A Rare Glimpse of Victory! - Excerpt 13

Friday:
The last working day before I start high school on Monday - with no school uniform, and Theresa woke up with a brilliant idea. She asked Mammy if she could spare the old blue skirt she used to wear to work. Theresa said that she would take the skirt apart and then cut it, pleat it, and make it into a skirt for my new uniform.

She said she learned enough sewing to make a pleated skirt, and that she should have enough material left over to make my tie. The shade was lighter than what I should have, and the cloth was old and worn, but at least it was blue. She said that although I needed a white shirt, I could wear my old cream shirt from primary school for the time being. Mammy thought it was a good idea, I thought so too, but was still feeling raw about yesterday and everything else.

“Instead of sewing it with yuh hand, I could send she to Barry’s wife in the scheme to ask if you could use her sewing machine,” Mammy said, flicking her thumb in my direction. ‘She’ ‘You,’ and ‘That One’ had always been Mammy’s names for me, there was no question that she meant me.
Theresa said that that would be even better, and that we had to do something now, we couldn’t wait any longer for my mother to show up.

I went up to the scheme to Mr. Barry’s wife, with a note that Mammy had dictated for me to write, asking if we could come on Saturday morning to sew my skirt. She said, “Of course, why not?”

I took my time walking back home, I knew this could be bad, but it was nice being out of the house, after eight weeks of ‘school holidays’ being locked up indoors and feeling watched all the time. I felt good and free, even if it was just a walk back home past the smelly Back Dam trench.

I looked for the cat but I didn’t see him, maybe someone took him in like Theresa had said.
When I got close to the house, I noticed Mammy’s head pop out of the window, I saw her face and knew straight away that I was in big trouble. When I walked through the door, she said to me, “Go take off yuh clothes, you getting licks.”

* * *
The projector coughed, the desolate screen stumbled to life, and this scene played:
My heart is pounding and my head feels wrapped with new elastic bands. I’m chewing on my finger nails to keep from fainting. I walk into the Mammy’s bedroom and start to take off my clothes. When she’s getting ready to do a nasty beating, Mammy insists I get naked - completely. I don’t know why, since the licks are really painful even with my clothes on.

I take my tee shirt partly off, but I leave it hanging round my neck to cover my chest because I have a tiny little booby. Just the one so far, and I don’t want anyone to see it.

Mammy comes into the room with the stick and she’s screaming at me because I’m still wearing my clothes. She rips the tee shirt off me, so hard it bruises my face, and I’m left standing there with my little, tiny booby pointing at her.

I start to cry, but it’s more from my shame than from fright. I need to cover up my body, so I put my arm on my chest, partly shielding the sharp ribs which are barely covered by my stretched skin. She hits my arm with the wood and commands me to take the rest off. She stands there and waits. I am crying as I take my shorts off but I don’t want to lose my underwear too. It’s the lone piece of the precious rags left to cover up my cowering frame. I’m growing up you see, and don’t want anyone to look at me.

I break down.
I can’t take my underwear off.
I can’t.
But by then I’m crying too much to do anything else. She gets really angry, she doesn’t like to wait.
Mammy never waits, not for anyone.

Now she can’t wait for me to undress anymore so she starts to beat me all over, the only place on my body that escape without licks, is my head.
In all the riot and pain, I keep holding on to the thought that keeping my underpants on means that I’ve achieved my only, precious, towering moment of victory.

I feel like a chewed up, spat out cherry. I know I’m bleeding somewhere but I can’t look now, the licks are too bad.
Much, much too bad.
She sees the blood too, some of it spills on wall and she glances at it. I think she’ll stop, I know she can’t bear to have any stain on her bedroom wall. I cry, but I can’t scream, I’ll get more licks if I do, and I’m am ashamed of the children next door hearing. She stops and now she is dragging me by my hair into the kitchen, the pain of each strand, etching her fury into my scalp through to my brain. She imprisons me by the hair, while she takes down the jar of salt from the shelf next to the kitchen window.
Salt!
Blood rushes fast to my head and I feel my throbbing belly suddenly knot inside me, protecting itself, waiting . . .

