Avenger

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

We both gave the same answer: he cut himself on some glass. I wasn’t lying or being evasive, I just didn’t have the capacity to describe exactly what happened. I think adults mostly forget what it’s like to be a kid and think that kids don’t think very in-depth about what’s going on around them, when the truth is that their feelings are as complex as anyone else’s. The reason you don’t hear much from them is complex as well, but a huge part of it is that they just don’t have the right vocabulary yet. I didn’t know how to express what had happened. The fact was that he had probably just picked them up out of curiosity and then held them too tightly in his fists while he talked passionately (and, yes, I know, very creepily) about something.
Mikey was patched up just fine. The wounds were not significant and didn’t require any medical treatment. I just panicked at the sight of the blood, to be honest with you. It did cause a bit of bother for my mother though, because the home of a child minder is expected to have high safety standards. But after much talking, Mikey and Lucy returned to our house the next day, and things were mostly as normal.

It wasn’t the only thing that tipped me off to how he was. There were other events similar to it. One year my family took a trip to the beach at Southside-on-Sea, and Mikey and Lucy came with us. We were playing by the caves on the shore and had managed to dismember a rock with a bigger rock. It had shattered the smaller rock so that shards had fallen to the cave floor in the shape of small blades. Lucy had seized several and treated them like characters from a made up story. The biggest one was the dad, and the children were lining up to go to school. I asked her what their names were when Mikey stood up brandishing a dagger-sized shard and said, “this is what they use to make the skinned men.”

I stared at him. Lucy looked at him for a few moments and then just went back to playing as though this was a very normal thing to say. Mikey smiled at me, then sat back down and quietly played by himself. He was choosing between pieces of rock, and discarding the smallest, dullest pieces.
Now, don’t get me wrong. He was a great mate, and that’s the truth. I loved him like a brother. We did everything together, and for the most part, we were happy and healthy and fun and free. His moments of what I came to call his “Mikey moments" were few and far between, so I never really bothered about them. I don’t know, I never really thought of what to do about it. I accepted him as Mikey and as everything that came with him. I now know, of course, that it was the adults who should’ve been doing something.

As we grew older, the periods of time that Mikey and Lucy spent dirty and ragged looking grew as well. It seemed a week went by before they would have a bath, as though their parents forgot baths existed. They often talked to me and my mum about never getting to eat breakfast, which my mother remedied, since she took them to school each day, by bringing something for them to eat on the way. Some kids came to us very early in the morning and had breakfast here before being taken to school, but that was part of the child minding business and depending on how many hours my mother looked after your child, you would pay more or less. In the case of Mikey and Lucy it seemed that their parents just weren’t doing enough to make sure they had something to eat in the mornings. My mother spoke to their parents about it and reminded them that she does offer a breakfast service herself, and that the school also offered a breakfast club. But they told her that the kids do get a breakfast at home and that they were simply telling a half-truth. According to them, they gave their son and daughter porridge most mornings and the kids were just extremely picky about their food, and it was something their parents were trying to break them of. They asked that my mother stop undermining their efforts by giving them food in the mornings. My mother believed them.

The fact of the matter was that there was nothing about Mikey or Lucy that was evidential of abuse at home. Even today I don’t think that’s what was happening. I think their parents were just kinda shitty parents, to be honest with you. Lazy and uninspired to work at any parenting skills. I knew for a fact that Mikey never got any help with his homework. Some parents think the burden of educating a child lies solely on the school. It doesn’t.