Mummy Knew

by Lisa James

  At first Eddie loved the garden too. It meant that he had somewhere to do his business and even though he cut his paws on the glass, he seemed happier now that he could get out from under Dad’s feet and avoid the vicious kicks they often delivered. But eventually the long narrow garden became like a prison to him because he was hardly let inside any more. He would bark for hours on end and chase his own tail. Finally he found a way under the fence at the end, and from that point on he would roam the streets, only returning every couple of days to feed on the scraps I’d save from the dinner plates and put in his bowl.

  One day Dad told me to go and say goodbye to Eddie. I asked why and he said they were going to put him down because he had fleas. I’d often asked Mum to get some flea spray but she never did. Soon Eddie was being driven mad, scratching so much that he’d clawed holes in his neck. Mum had Eddie on a lead outside the front door. I looked at his scruffy black white and tan coat and his big melting eyes and I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and sob, but Mum pushed me off.

  ‘No, he’s fucking riddled with them,’ Mum said with a look of disgust on her face. ‘They’ll get on you, and then they might get on Kat.’

  ‘Can’t the vet do anything for him?’ I asked with a heavy heart.

  ‘He can do something, alright,’ said Mum. ‘He can put the bastard down. He’s always been trouble, shitting all over.’

  I watched Mum lead Eddie off and for some minutes I couldn’t move or cry. I just stood there, rooted to the spot. I could hear Dad gloating from inside ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

  Later I went to my room and cried into my pillow for my poor little dog, who I knew would be dead by now. He’d had a miserable life and he hadn’t deserved it because he was really a very sweet-natured creature. I missed him a lot once he had gone.

  When we first moved into the new house in Nunhead, there was a period of peace and calm between Dad and Cheryl. I even saw them talking and laughing together on the sofa. But suddenly the atmosphere changed, and one day I heard Cheryl explaining to Mum that Dad was making her ‘uncomfortable’ again. Mum told her not to be so stupid.

  From then on, Dad began giving Cheryl increasingly evil looks and frequently making her cry. Once I saw him smash a plate down on the table by her elbow, knocking over her mug of tea in the process. I didn’t stay to find out what was going on, just ran as fast as I could to the top of the house. I tried to block my ears but I could hear Cheryl crying and Dad shouting ‘Go on, show us your big tits, you fucking slag.’ Mum gave a nervous chuckle, which I knew was her way of attempting to relieve the tension.

  Crouching on the floor in my bedroom, I thought back to a few months before when Cheryl had taken me to visit one of her friends.

  The friend wasn’t like us. She was posh and wore hippy clothes with bare feet and rings on her toes. I’m not sure how Cheryl knew her but she wasn’t like any of her other friends. Her name was Gail, and she lived in a small basement flat. The floor was covered in rugs. Giant bean bags were strewn about and a fine red scarf was draped over a lamp in the corner. Gail stood at the stove stirring a big pot of bubbling liquid. The smell made my eyes water, and she explained it was pepper soup.

  ‘Haven’t you eaten a pepper before?’ She laughed when I admitted I hadn’t, and I could see Cheryl blushing despite the red tinge of the light. When Gail handed me a bowlful, I felt quite sick. Not because of the soup, which was strangely tasty if a little bitter, but rather because her hair fell over one shoulder revealing a huge lovebite. I knew what lovebites were because Mum’s neck used to be covered in them when Dad first moved in and Cheryl or Diane had explained it to me. It seemed to me that the words ‘love’ and ‘bite’ didn’t really go together. Why would you bite someone you loved? To take my mind off the images of the painful-looking purple marks, I concentrated on blowing spoonfuls of the hot soup, and began to tune in to what Cheryl and Gail were discussing in hushed tones.

  ‘He’s always trying to touch me up,’ Cheryl said. ‘He’s really lecherous, you know. It’s disgusting.’

  Gail, sitting with her legs crossed under a long floral skirt, nodded towards me, concern written all over her face. ‘But not her, though?’ she asked.

  Cheryl spluttered on her soup as though Gail had suggested something too ridiculous for words. ‘No, not her! She’s only ten years old.’

  I knew they were talking about Dad and although I didn’t understand the word lecherous I had a pretty fair idea of what ‘touching up’ meant.

  I’d seen him doing it to Mum a lot, shoving his hand up her skirt and down her top to feel her chest, and I wondered if he had gone that far with Cheryl. The idea made me feel sick. Maybe Uncle Bob could give him another black eye. Dad hadn’t been as rude with me since then. In fact, he hadn’t shaken his ding-a-ling in my face or tried to get me to stroke it for quite a while. He still liked to play horsey, wrestling and dress-up games though, and sometimes his hands would touch me in my private places by accident.

  But that wasn’t the same thing as touching up, was it?