I wriggle to get away but she’s very strong and very powerful - stronger and more powerful when she is angry. She opens the jar with her mouth and pours salt into my cut, which I then realise, was on my leg. Five million grains of salt feel like ten million angry bees, stinging! Stinging!
Stinging!
I could hear her grind her teeth as she rubs the salt in.
I scream.
Once.
“Next time,” she hollers, releasing me, “I’ll pepper you parts!”
But does she know I’d won?
Does she?

Rock-a-bye Auntie, Your Bough Did Break - Excerpt 12

Mammy left earlier tonight to go to her friend’s house. As soon as she was out the door, Theresa, Franc and I stole our rare chance to play and sing songs. Because of Theresa’s hearing problems, she needs to make up her own tunes to the songs we sing. You see, she can’t possibly know what the right tune is, since she can’t ever hear them like people with normal hearing can.

This is how we were playing when the next disaster happened.

We have a little book that Rafza, Aunty Meena’s daughter, had left for us. It’s an old book with a picture on the cover of a little blonde girl and her toddler brother, looking up into a star-lit, peaceful sky. We usually look at the pictures of the children in the book and wonder at their lovely new shoes and white socks, things we could only hope we’ll have some day. The book is filled with poems and a few children’s songs. One of my favourites is, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world . . .”

Theresa opens it to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” her own favourite, and starts to sing, in her own tune, to Franc and me. I try to sing it in the way it was meant to be sung, but that’s hard for Theresa to follow, so I join in with her way. That special way she sings every single song she ever sings. It puts a smile on her face, and I like that.

Suddenly she gets up, looks around as if she’s listening to someone in another room, then slowly gets a chair from the kitchen. She puts it in the middle of the polished living room floor, points to it, and says to Franc and me, “Sit there.”
Franc is only two or so, she thinks it’s a game so she climbs unto it, sits down, looks up at us and asks, “Wot nex?”
I don’t sit down.
I know something’s not right, but all the time, Theresa seems to be listening, listening. Listening to what?
This makes me a little scared of Theresa, but I don’t know why.

She picks Franc up off the chair, her lean, muscular arms wrap themselves gently around her chest, then she sits down herself. Her eyes are two still, dark marbles in her slightly cocked head. Listening . . .
She’s turning the book quickly, too quickly for me to see the nice pictures of the children in their pretty shoes, in their big houses. But she seems to know what to do, because she’s singing lots of different songs - all of the songs in the book. One tune - her tune.

“Sit here,” she says to me again, placing the baby on one knee. This time she points to her lap. I don’t want to, but how can I refuse her. I sit down and she hugs us both.
And rocks. And rocks. And sings.
All the songs . . . her tune.
I feel very uncomfortable because she’s never allowed to hug us. Mammy says that you spoil children if you hug them.
“I’ll come back,” I say, and get up to open the front window to look out for Mammy. It’s very dark outside, I can’t see very far.
I don’t know what to do. I walk back and forth to the window and to Theresa’s lap. She starts to cry.
“My children, my children,” she cries. “I will protect you and keep you. I will protect you from evil and keep you safe.”
And she rocks - and Franc rocks.
And I’m a little scared of Theresa, but I don’t know why.

She starts to wail as the tears stream down her face. I know that something is very wrong, I don’t know what though, I’m only a child, but I know that whatever is wrong, is something big and terrible, something I can’t fix. Franc starts to cry and me too, but I have to keep strong to save Franc if something worse happens.

We all cry.
And we rock.
Rock.
We cry, abundant tears, all leaking out from tiny holes in the corners of our young, aged, tired eyes.
I am a little scared of Theresa, but I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s because of that marble look in her eyes. I keep praying for Mammy to come home. She’ll know what to do because she’s a grown-up. I keep looking at the clock, but then remember that it’s telling the wrong time because we’d run out of batteries for it ages ago, and didn’t have any money to replace them.
I try to sing with Theresa, she is praying a lot too. I try to say the prayers with her and when she cries again, Franc and I cry with her.
And we rock too.
I am a bit scared to leave Franc on her lap. Again I don’t know why, she will never hurt us, but I am still scared, so I try not to go to the window anymore. I stay and rock and cry and pray.


