The Outcast Son

by Jacobo Priegue

  Then he put his head down as if he didn’t want to look at me anymore, but that moment only lasted a few seconds.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “I know, sweetheart. I’ll prepare something in a minute. Come with me.” I held his hand and took him downstairs with me.

  “So how was your day at school?” I asked, just to keep him from thinking about what had just happened.

  “Well,” he answered, “I drew.”

  “Did you?” I exclaimed, smiling at him.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you draw?”

  “I drew a house and a car and you and Dad. And I’m going to colour it, and when I finish, I’m going to bring it and give it to you,” he said, excited.

  “Wow, that’s great!” I told him. “I’m looking forward to seeing your drawing!”

  Jaime grew up quickly. He was very smart for his age, and all of his teachers underlined his great potential and good attitude towards learning. But they were also worried about the way he related to other kids. It was as if for some reason he hated being with children his age. He wasn’t aggressive or anything, but he just wouldn’t talk to anyone or play with anyone other than adults. It looked like normal behaviour in a gifted boy, as some of his teachers pointed out, but I was afraid this personality would bring him pain and sorrow in the future.

  When Jaime finished his dinner, it was already 7:30 pm, time for him to go to bed and for me to check on Mark. I opened the door of our bedroom and saw him covering his eyes with his left hand. He was awake and fine, but he looked like an awful migraine was devouring his brain, so he couldn’t get off the bed.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him.

  “I remember everything now,” he said, clear-headed again but with a sad echo in his voice that made me feel uneasy. I didn’t say anything. I thought it was best to let him speak. “I went to Jaime’s school and waited for him at the gates. It was exasperating to see all the other children coming out, lots of them at the same time minutes after the bell rang, and then fewer and fewer till the gates were empty. I saw a teacher holding his hand as he walked him through the undercroft. He was the last one.”

  “Why?” I surprised myself throwing that anxious question before letting him finish.

  “Apparently, he didn’t want to leave the school,” he said. “It was outrageous, Laura, his teachers thought he was having some trouble at home. I was so angry.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed. “That’s horrible!”

  “It was horrible. You should’ve seen the look in their eyes, asking me awful questions, making me feel like a terrible father after all we’ve done for this child.” Mark struggled to speak, his voice choked, hardly able to rekindle what had happened, but I still didn’t know how this had anything to do with him fainting at home.

  “I’m so sorry, Mark. I wish I were there with you,” I told him. “Did you find out why Jaime didn’t want to leave the school?”

  “Eventually, yes. But those ten minutes they spent asking me questions were the worst in my life,” he carried on. “I wanted to just disappear, to vanish in the air. I was on the defensive. I couldn’t help it. But that only worsened the situation. They wouldn’t understand that my reaction was just me being outraged. How can they possibly think I would hurt my boy?”

  “But what did they ask you?”

  “Just subtle, implying questions. Like ‘Would you think Jaime feels safe?’, and the sort. Anyway, Jaime looked fine, and that was the most important thing for me at the moment. Apparently, he had told a teacher he didn’t want to go home because he didn’t like it. Can you imagine?”

  “Oh, dear. How could this have happened?”

  “I know. It’s appalling. My baby boy saying he didn’t like it here. To a stranger. I thought he absolutely loved this house. I mean, his room is the best one! I was disappointed in him, and he realised it. He was sad and had his head down all the way home. He didn’t say a word, and I didn’t speak to him either. I was angry. Not at Jaime, or at least not mostly at Jaime, but the whole situation.”

  “Don’t worry, baby,” I said to him. “I understand. You couldn’t help it. It must’ve been very humiliating.”

