Black Eyed: A Novel

Prologue

The house had not been a home for some time. No one had truly lived there for years, and the outside hedges and grasses were unbecoming with weeds and vines, yearning to be tamed by human hands. It was a storage place of sorts, wherein its owners placed meaningless memories in photo frames along the walls and discarded books with dusty and dogeared pages on the shelves. The house stored them as well: their lives of monotony; bland, unseasoned meals; and wrinkled bed sheets strewn across depressed mattresses. It could hardly stand after wobbling for a hundred years without the support of an emotional tie. There was no sentiment towards the building, and it most certainly was not a home.

The forlorn and lonesome structure stood alone, bordered by a great expanse of corn stalks in every direction. Miles of red dirt and rock distanced the blue, weary building from the nearest paved road, and it had been decades since proper traffic had disturbed the rust-colored earth. Its closest neighbor was hundreds of yards in the distance, so it stood desolate, its bleached azure mingling with the horizon's, letting it disappear into obscurity along with its owners.

The building had been crafted with care, meticulously, by a young farmer in the early 20th century. Believing he would be able to live here, happily and contentedly, with his wife and future family, he spent six years constructing the perfect dwelling that he had dreamt upon. Two stories, a vast front porch, and several large bedrooms made the home a mansion in the maize farmer's mind. He was only able to call the construction Home for half a year before the depression of the thirties claimed their savings and the bank claimed their house.

It had seen only one or two owners thereafter, abandoned to the mercy of a dust particle's whim for the majority of its life, too much trouble for its worth. Then, in nineteen-sixty-eight, a couple of newly-weds bought the house and had remained its owners ever since. Treating it lovingly and repairing most of its fixtures, the once youthful Caroline and Robert Frank were now stretching into retirement, wasting away in their late sixth decade, and were decaying along with the house, skin and paint yellowing, hair and roof tiles falling from their crowns.

They had failed to reproduce, focusing solely on their respective careers, wishing not to be interrupted by the incessant neediness of children. When the recession hit in the early two-thousands, their life became tyrannically governed by monetary support, or the lack thereof. Unemployed, broke, and nearly homeless, Robert Frank found solace working at an automotive garage as Caroline stayed at home with the promise of repairing it for the prospect of selling the wretched thing. But the house seemed to wither during that period, shrinking into itself; its paint became an adhesive for excessive amounts of dirt and vegetation enveloped its dusty walls with green and possessive fingers. Neither Frank noticed; Caroline simply because she refused to be bothered by petty housework, and Robert because he was scarcely home enough to witness the damage.

Several months later, after finding the trickle of money from the shop less than satisfactory, they had brought home a young girl, almost ten years old with wide eyes and a wide check payable to their bank account.

Foster care. That's how they'll do it. It'd be only for eight years, and then she's off, Robert had said, sitting at their small kitchen table. It was a conversation just as shallow as any other preprandial talk that they had ever had. Caroline sat across from him, her eyes stapled to the table's center; neither wished for either's touch.

Caroline Frank was more than hesitant towards the idea: she loathed it. She hated children, those ungrateful beings of destruction and noise. The motherly idea of childbearing seemed to her a fanciful notion that obscured the truth of its remarkable emotional and financial toll. Caroline had never held her own swaddled babe in her arms before, and she told herself every night that she was okay with that.

It was easy for Robert to fancy the idea; he spent the majority of his days at the garage, anyway, deserting her to spend nights on the slovenly kept couch in one of his offices. He wouldn't have to school the child, or cook for them, or entertain them - this nameless "them," who was, after all, a child who was not even theirs to begin with. Robert countered her concern by reminding his wife that a young child normally comes with two arms and two hands, able to lift and clean and cook.

"The last time we had help was in the sixties, and this one'll don't need pay. We could get an older one, one that'll know how to clean and cook and look after 'emselves. It'll give us enough money for enough time before retirement," Robert had reasoned, his southern drawl accenting his speech. "Then they'll be off and we'll never see 'em again." Robert was studious in his business decisions.

Caroline glared at her husband. He was ignoring so many other concerns, but his simple tone kept her jaw wired shut.

After a month of constant nagging, she had caved. 

After all, how hard could this be?