More than an hour later Mammy comes back, she makes sure that Theresa isn’t just putting on and then she sends me to get Cecil’s mother. She calls this lady ‘Cecil’s mother’ because she has a son named Cecil who came to her nursery school a long time ago. Cecil’s family has four dogs, and one time when Mammy had sent me over there to get ice, all four of them jumped on me and mauled my skinny little frame. That’s not because they’re bad though, because dogs always jump me. Theresa says it is because they can smell that I am scared of them. They never tie the dogs up, no one ever does. But it’s late now so maybe the dogs would be asleep.

It takes about five minutes for me to walk to Cecil’s mother’s house. I walk alone, shivering in the total darkness. No, it isn’t cold, quite warm in fact, warm and humid.
I shiver from the fear I feel of knowing that something is desperately wrong with my auntie. I wish, I wish upon that twinkle, twinkle little star, that it would all be fine when I get back home.
For my sake, I think.
For the first time in my short life of eleven years, I’m a little scared of Theresa, but I don’t know why.

I know that if something bad happens to Theresa, I would die of the fright of us being left alone with ‘Her.’
When I get to Cecil’s house, his dad’s on the veranda. He has a good job at Bermine. I think he is a foreman or something because he wears one of those big, important white helmets to work. He sends down two of his four sons to hold the dogs so I could go upstairs.

Cecil’s mother and I walk quickly back home. She’s short and fat and is puffing by the time we get up the long stairs to our house. We could hear Theresa crying from the front yard, through our house, which was made of thin slats of timber - just like all the other houses in the street.
Between them, Mammy and Cecil’s mother decide that Theresa needs to go to the hospital. Cecil’s mother volunteers to stay with us so that Mammy could take Theresa there, but first she had to go home to call an ambulance (which she paid for) because we’d never had a phone.

A Cup of Pee - Excerpt 11

When we got home, things were different from what I expected them to be. I was sent into the bedroom to take my clothes off to be beaten.
Christopher shook his head as I oozed past him and said, “Doan know why Esther left she children with you, look at this one,” he smiled and nodded in my direction.

Mammy called me ‘that one’ or ‘this headache’ too, but never by my name unless she was shouting for me when I was in another room. So at first I thought he was siding with her, but then I looked at him and saw that he was smiling, and became even more confused. You never knew exactly what to expect with Christopher, he had very big lips, so smiling, snarling, snickering – they all sort of rolled into one when they reached his lips.
“She locked up in the house all day,” he continued. “Bony, malnourished and pale, she is. She don’t go nowhere, don’t do nothing, don’t even smile.”

“When was the last time you smiled, little girl?” he turned to me.
I started to answer, even though I had nothing to say. I’d learned that you always answered. Always.
“No?” he asked.
“When was the last time you laughed, eh?”
Again, I started to answer, with no words in my mouth.”
“No?” he asked again.
“Do you ever laugh, eh?”
By this time, I realised that he was asking what my English teacher called rhetorical questions, so I made no attempt to say the answer my brain held captive.
No! No! No!
“See,” he turned back to Mammy. “She waiting to escape just like we all waited to get away.”
“You don’t dare get on my nerves now,” Mammy replied.
“Look at the neighbours’ kids, they all runnin’ ‘round, and playin,’” Christopher continued as if Mammy had said nothing.
“I doan believe in keeping neighbours close, I like keeping them at arm’s length,” Mammy cut in.
“Maybe they keeping you at arm’s length,” Christopher said. “Ever thought ‘a that?”
The two of them could never live in a house together and not argue. Theresa said that they were too much alike to ever get along. She said that Mammy let Christopher get away with lots of bad things, so he runs wild sometimes.

