Logs:Ten Years, Ten Moments

Ten Years, Ten Moments
cn: depictions of child abuse & neglect
Dramatis Personae Desi, Gaétan, Sera	a long decade "{They're magic.}" (a duet: bass & baritone here)
Location together, and not
march 2006 The shouting from downstairs is loud and angry, enough to wake the baby where he had been sleeping so peacefully before. Desi has just fled up here and scoops Gaétan up, bundling him against her chest and rocking gently. As he quiets she creeps to the edge of the landing to peer down through the spindles, her green eyes wide and fearful. "{It's alright,}" she whispers, though her skinny arms are quivering around her infant brother, "{we won't let anything happen to you.}" may 2007 "{You may think this is just some mush,}" Desi informs Gaétan solemnly, waggling a spoonful of what does, indeed, look very much like mush, "{but it is fairy food and you ought to eat it all up.}" The spoon makes a few loops in the air before slipping into the toddler's (already mush-encrusted) mouth. Sera wakes where she had been sleeping in the carrier beside them, fussing in clear prelude to screaming. Desi hastily puts down the bowl in her hand and lifts the baby instead. "{Hush, now! Soon our brothers will come, tall and handsome, like fairy gentlemen. And we will have a ball with--dresses and dancing and cake!}" She scrabbles to her feet and tugs her little brother up by his sticky hand. "{Well, none for Sera. You still need milk.}" Though she adds, conciliatory, as they head toward the kitchen, "Fairy milk." april 2008 Sera is crying again, having been left in one the hard plastic lawn chairs out on the porch where her mother's latest boyfriend is drinking and chainsmoking. Her agitation is contagious. Ed puts down the fifth of noxious whiskey, still wrapped in a brown paper bag. "Elie! Your brat is screaming," he hollers through the open front window. "You wanna shut it up before I do?" Beside the chair, Gaétan is wide eyed, more than a bit frantic. There's not really enough strength in his chubby arms to safely hold or soothe a baby, but that doesn't stop him trying to pull his little sister out of the chair -- which only aggravates her howling, despite his firm and fierce "Shh! Shh! It's quiet time shhh --" as he pats at her face. The patter of urgent footsteps from inside sounds much too light and coordinated to be Elie Tessier in her present state. Desi pushes out onto the porch and lifts Sera, bouncing her gently. The crying eases, less affecting now even if it doesn't immediately cease. "{C'mon, Gae, let's go play inside.}" She awkwardly cradles the baby against the same side she's leading the toddler on, keeping her scrawny frame between them and Ed as she ducks past him and his miasma to get back to the door. june 2009 Desi runs a comb through Gaétan's unruly mop of dark hair, taking perhaps more care than is entirely necessary so she has an excuse not to look at their mother, hovering in the doorway. "{We'll take Sera,}" she's saying, quiet and demure, "{you and Ed can have an evening to yourselves. It's like they're babysitting for free.}" "{This is only Lucien's attempt to show me up for missing his graduation,}" Elie snaps, gesticulating wildly with her cigarette. "{You are my children, yet you take any excuse to abandon me and run off with your brothers to their life of sin.}" Her breath hitches audibly in her chest. "{Don't you know how afraid I am to be alone with Ed?}" Gaétan is not helping with this process, head bobbing along to some quiet tune hs is humming under his breath; even at this age he has started developing a strong ability to tune Elie out. He does look up at Desi after the latest stroke of comb, voice hushed and conspiratorial as he informs her, "{We might even get ice cream.}" january 2010' It's not an ideal environment for reading, not with the loud rumbling rattle of a subway train shaking the room every five minutes nor with the raised voices that drift in from the living room. Gaétan has nevertheless set up a tiny and relatively clean-swept corner with a ratty old bedsheet draped like a tent. He's tucked himself onto a pillow, arm curled around Sera where she sits in his lap. He is, at the moment, taking a brief respite from continually asking Desi What Time Is It Now to hold the worn and beaten library book up where Sera can see it (but out of reach of where she can grab at its pages.) "{See, we're just starting right here --}" One finger taps the page before he begins reading it, quiet and slow, but steady. "All children, except one, grow up..." Too tall to sit up properly in the little tent, Desi is stretched out on her side with her head propped up in the palm of one hand. She wears an indulgent smile on her face, confident and encouraging, but her eyes keep straying to the timestamp on the screen of her phone even after her brother has ceased asking about it. As surreptitiously as she can manage, she's composing a text while Gaétan reads. (Desi --> Luci, Matt): {Where are you?