2 Chapter-1

In a city in India, a girl was born into a family. The mother was British, and the father was Indian. The girl was born on the 5th of January in 1969. It was that day the mother of the child got pains. On that day, this girl child was all ready to be brought into this world in darkness. Her first invisible stepping stone was that day this year, a great leader had died, and it was a total lockdown. A rainy day, power shutdown. There was no transportation to get the pregnant woman to the hospital, but, finally, they happened to find a jet cart. Also known as a carriage of two cows carts. Which, they managed to reach a government hospital.

The mother struggled and cried in pain. It was her first baby. The hospital power was off, and 2 hours later, still in the dark, the woman delivered a beautiful baby girl. She was four pounds, blue eyes, blonde hair, and fair. She was a beautiful child, but her life was to begin from this moment on the stepping stones. She was the pet of her grandfather from her mother's side. The grandfather was a British man who fought in World War 2, who later settled down in India.

Skeeter was named after a great singer called Skeeter Davis but baptised as Skeeter Baylis taking the surname after her father, Leonard Baylis.

Unlike other children, Skeeter was never loved by her parents, and these reasons are yet to come to life. When Skeeter was three years old, she was in St. George's Orphanage School. A popular Indian school, that was to be her home for good. Back home at her mother's house, her Skeeter little sister Luana was born. Leonard, the father of Skeeter, never worked. He depends on his sister Ann, who was a Cabra artist. She loved nobody other than her brother Leonard. She used to spoil her brother with grass which nowadays we refer to as weed. He became addicted to it.

He needed money to buy it every day, or he would beat the shit out of Jane, Sketcher's mother. He would take her clothes away from her body. Beat her blue and throw her out of the house with her two kids, Skeeter and Luana, naked crying. The two girls would cover their mother's body. That happened kept going on until Ann, the aunt of Skeeter, plotted to make and force Patsy, Skeeter's mother, to become another Cabra artist. A woman born in Liverpool in a decent family was forced into many other things in life by Ann and her brother Leonard Baylis.

Since she was not allowed in her father's house anymore, she had to live with what was her faith. Skeeter was left at the orphanage. She never saw her parents on the second Sunday, or for holidays she would watch when other parents came and see their kids bring food from home to feed them. She would walk from pillar to pillar with her eyes on the road looking with hopes to see if anybody home would come and see her. The school gates would close, and she would be disappointed and sad. She would walk back to her dorm. She had no friends, nobody liked her because she was the fairest child in the school. She would always sit down and dream.

Skeeter was a dreamer. She would sing her favourite song, "I am nobody child" as if it was a normal song to sing. Two years passed, and nothing changed besides her little sister Luana, who was now in the same school. Both sisters were never looked after well. Boarding school was bad. They got only a small bowl of rice and half-cooked vegetables for lunch and dinner. For breakfast, it was served two hard rock stone idli, or Rava suji upama every grain had magat. Nothing else was supplied to not only them but the whole which had 200 student boys and girls staying in school.

It was a very reputed school which was founded in 1715 by the Britishers, but as it was taken over by the Indians, this school lost its charm. Skeeter was good at acting, she would take part in all cultural programs and Christmas plays were her most favourite act as she would always act as a liar and an angel. She would take part in Shakespeare plays. She was a very good dancer at birth. Skeeter was then five years old, her parents' relationship was getting worse day by day. Mother had to travel from city to city to another city.

Every club her mother had danced in. Father would accompany her, and he would do the same to her, give her alcohol, take away her salary, and beat her up. And the money Jane made was never used for the children's support. They were greedy and selfish people who threw the sisters in a boarding school and deprived the girls of love and affection. Parents were in their world. Again, years passed by, and Skeeter's mother found real love in her husband's cousin. He was much younger to patsy one day when she eloped with her husband's cousin Joe. Joe left the two girls in school. They started a family in another region, nobody knew their whereabouts, not even Joe's parents. Joe was Leonard's 1st cousin.

Two sister's sons. Joe worked in Vizag as a chief cook while Jane still kept on dancing. She was pregnant with Joe's baby. One day, she came down to Madra and went to her stepmother's house looking for help to see her two girls, but since Jane's father had passed away earlier, she had no contact with her step-mother or half-brothers. They had no clue about the girls, so Jane went straight to the school, where she was not permitted to see them, but for her lucky break, Skeeter spotted her mother from her classroom and ran to see her mother and hugged and cried for not to leave them and go. Skeeter and Luana had not seen their parents for three years.

Skeeter was dirty and wearing torn clothes. Head was full of deep scars of sores, nose running. Jane requested the school warden to grant her permission to take her two daughters for a day and will be back within 24 hours.

The school principal was a kind man, and he was very fond of skeeters and had his daughter. He had no kids. He granted permission for Jane to take the girls with her and bring them back. The next day the school will be responsible for Skeeter's father.

It was like the best day of Skeeter's life.

Skeeter had never in her entire childhood gone anywhere with her parents. Luana was seven, and Skeeter was nine years old. Their mother took them to a hotel where she stayed and introduced the girls to Joe. Their mother told them that he was their new father. Skeeter knew Joe since she was a baby as he would come and visit his cousin Leonard at his house. That's where he met Jane and fell in love with her.

Skeeter didn't give herself the trouble to call her father. She was used to calling Joe by his name. Since she was a little child, Skeeter could not accept calling Joe dad or any other person's father. No matter how bad Leonardo was, he was still her father. However, Luana accepted him as her new father, which was weird because her little sister was their father's pet. Leonard has never liked Skeeter because Skeeter looked like her mother. Jame was very fair, blonde hair and blue eyes.

He always thought and had this doubt that Skeeter was not his daughter. There were differences between Skeeter and Luana. He would never hug Skeeter, he would beat her with a cane stick dipped in vinegar for no reason, but she was always to be responsible for Luana mischief. Skeeter never saw love from him. She was always hated more by Leonard after Jane left him. Time flew as if it was a wind that had just passed by. The girls were taken by their mother to buy them clothes, then they had lunch. The next day, they stayed in a motel, and then dropped them back at school. After that, their mother disappeared into thin air. They have never heard about her again.

Years passed by and one summer holiday the girl's grandmother, on her father's side, came to school to pick the girls up, to take them home. They were happy at last since they were going home. They went to their house, but everything changed. Their home was a 400sqft room with an old granny, and their sick father was lying in bed, but it did not matter as long as they were home with the family the next day. As they woke up, they were expected to have breakfast as then in school. Even though there were magats in the food, the food was on the table. Hungrily they kept asking their grandma what was there for food, but the reply came that there was nothing to eat.

At noon, the girls went out to play. Hunger grew more. The neighbours would ask the girls what they had, but the girls said there was nothing because of some times no money. Sometimes the neighbour would give a plate of food to the neighbour. The girls took it to their grandmother, and she shared a plate of that food with their sick father, Leonard. The two girls were content with what they had that day.

They would go out and play several nights, and that was the everyday routine. The girls thought to themselves why was their father lying in bed. What happened to him. He was very good-looking, tall, handsome, dark, he had a beautiful tattoo of an eagle on his back. He looked like one of the bees that had been there those days before Jane could leave him.

It was his fault! Leonard did not only ruin his life with drinking and smoking but made the girls motherless and broke their family. Later in his life, he had an asthma attack of asthma, and he grew thin, with no job, he had to take the help of his old mother. She would go house to house working for people. She would go to tailor shops to collect the waste cloth and bring it home, and she would stitch underwear, dresses, blankets for the girls with patchwork. It was the second stage of Skeeter and her little sister's life... ..................................................................................... TO BE CONTINUED...