Dora

It was winter when I ran away. The jonquils in Mrs Black’s garden next door were beginning to go brown at the tips and her daffodils were coming out like fresh yellow trumpets, ready to herald the springtime. I reckon it was the first Monday in August I left, when there was frost on the ground and I could see my breath in misty clouds before my face.

Our house was old, and ugly most of the time, except on rare occasions like Christmas time or when anyone came to visit; then Dora would scrub away the black dust in the corners and wash the carpets and tidy all the rooms, even the ones she knew no one would go in, and the whole place would smell of cleaning spray and lavender for a week. She was never very good with the cleaning. The doors were too high and draughts came in under them, and my bedroom was the coldest place because the window was jammed and would never quite shut. Just before I left Dora sewed clumsy little curtains and hung them up there for me.

Our backyard was just a pile of old junk that Dad had collected and never gotten rid of. He said he had too much on his mind to bother much about it. Once, Dora planted pansies in a little open patch in an attempt to make something pretty, less dreary, but Dad forgot they were there and crushed them somehow, by accident. I remember that time because I found Dora crying in the kitchen afterwards, and I watched her from the doorway until she looked up and saw me, and pretended that nothing was wrong. Funny, the things Dora cried about. She didn’t flinch when Dad shouted at her, didn’t even get teary eyed when her precious kitten ran away and disappeared or when the grandfather clock fell over in the hallway and broke her china cups, and got that awful scratch down the front; she just kind of pursed her lips and swallowed all the tears and words before they had a chance to come out, I suppose. But then, she cried when I fell off my bicycle and scraped my knee, or sometimes when dinner didn’t turn out right, or when she dropped a stitch in her knitting - just a soft, gentle sort of crying that made me stop whatever I was doing and go and wrap my arms around her and say, “Please, Dora! Don’t cry, Dora! Don’t cry!” even when I was too old for it, and she would stop at once, and smile, and wipe the tears away with her apron.

I never called her anything but Dora, because that was what Dad called her. I only knew that she was a sort of aunt, Dad’s younger sister - at least, half one, anyway. Two years after Mum died, when I was still too small to reach the water tap and tie my shoelaces, Dora came to live with us. I don’t know why. She should never have come. I suppose she didn’t have anywhere else to go, no other family or work. Dad never wanted her, but he needed someone at home to look after me every day when he went away, to cook the meals and wash the clothes … maybe he even needed someone to shout at, someone grownup and not a little boy. Maybe he hoped she would shout back, but she never did. Not Dora.