His malicious personality didn’t let him say a single word. Antony made up new stories quickly to persuade Jacqueline. Antony saw the most stressed mother in Jack. She may have much reason to worry.

Meanwhile, Ellen reached Maple Valley Railway Station. She took the public transport to get to the nearby town. The place had developed a lot now. The bus entered the city transport stand, and all the travelers got down there. Most presumably, this was the last stop of the shuttle bus from the railway station to city. She got down from the bus at last, and she was looking for some face that would help her. She found a middle-aged woman and showed her the address she had.

The lady pointed her fingers toward the church on the hill, “That is the place you are searching for. Try to get a taxi to go up there. It is very long to walk.”

Ellen tallied the cash left with her. Ten dollars, that’s what she was left with after her train ticket and a few coffees at night. She went and asked a taxi which was waiting outside the transport about the charges to the chapel; the driver grinned at her. “Ma’am, this taxi is not going; I am waiting for the Father of the church. You could ask him if he allows, I can take you there.”

She stood near the taxi. A moderately-aged man was assisting an old cleric walking toward the taxi. Father Gabriel seemed very old now, and Adam was still beside him as his right hand. Time had made Father Gabriel bow while strolling—someone who hadn’t bowed before anybody in his life. They moved toward the taxi gradually. Adam opened the door and helped Father to sit in the rear serenely.

Ellen walked to the window side next to Father Gabriel. Adam stayed close to the front door and saw the young woman moving toward Father Gabriel. Ellen disclosed her difficulty getting a taxi in at the beginning of that day, and she asked Father Gabriel to help her to reach the church.

“Get in my child, we are on a similar course,” Father Gabriel’s sound was not clear with his tired vocal cords. The taxi began to move slowly toward the church.

“From where are you coming, my child?”

“New York, Father.”

“Whom you need to meet in the church?” Father Gabriel proceeded with his inquiries.

“I want to stay in Moses, Father; I am a vagrant.”

“Oh my goodness. There is not much space to live, my child. The inmates and orphans we have in Moses are battling for their survival. I don’t think you are a vagrant, dear. You need to go back, my child. If you ran away from home, leaving your parents in distress for senseless reasons, the orphanage is not a place to have fun,” Father was sure about what he said.

Ellen’s eyes became noticeably watery. Her last expectation, she felt the agony of people who were tossed out from their families. She didn’t have any stress while leaving Aileach and New York City. Ellen had a solid conviction about those hands that protected her from death. And she believed it would be effortless for those hands who gave her life to give her shelter.

Father Gabriel chose to take the young lady to chapel. He had many encounters with youngsters who ran and came to the chapel to stay. He thought of calling her home on the way to church in his mind. He wasn’t impolite to request the defenseless young lady to get down and walk back. He remained a messenger of God by his helping mindset toward the helpless.

At the point when the taxi began to race toward slope gradually, Ellen felt the same passionate boundary she felt sixteen years back while going down from Moses in Anthony’s Mercedes. She spoke a few words with substantial pain in her heart and a stifled wail between her words.

“My name was Elisha, Father. I got adopted from here sixteen years back to a family in New York,” she kept her mouth closed tight with her hands and cried intensely. Her tears made dull spots over the brown leather pack, which she held on her lap.

“Elisha!” Father Gabriel and Adam heard the name with a shock. They didn’t accept what they listened for a minute.

“How?” The single wordd question Father asked Ellen implied everything..

“I can’t live in the family anymore, Father,” she endeavored to state this much through her sob.

Father thought not to bother his Little Elisha any longer. He chose to ask more after she had calmed her feelings. He instructed Adam to take the course of action for her stay for that day in Moses.

The taxi reached the church.

Adam led Ellen to Moses. She saw the giant maple tree in front of the chapel with colorful leaves in it; deciduous leaves covered the garden bench like a brown cover. With a glance around the area, Ellen saw the home with a big swimming pool at the bottom of the hill.

Sister Mary was now pretty old, and she was the Mother Superior of the convent. She was sitting near the corridor when they reached Moses. It was a happy moment for the mother within Mother Superior to see the half-dead baby she took in her hands years ago. Sister Sophie came down and joined them. Ellen disregarded her stress for a minute when her mothers began to chat with her.