I had a feeling he wasn’t making things better for me, but for the time being, I was thankful I could put off the shame of taking my clothes off. He seemed to be baiting her just to get her angry. I wasn’t sure why.
“You destroy us, that not enough for you, so now you destroying yuh grandchildren,” Christopher continued, “turning them into mad people.”
“I hope when you get yuh children, they talk to you the same way yuh talk to me. I am yuh mother I had fourteen of you, yuh shouldn’t talk to me like that.”
“You always talk ‘bout having fourteen children, how many us alive? Eh? Seven! Only seven!” Christopher shouted.
“I sorry I had yuh,” Mammy shouted back. “You bad seed!”
“I didn’t tell you to get pregnant again for the married man. He tek you to court and disowned Theresa when you ask him for child support, and a year later, you had me. Not my fault. Blame you self.”
“I want you outta my house tomorrow!” Mammy barked at him.

But why didn’t she hit him?
“Yeah, use me money out then chase me away. See if you can get rid of me. I staying until I want to go.”
Mammy suddenly looked at me and shouted, “You like this, no, people blaming me for you.”
I was keeping my distance because I knew that there was always a way for the blame to find its way to me. I didn’t want to be like the cat, so I put my head down and moved towards the wall by the front window.

“This is what you like, no, me getting blame for you,” Mammy said, stomping over to where I stood willing my body to become invisible, but before I knew it, she had slammed my head into the wall. Part of my head hit the wall but my forehead met the window frame and the room went dark for a minute. Christopher put on his shoes and left, slamming the door.
“Wait till he get his children,” Mammy said.

Little did any of us know, he would die child-less.
Christopher came back in the early hours of the morning and peed in the wardrobe. He was drunk. I woke up and saw him at the cupboard, I heard the wet noise but it didn’t register. Mammy woke up too, but not in time to stop him. At least he had got a cup from the kitchen and held it under the pee. That might have helped, except it was a tiny cup, and he peed lots of pee.
From that night on I felt like he was my friend, because even though I went to bed with a sore head, he had saved me from the shame of once again having to strip down to my bare skin, in order to take my beating.
He didn’t know, or did he? That although the beating hurts, taking it naked was steadily sweeping my eroding soul into a sea of dry, aching dust.
Flying away . . .
Sailing away . . .
Light as a feather . . .

How to Earn Seven Years of Bad Luck - Excerpt 9

It was getting dark by the time I got back home, so Mammy said I should have my dinner before I did my homework. With a watering mouth, I galloped down even the sweet aroma of the most beautiful curry ever made, a dish that no one could ever make as well as Theresa. The only thing I savoured was the one piece of meat I had on my plate. After months without meat, I couldn’t let my serving go without chewing into the bone. I then took the fragments of bones apart and licked all the brown stuff off from the inside. Marrow, Theresa said it was called. Marrow, the sweetest bit, the bit you savour and keep for last.

After dinner, Mammy went to have her cigarette in her rocking chair on the veranda, Theresa had to give Franc her bath, and I cleared the table. This was turning out to be a nice day after all; tiring, but nice. Maybe if we’re lucky Mammy would even tell us a long-time story.

As I was taking the last few dishes into the kitchen, I caught my foot in the mat, slipped, and let go of the glass I was holding.
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Rewind!
Now slow it down.
As the glass fell, my eyes saw it tumble a few times before it finally hammered the floor.
Splinters! Don’t walk! Don’t walk!
So many things went through my mind, it was as if my brain had kept a film of the last time this had happened and was playing it back - frame by clicking frame, in front of my eyes - in very small black and white pictures tinged with spots of red. The glass crashed on the wooden floor, and I felt my heart dive there with it.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Now speed up.
Within a fraction of a second Mammy was standing there with that familiar look on her face, wide nose flaring. She glanced at the broken glass with a look of satisfaction. This look would’ve puzzled me, except that there was too much terror racing through my blood to be anything but terrified.