  “It was,” he answered. “When we got home and I closed the front door behind me, I couldn’t hold it any longer. I told him ‘Jaime, what you’ve done today was not okay’. I wasn’t shouting, but I noticed Jaime was getting more and more distressed, so I stopped. We went to the kitchen and I gave him a cookie and I had a glass of water, which I couldn’t finish because Jaime threw the shortbread box on the table and ran away. I thought he regretted what he had done. He knew it was wrong, and he felt terrible, so I followed him upstairs to have a conversation. I was shouting as I went up, ‘Jaime, don’t run!’, but it didn’t have anything to do with me being mad. I just didn’t want him to fall and hurt himself. When I was in the corridor upstairs, I felt rigid, my legs failed, and I passed out.”

  Chapter 7

  Roots

  Back in London, my mind wouldn’t stop reliving every moment of having helped a child. It was a warm, fulfilling sensation which made my days brighter and full of hope. I wondered if it was selfish to help others because it felt good, because I knew that’d make me happier. And I’m not talking about those people who help others as a way of advertising, to gain social recognition or prestige, even though they don’t give a damn about anybody other than themselves. I’m talking about solidarity, about doing things for people in need because you know they are in need.

  There is a sort of selfish engine in ourselves. This is not the only thing that keeps us going, but nobody can deny it’s there. It prevents us from getting hurt, makes us put our lives and our needs and our family’s needs first and helps us build a future for us and for the ones we love. This force is always pushing us, encouraging us to materialise our dreams and desires, to pursue happiness. And that is precisely why this engine’s got a brake too. This break is what keeps us from hurting other people, fills us with remorse when we do something wrong and puts us down when we see others having a bad time, so we end up avoiding those actions because we don’t want to feel bad, because we want to think we are good people. Engine and brake hold our societies together. They make us worry about others, they spur us to seek social recognition and we do this by helping people, by trying to be the best possible version of ourselves. Is it selfish then to help others so you can be happier? It might be, but that’s the sort of selfishness the world needs, for it’s what makes us human and helps us build a better society.

  I remember my face on the front page of every paper. It felt so good. It almost made me forget about what I had done years ago, about all that blood in my hands. I was a good person. Everybody around me knew my name, and when we moved to Mark’s place in Leytonstone, many people wanted to come and meet little Jaime, the cute boy they had been hearing about so much. My profiles on social media were full of friend requests and positive comments, all of them praising me and underlining how selfless a person I was. I dreamed on, and I drowned in my own self-satisfaction.

  I came to believe it was all true, that I was extraordinary, that I had done something incredible for that little pitiful child, but when all that attention and focus faded away and I came back to reality, I understood there wasn’t anything special about what I had done. Perhaps it’s not entirely true that anyone would’ve done the same, but I want to believe and I do believe that most people would, and the only great, wonderful thing about this is our own human nature, which makes us care about others.

  I kept that piece of news in my drawer. It gave me strength sometimes when things weren’t going as smooth as I’d like, and I came back to it and read it over and over to remember I was capable of great things. I reproduce below the full text of the article I still keep with me:

  Charity worker rescues starving child abandoned in the streets of Cusco for “being a witch”

  A 2-year-old boy accused of witchcraft was rescu
ed last Monday from the streets of Cusco, Peru, by a Spanish charity worker settled in London. The child had been abandoned by his family and was suffering from starvation when the charity worker, Laura Costa, 31, saw him and took him to the hospital. The doctor who examined the boy has indicated that he “is in a very serious condition and in need of immediate treatment,” but they don’t fear for his life.

  According to members of the hospital and the charity worker herself, the boy had been abandoned by his family and suffered ostracism because they believed he was possessed by the spirit of a witch. This is not the first time something like this has happened around the world. The amount of cases and deaths of children abandoned by their parents based on superstitions and local beliefs appears to be increasing, with a number of documented cases in which their families accused their own sons or daughters of being “witches” and bringing disgrace and calamities to their parents and relatives.

  Cusco police are conducting an investigation to determine the circumstances of the incident, where the child’s family is and why they were not informed about such a situation. Local authorities have promised to analyse this worrying episode, and they have already started a campaign to prevent something like this from happening again, not only in Cusco, but all over the country.

