Free Rowan In The Oak Tree by Ayla Page

*****
    ‘‘There was a little
girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good,
she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid.’’
     
    Rowan missed her daddy. She hadn’t seen him in a very
long time; her maman would not let her. At the grand
old age of eight, Rowan had no pet name for her mother; called her ‘mum’ to her
face. But ‘ maman ’ was the nickname she used behind
her back. The woman was short and stumpy like a felled tree, and had a deep,
booming voice, and a moustache she had to shave or bleach, so maman seemed apt, for mother she was, but she was more of a
man, if you looked closely enough.
    Rowan still called her daddy her daddy. In private
again only though, for her maman had insisted her
boyfriend be called daddy, for he provided the roof over her head, and tucked
her into bed at night, and put the food on the table, whereas her daddy didn’t.
    To Rowan, however, those things didn’t matter. On the
rare occasions she’d seen her daddy, she’d felt like a princess; all the time
and energy he’d spent was on her, he made her giggle, his car smelled like her favourite fruity cereal, his music was loud heavy metal,
his smile was huge and infectious, and his hugs were like no other. Maman’s boyfriend was kind of bony and stiff, whereas her
daddy was big and strong, and soft and squishy.
    Rowan found herself daydreaming again about seeing her
daddy while she was doing her chores for her maman .
She was walking out of the gate at the end of the garden, through the Deep Dark
Woods, and finding her way to his house by herself to see him. She was thinking
of turning her daydream into a reality when she received a sharp clip to the
back of the head.
    “Quit yer mumblin ’ gal, ‘n’ git on wi ’ yer chores!” Her mother said.
    Rowan shoved the laundry into the machine faster, and
mistakenly pushed the heavy clothes too far back too hard, causing the heavy
Hoover to rock, earning her another smack. Said smack sent her head ricocheting
into the machine, and she banged her forehead on the door frame as a result,
and bit her lip. It was all Rowan could do to not cry; maman wouldn’t like that ‘silly noise’, that
‘ridiculous racket’ and would only hit her harder.
    Rowan kept her teeth wrapped around her bottom lip; if
she tightened her grip she could cause herself more pain than maman ever could, and maman didn’t deserve to cause her pain. She couldn’t see for tears, but she blinked
them away so that the evil tree stump couldn’t see. Continuing to put the
clothes in the washer, Rowan kept her face averted from her maman .
She shuffled over to the under-sink cupboard for the clothes-soap, and the foul
smelling liquid that apparently made the clothes soft and smell like Swiss
mountains, and decanted a portion of each into the drawer as she’d been shown
years before, before switching the settings to ‘wash’ and pressing ‘go’. She
muffled her snigger as she put away the Swiss cheese liquid and the powdered
soap into the cupboard; maman had gotten bored with
her already and had gone to sit down in front of the television in the other room.
It amused Rowan how quickly the wrinkly tree would tire of her if she ignored
her behaviour and tried not to show how much it upset
her.
    A soft nudge at her leg made her smile; Peyton looked
up at her, his big brown eyes were sad inside his daft fluffy head. His soft,
floppy ear rubbed against her hand and she rubbed her fingers over its
comforting texture. Slowly, his tail began to wag. He’d known she was sad; had
seen the taller human strike her the way she lashed out at him. He’d come to
comfort her, as always, and as always, his presence reassured Rowan that soon
she’d be a grown-up and she’d be able to escape this place, and move out and
move on.
    Rowan turned to face Peyton, and knelt down in front
of the kooky cocker spaniel, not removing her hand from his ear. She brought
her