Before she looked behind the front door where she kept the two-by-four, I knew what was coming.
Mammy picked up the wood and walked towards me. I didn’t actually see her move, one second she was at the door, the next, right in front of me. There was nowhere for me to run. What am I talking about, I never run – too scared. Besides, she always says that if I make her have to run after me, I’d get a lot more licks.

***

She twists my arm behind my back and my knees hit the floor. The blows come straight after in a downpour of, Thud! Thud!
My arms, they’re way too small, way too thin, but the thud, thud, they keep coming.
The pain - electricity through my bones - rockets me to my feet and I jump around on one foot. The more I jump around, the more the hits rain on, and the more she chews her lips.
Thud! Thud!
I cry in pain but not loudly, I always keep it in. She now grabs my wrist as she starts to beat my legs, all over, again and again, speeding up. I try to turn again, but this time she’s holding me so tightly that my whole arm is twisted over and above my head.
I can’t move, I can’t get away from the fire on my skin, charring me all over. I can’t get loose.
Pain. Too much pain!
It’s in this position that she hits me again, again, again. Every time the licks land on my skin, I feel - rip.
The lashes come harder and harder. I hear them in my head and I cry out inside, please stop, please stop. Oh my God please make it stop, please, please.
My knees are now giving away I can’t stand. But, Yank! She yanks my little body up by the arm and keeps beating.

“You want to break her?” Theresa demands. I think she has Franc in her arms because she very carefully puts down something which is wrapped up in a bath towel, and comes over. At this point I’m half sitting on the floor, tears streaming down my face, body fire-working into flames of red, sizzling pain.
Theresa pulls the piece of wood from Mammy’s hand, Mammy drops me and goes for her, punching her several times in the face and chest.
“Don’t you take me on!” Mammy shouts, spit flying from her mouth. “She know that she get licks when she break m’ things.”
“People don’t beat children for accidentally breaking things, and they not your things, they Esther’s things!” Theresa shouts, leaning in dangerously close to Mammy. “I hate this wood. Ah getting rid of it!” she storms out of the house.

“Clean up that glass!” Mammy shouts at me. “And you, sit down!”
It’s only at this point I notice naked Franc, with a green towel draped round her shoulders, standing in the biggest of our three chairs – the ones with steel legs - staring at us.
Taking it all in, and swallowing it down.

EPILOGUE

Dear reader

All of the events that I’ve recorded in this book have happened to me in real life, each and every one of them and more. I have changed some of the names of the people in this novel because I did not wish to cause them any embarrassment. Apart from these names, nothing else has been changed.

I have written down these bits of my life to show that regardless of your past, with God’s help, and a few good people, you are potentially able to rise above it and can consciously decide not to allow it to affect the present.

It’s an agonizing affair, but I believe that if people who’ve been abused in their childhood allow their entire lives to be ruined, they have in effect, surrendered to their abuser their right of self. Abusers are aware of the devastating powers of their actions so if the victim continues to live his/her life in the shadow of that abuse even after it has ceased, he/she is enabling the abuser to succeed in destroying their life thus achieving their goal.

I wrote this book in the progressive developmental language of a growing child to provide an opportunity for the reader to visualise the intimate thoughts of an imprisoned child of that age. This I hope would offer a tool, which could help to identify a child who is being abused.


I know how formidable a task it is to muster the strength to change the direction in which your early nurturing points you, but if you know any child who is going through a difficult life, tell them about my story, and tell them to believe and pray and then try as hard as they can to be the best they can be for themselves and their future children.

And if they can’t do it for that reason, do it just to lay bare the depravity of their abuser, and to show him or her by shining brightly, that they’ve lost their sadistic, evil hold.

What better way to avenge yourself than to laugh in your abuser’s face by living an exemplary life? What better way is there to expose their cowardice of taking advantage of a weaker person, than to exhibit bravery in your life? Overcome your abuser because your suffering doesn’t hurt them, it’s your happiness that does!

Anne. xxx