Sister Mary instructed someone to arrange the guest room for Ellen. The room was slick and clean, Ellen noticed and delighted in the old tree house aroma inside the room. She felt weightless on the bed after numerous years. Old Moses hadn’t changed much. Didn’t change at all, the big garden with all-time flowering plants was the only change that had happened.

Mother Mary and Sister Sophie had some work in the city that day; they advised their Little Elisha to unwind after the stress of long travel, without inquiring about her reason for coming back.

Ellen lay in bed with the old wood smell in the room. She closed her eyes. Memories flashed before her eyes. She remembered the date was seventh November. Her birthday. Tears were tumbling from her closed eyes. Tears fell on the same floor where the destitute old woman left her material body as a mystery nineteen years back.

Father Gabriel was hunting down Elisha’s document painstakingly in his cabinet. He was not sure about the year Elisha came to Moses. At last, he discovered her record. The smell of old paper arose when he opened it. Father went through her various medical reports. Legal forms of adoption. He saw the enrollment archives of the property, which Antony had enlisted in Elisha’s name. He hauled the document out from the record; Father read the old yellow paper deliberately.

Father Gabriel noted Antony’s telephone number from the record and attempted to contact him by telephone. No one picked up the call in Aileach. With uneasiness and frustration all over, Father Gabriel put down the telephone.

Ellen was dozing calmly. She felt the security of home inside the narrow room. She had become weary of her restless adventure and the restless evenings she had experienced in Aileach.

Ellen woke up at around three o’ clock in the afternoon; she strolled outside with her drowsy eyes. Mother Mary and Sister Sophie had returned, and they had been sitting tight waiting for Ellen to join them for lunch. They began speaking about the years past at their meal. Ellen tried to hide the awful part of her New York life. She told them about the stories of loneliness and insults from the schooling, and she lamented about recounting the genuine stories to Abeba in her brain at the same time.

Antony and Jacqueline reached the church at almost at the same time. In the morning, they had left for the first flight from New York to Toronto; they were in a hurry to meet Ellen as early as possible. When they entered the congressional hall, Father Gabriel was resting in his office. These days, Father Gabriel didn’t go to the clergy house once he came to his office. Adam got them to Father Gabriel’s office. Father stood with great difficulty. Antony’s face was begging for mercy. Jacqueline was taking cover behind Antony with her frightened face.

Antony expressed his wish to confess to Father. They both walked toward the confessional room. Father Gabriel may have thought it was always great to begin fresh starts in the wake of washing off the wrongdoings from the mind. Father sat inside the confessional and pulled the drape between them. Antony started to admit his oversights in life to Jacqueline and others. He recounted the stories of cheating he faced and that he had committed in his life.

Antony burst into tears while confessing the tragic conduct toward Ellen under the influence of alcohol. Father heard everything; his eyes became noticeably watery. Jacqueline was imploring before the Jesus statue in the hall; she was stressed about the admission Antony was making now. She heard the reverberation of the smothered cry of Antony inside the congressional lobby. Father Gabriel came out from the confessional. Antony remained there to get back to normal. Father Gabriel was upset about the circumstances Ellen had been through, and he decided not to send her forcefully with them.

Anthony and Jacqueline came to Father Gabriel’s office again. Father asked them to sit, and they were talking for long. Father didn’t show hostility toward Antony, and he valued Antony’s honesty in admitting and acknowledging his mix-up and his intention to correct his slip-up in mind. Father Gabriel put forth his expression without disillusioning those guardians. He told them if Ellen liked to go back with them, they could take her while going back home. Jacqueline was thinking of ways to convince Ellen and to take her with them. She was still her little girl in her mind.

Father asked Adam to call Ellen. Adam saw Ellen in the corridor chatting with Mother Mary and Sister Sophie after lunch. He asked her to go and meet Father in his office. When Ellen left the place, Adam disclosed to Mother Mary and Sister Sophie that Ellen’s guardians had returned to call her to the family. They were shocked and thought Ellen was hiding something from them.