  Laura Costa has said that “nobody would help him. People were passing by and just ignoring the child.” She is very worried about the boy’s health, but she knows “he’s in good hands now. The doctors say he’ll recover very soon. He’s a fighter.” When we asked the charity worker if she felt she was a heroine, she answered that “anybody would have done the same in my situation.”

  I remember spending entire evenings reading that stupid piece of paper. Four times. Five times. Six times. Seven times. I held on to it. It was my relic. I read it when I felt depressed. I read it when I couldn’t find my strength or when my life seemed empty. I read it a lot. I had done something good. That was the person I wanted to be. I read it until every word had lost its meaning, until it was just an empty piece of paper stained in black ink. I stared at the picture until it grew blurry, until I couldn’t recognise the two strangers smiling at the camera. I wanted to be there again. Forever. Hearing the people calling out my name. “Laura.” Was it really me?

  And finally, one day, I found myself regretting having kept that piece of news. I froze. A cloak of winter ice laid on me, and my stomach shrank as if it were drained and stirred and put upside down. I couldn’t move at the sight of Jaime standing by my bedside table, still and quiet, already a seven-year-old young man. He was reading that piece of news.

  I had pictured that moment a hundred times in my mind, the very instant when my child would learn the truth about his roots, when he’d finally know where he’d come from, and I always knew the right thing to do, the right thing to say. Not this time. This time I stood there, by the door. This time I kept silent, frozen, looking at Jaime and unable to find the warm words I’m sure he needed. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I wanted to tell him myself. I wanted him to know that I loved him, that I brought him up as my own blood, that I couldn’t have been happier when I first saw him all smart and proud in his uniform the day he started in school.

  Jaime was still very young, but he understood what that article meant. He understood that he had been unwanted by his biological family and somehow abandoned, and he couldn’t stop staring at the photograph on the clipping where Mum held his faint body in her arms and showed a worried grin. However, he just stood there. Calm and quiet. He didn’t seem to notice me. It was as if his world had been reduced for a moment to the old piece of paper he was holding.

  I overcame my astonishment and approached him from the back just to hug him. He got stiff for a moment but then realised it was me. I made him turn around and I kissed him on his forehead.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I told him, but I got no response.

  “I wanted to tell you myself when you were a little older.”

  Jaime’s eyes were expressionless. I noticed the doorknob was shaking and I stopped to look at my hands and take a deep breath. I wanted Jaime to talk to me. I wanted him to hug me, to feel the warmth of his little hands around my neck. But he wouldn’t. He remained silent. Quiet. Eyes lost in the abyss.

  “You know I love you so much, don’t you?” I waited again for an answer, but it was a vain hope. “This doesn’t change anything, Jaime. Your father and I love you so much, and we want you to become a great, good man. Never mind the past. We are your family. We will always be by your side, no matter what. I loved you since the day I met you. I knew you were special. I knew you would make us happy.”

  I nearly fell to the floor in fear when a crow broke the window and crashed into the wall.

  “Damn!” I shouted out loud, surprised by my own voice in the peaceful silence of the evening.

  “It’s dead.” Those were the first words Jaime pronounced after reading the article.

  “Oh, dear! Are you all right, baby?” I asked. His eyes had recovered their life, and he was now looking at me, still very quiet, and he brightened my soul when he smiled at me again.

  “Yes, Mum.”

  I tried to look self-controlled and calm in front of my boy, but it took me a while to regain my clarity. A crow had broken into my house, only to die right there. In my room. At my feet.

  “Don’t worry about the crow,” I said to Jaime, although I noticed my voice wasn’t firm and sounded very little convincing.

  “I’m not worried. It doesn’t exist anymore.” A chill crossed my body from neck to tiptoes, but I was happy to have my baby back, smiling and hugging me, so I chose not to lend much weight to what he’d said.