} august 2011 Gaétan is laughing, breathless and dizzy as he spins across the floor, several twirls longer even after Desi has released him. There's not a lot of space to continue this in the small shared bedroom, and he thunks into the side of his bed, whumping down to the mattress. "I'm fine!" he declares almost immediately, though his first attempt to sit back up has him toppling back over with the room still spinning. "Are you gonna do this on stage?" Desi follows her brother across the room with a tight series of chaînés and, though she does not look the least dizzy, also throws herself across Gaétan's bed. "Yes!" She rolls onto her side and sits back up. "I'm going to study in college first, and then I'm headed to Broadway." Her eyes lift dreamily to the posters of Les Miserables and Wicked on the wall over her own bed. "And then you can come and see me and Luci up on the stage." february 2012 There's hardly any space left in the tiny bedroom after fitting in the furniture for all three children. Desi has consolidated all of her posters onto the wall above her twin bed, and is in the process of stringing multicolored fairy lights around her younger siblings' bunk bed. "{It's not so bad,}" she tells the others brightly, "{at least you have your own beds now.}" She musses Sera's hair before reflexively smoothing it over again. "{So I won't crush you in my sleep.}" Sitting on the edge of the lower bunk with her legs kicking in the air, Sera looks deeply skeptical of her big sister's optimism. "{There's room for all my animals,}" she concedes reluctantly, radianting malcontent, "{but there's no room to walk. I wanna go home.}" By the window (which looks out on a very appealing view of another brick wall and a narrow trash-filled alleyway), Gaétan is carefully lining up a row of potted plants. Scowling at the lavender he's just balanced on the sill. "{This is home,}" is, first, sharp and disgruntled. He relents in the very next moment, adding more gently, "{Hey. Just a few more plants and you can imagine this is fairyland.}" september 2013 The assemblage of items Gaétan is cramming into his backpack is -- maybe not exceptionally well thought out. A book of guitar sheet music. a pack of playing cards, a box of Particularly Interesting Rocks, two tee shirts, a small canister of tea. "{She probably wouldn't even notice we're gone anyway.}" He sounds a bit obstinate in this assertion. "{Anyway, they didn't wait for permission, why should we?}" Despite her reservations, Desi has packed far more quickly--perhaps has never been wholly unprepared to flee, since she's been old enough to countenance the idea--and is now helping Sera. "{I fear she will notice, and call the cops,}" she frets, struggling to keep her voice even, "{and I have no doubt their house is the first place she'll look. Quickly now.}" She coaxes Sera into her Toothless backpack, then reaches into her purse to check--for the fifth time in as many minutes--the cash she took from under their mother's mattress. "{But I don't know where else we're to go.}" Sera bounces up onto her toes, hefting her (not actually very heavy) pack with satisfaction. "{Don't worry,}" she reassures Desi brightly, "{Luci and Matt will charm the cops away. No one can resist them.}" Her excitement and pride ripple through her siblings in fluttery waves. "{They're magic.}" november 2014 Two glittery jump ropes on what little floorspace there is in the children's shared bedroom demarcate the bounds of their ritual circle. They have only one candle--a little tea light in a glass painted in a pinwheel of colors representing the four quarters--its flickering light warm on the faces gathered around. Sera takes her siblings' hands in hers, the intensity of her focus gathering them in. "{Dear gods and goddesses, watch over our big brothers.}" Her voice is an exaggerated stage whisper, her eyes huge and serious. "{It's Luci's birthday but mama wouldn't let us go see him so please help him not be sad, and Matt is very sick and hurting a lot, please make him better soon.}" Gaétan has been fidgeting, restless and inattentive; the candlelight cast on his face illuminates an expression that is heavily dubious. At least until Sera takes his hand; though his sigh is exaggerated he does focus more intently. It takes a reluctant pause before he adds in, "{If anyone's actually listening. They could probably use some help.}" The faintest ghost of a smile touches Desi's lips when Gae speaks, and her grip tighten ever so slightly on her siblings' smaller hands. "{We gather here in love and light to ask your intercession,}" she intones, her eyes focusing on the flame at the the circle's center. "But as above, so below: work in us, and through us, and all the wondrous channels of the world. This is our will, so mote it be!" december 2015 Gaétan is fighting the zipper of a beaten-up suitcase, wrestling it closed around its overstuffed contents. "{I promise Huckleberry's going to be okay in there,}" he's assuring Sera earnestly even as he pokes one tentacle of the squishy purple octopus back into the zipper and tugs it properly closed. His little sister's worried look prompts additional clarification from him: "{She's got all her friends with her, and you'll have so much room to put them all, now.}" "{Okay,}" Sera replies dubiously, still watching Gaétan close up the suitcase an unsteady admixture of worry and sadness that she's trying to contain. "{It's such a nice house,}" she adds finally, "{I wish we could all live in it, together. But...}" She starts to pluck at the rough, much-stained sheets, without much conviction or skill. "{...Luci shouldn't have to be alone.}" "{Oh no, you don't have to pack these chewed up old sheets, darling.}" Desi pulls Sera against her side and kisses the top of her head. "{Luci got pretty new ones for you in our new home. Don't tell him, 'cuz this is a secret, but you're right...}" She kneels down in front of the youngest Tessier, though she reaches out to pull Gaétan into their little huddle, too. "{...he needs us to help take care of him, too.}"