Ellen saw Antony and Jacqueline while entering the congressional hall and hastened her steps. Jacqueline ran toward Ellen and embraced her at her sobs. However, Ellen did not feel like crying with her mother. She was strong enough inside. She felt the love of her mother. Ellen apologized in Jacqueline’s ears for absconding from them. She saw the unnerved face of Antony alongside Father Gabriel. Jacqueline was apologizing for every single oversight she had committed toward Ellen while wailing aloud. Father Gabriel got a rough picture of Ellen’s painful life in New York after Antony’s confession and Jacqueline’s apologies.

Ellen had already made her decision before leaving New York. She asked Antony and Jacqueline to allow her to stay in Moses Orphanage. She assured them one day, she would come back to their life. Antony stood helplessly near Father, and Jacqueline was surprised to see that Anthony did not even come close to Ellen at that point. Father Gabriel also kept silent when he heard Ellen’s opinion. Until evening, Jacqueline tried to convince Ellen to come back home.

Ellen had already mentally decided the way forward. Antony and Jacqueline waited in their taxi close to the congressional door anticipating their daughter should return even in the wake of leaving the compound.

After an extended wait in the cab, they began to move down the hill carrying two hearts filled with sorrow. Antony recalled the first day that they had seen the butterfly in Moses. He reviled himself for demolishing the fantasies of the angel.

Ellen walked toward the garden bench. She cleaned a portion of the seat covered with fallen leaves. She heard the sound of cab starting to move. Ellen felt the passionate pulling inside her, yet her psyche was stable enough to conquer it. She sensed that she was sitting in a ghastly burial ground filled with leafless trees, which looked horrendous while looking around, that overcast evening. But the maple tree in front of the church was waiting for someone with its dark orange leaves on it. The cool wind before the rain blew her loosened hair. The leaves from the tree began falling on her like a shower of rain. Mother Mary and Sister Sophie also saw a significant amount of leaves tumbling from the tree with a little breeze. Ellen admired the tree and asked softly, “Do you remember me?”

The breeze became strong with the rain; Ellen rushed to Moses. She saw the remaining leaves on the tree falling like a dark cloudburst and flying around. Nature was crying uproariously like a thundering ocean. Ellen didn’t feel the tide of feelings inside. Her mind had matured enough overnight.

Sister Sophie walked to her and started conversing with her. By this time, they got to know Ellen’s circumstances in New York were not as good as they expected. Mother Mary saw Father Gabriel waking toward the clergy house after Antony left the chapel and Father told her about the colossal mistake he had made in his life and advised Mother not to aggravate Ellen by asking her about her days in New York.

Ellen was enthusiastic about helping the ladies in the kitchen making supper. Middle-aged and old inmates and orphans were happy to get the help of a lively young woman. Ellen was drawing herself into the activities to divert her unwanted thoughts. She had dinner with the big family of Moses at night. Her recipes were appreciated on the very first day. After dinner, Sister Sophie told Ellen about the morning walk she went on each day and asked Ellen to go with her if she liked to. Ellen truly needed to stroll through her country. Where she was born. She was glad to say “Yes” to Sister. After dinner, they went to their rooms.

Ellen shut her door. The sounds of whispering inside Moses boiled down to noiselessness. Somebody thumped her door. She opened it fast and was astounded to see Mother Mary, Sister Sophie, Adam with all the old inmates and orphans standing outside the room. Sister Sophie held a cake with candles in it. Ellen’s mind was filled with satisfaction for a minute; the next second, she recalled the birthday events celebrated in New York until this time.

Ellen strolled with them to the hallway. After everybody’s overwhelming applause and birthday melodies, she sliced the cake and gave it to her moms and everybody. She felt happy while strolling back to the visitors’ room.

Ellen imagined the homeless lady. She imagined her figure with grimy torn dresses and with the face of a holy messenger. No, the old lady had a face like a witch. Sister Mary had told her that a long time back. She endeavored to imagine the lady’s face like a witch in her mind. But still, it didn’t change; the destitute woman with a bright heavenly attendant’s face was smiling at Ellen. She dozed gently, to begin a new life next day. Her stresses over family melted like ice in her psyche. She rested with no anxiety that day.