  The very sight of the crow covered in blood on the floor was dreadful. I’ve never liked them. They feed on dead bodies, and their cawing sounds like an alarm, as if they were trying to warn us – or remind us – how ephemeral our lives are and that they all come to an end at some point. Like vultures, you can find them gathering wherever there is carrion, and so they might have been associated with death. I didn’t believe in such things as bad omens, but I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about the scene: a broken glass; the wind coming through; a wall painted with the blood of a crow; the bird, motionless, on the carpet and Jaime smiling at me as if nothing happened. And the fact that it was a crow. I don’t think I would have felt the same way if it were any other type of bird.

  As far as I know, Jaime didn’t talk about what he had found out that day to anyone. He pretended it hadn’t happened. Everything was as it was before: the same character, the same personality, the same attitude. It made me even doubt it happened at all, but a dry, impossible-to-wash-away trace of blood remained on the wall to remind me it did happen until we repainted the room. I didn’t talk to Jaime about this ever again. I thought he had taken it really badly and he was just repressing his feelings, and I didn’t want to make him relive that memory.

  Chapter 8

  Loss

  When Mark arrived from work, I was already sitting on the sofa and reading a book I had just bought. I was nervous. I remember having almost jumped out of excitement when I heard the noise of his key entering the lock. I didn’t know whether to stand up or stay there, put my book away or carry on reading, look at him or pretend he wasn’t there. It had been an impatient afternoon.

  “Hi there!” Mark said when he saw me. I had decided to stop reading and look at him. My eyes found his as if I were meeting him for the first time. My heart sped up at the mere sound of his deep voice filling in the house.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, knitting his brows, looking at me with a rather puzzled face. He didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was about to say. It was important. It was good news. That much, he could figure out. I sort of felt he was an idiot. He should know. The warm smile on my face, my mellow eyes, the faltering hesitation in my voice…the signs shouted. They screamed at him. So I smiled without saying
a word.

  “Is everything okay, sweetheart?” he asked again. Now I was starting to get angry.

  “I’m pregnant, you idiot!” I exploded.

  “What?”

  “I’m pregnant, Mark! We’re having a baby!”

  “That’s great!” He seemed to understand, his eyes were wet as he hugged me and took me into his arms and kissed me and carried me upstairs.

  If I had to think about a happy memory, it’d be that 8th of April of 2013. We had been trying for almost half a year, and both of us were getting anxious. Jaime was already three, the perfect age for him to have a little sibling. He had grown up lonely and should benefit from having a little sister or brother. As for me and Mark, we still had so much love to offer, and the prospect of raising a child from the very beginning thrilled and excited us.

  I thought about the moment I’d tell Jaime. He’d be so happy. He wouldn’t feel alone anymore. Sometimes I’d stare at him the whole evening, trying to imagine what was going on in his mind, figuring out his fears, his emotions, his joys; his little face absorbed by the drawing he was making or the book he pretended to read – mostly pictures he’d ruin with his crayons. He had a gloomy character, as if he were incomplete or missing something or in need of something he knew he wouldn’t ever find. And perhaps the sadness, the feeling of me failing my baby boy, was what moved me to want another child, someone I wouldn’t let down, someone who would be happy and complete and smiley, and only perhaps, someone who could make Jaime happy too.

  We decided to wait a couple of months before telling Jaime. I remember that Saturday very well. The morning light coming through the window woke us up soon after dawn. We had planned a day trip to the countryside to escape from the pollution and rush of the city and for Jaime to breathe some fresh air. He loved it out in nature. It was like finding his true self, smiling from the moment he knew we’d go to see the trees and the lakes, the ducks and the swans, the frogs and the fish. He was a different person. He could spend hours staring at the little creek among the hills and the animals feasting on the fresh blades of grass. He didn’t have to do anything else. It was just him sitting next to us, his eyes reaching the distance, his head high and ecstatic at the dance of deer and birds in the wild.