  A few days later, another big row started. I crouched down on the floor in my bedroom, holding my knees against my chest as I rocked to and fro. Then I heard the front door slam, and the front gate bounce off the wall. I jumped up to look out of the window and saw Cheryl running over the road in her high platform sandals, her coat flying behind her. I watched her sadly, wondering when I would see her again. Everybody kept disappearing from my life.

  I never saw Nanny and Jenny any more since we had moved. I had been to visit Diane and her boyfriend in their flat once or twice, but when I got back Dad would always call me a ‘betraying bastard’ and be especially nasty to me, so it was clear I had to choose which camp I was in. Since I had to live with Dad day in, day out, it was almost a relief when Diane stopped visiting, but at night, as I said my ‘God bless’ prayers in the dark, I always kept her on the list of people I wanted him to bless.

  Now Cheryl had gone as well, and I assumed she would stay at Diane’s but I had no way of knowing. We didn’t have a phone in the house–Dad wouldn’t let us get one–but even if we did, I knew she wouldn’t call in case he answered. She knew that if he found out we were in touch, he would make my life hell.

  My brother Davie, who was nearly seventeen, was the last of the older ones left at home. He wasn’t allowed to use the front room at all, and could only go into the kitchen when Dad wasn’t using it. Consequently, he spent hardly any time at home. He often stayed with friends, and he went to Nanny and Jenny’s back in Peckham once or twice a week.

  One night I woke up to lots of shouting. Davie and Dad were having a row on the landing outside my bedroom door. This in itself was very unusual because since moving to the new house, Dad had gone out of his way never to utter a word to Davie, and Davie, like everyone else, was generally too petrified to do or say anything that might antagonise Dad.

  Suddenly I heard Davie shouting, ‘I’m going, and I’m taking Lisa with me.’

  I jumped out of bed and opened my bedroom door to find Dad pushing him up against the landing wall.

  Davie turned to face me and said, ‘Who do you want to be with–them or me?’

  I felt sick. How could I make that choice? Davie was too young to look after me and what would he do for money? But if I didn’t go with him, I realised I was going to lose my brother just as surely as I had lost Nanny, Jenny, Freda, Diane and Cheryl.

  Without giving me a chance to answer Dad shoved Davie into his room where he fell backwards onto his bed. ‘If you ever take that kid out of this fucking house, I’ll kill you, you cunt.’

  Predictably, it wasn’t long before Davie left for good. Where to, I had no idea.

  I hadn’t been allowed to mention Nanny’s or Jenny’s names for years now, and Dad added my brother’s and sisters’ names to the list. All the photographs of them he could find were ripped to shreds and I was told that if anyone asked me, I was to say I only had one sister, Katrina.

&n
bsp; Life went on. Now it was just the four of us left and Dad had managed to isolate me from anyone else who cared about me. Sometimes at night, as I lay in my bed listening to the familiar grunts and groans emanating from the room next door, I’d think about how much I loved Nanny and Jenny and all those precious memories from the time when I lived with them. When I turned my thoughts to Diane, Cheryl and Davie, I felt bereft. It was almost as if they were dead–but this was worse. I knew they were out there in the world somewhere, living a life, and I wondered if they ever thought about me. Christmas came and went, and then my birthday, and I didn’t get a card from any of them. All evidence that they had ever existed in my life was erased.

  As time passed, I trained myself not to think about the family I had lost, even at night, because if I did, my heart felt heavy and my eyes filled with tears. The pain was too much. It became so ingrained in me not to mention my missing family members that they seemed part of another life altogether. Now if people at school asked me how many brothers and sisters I had, I wouldn’t even hesitate to follow Dad’s instructions. I just had one: Kat.

  Chapter Seven

  One day when I got home from school Dad wasn’t there and Mum told me he had gone to prison. She gave no explanation other than to say, ‘They done him up like a kipper. He’s gone inside.’ But I knew it was for drink-driving offences in friends’ cars. He had been banned and fined quite a few times and I think he’d gone on to have an accident so the courts had lost patience with him. I was pleased because just like the last time he left home for a week or so, before he and Mum got married, the oppressive atmosphere in the house lifted.

  He was gone for a few blissful months. It was as if a weight had been lifted from me, and from Mum. I skipped home from school every day, free of fear and worry. Mum was cheerful, a different person. The lines of worry that had characterised her face for so long began to soften. I wondered if my sisters or brother would visit now that Dad was safely out of the way.

  ‘Can Cheryl come over, Mum?’ I asked. It felt odd saying the name out loud.

  ‘Shush!’ she said urgently. ‘We don’t want Kat repeating that when he gets back.’

  So that was it. She was concerned that Dad would find out so we couldn’t get in touch with them.

  Mum wrote to Dad every few days. She would sit at the dining-room table, black biro in one hand, cigarette in the other, and scribble away. She used to keep the letters he sent her in the bottom of the sideboard. I couldn’t help sneaking a look at one. The paper was light blue and very thin and crinkly. I could barely read his handwriting, but the words I did make out were rude and full of the things he was going to do to her when he got back. I didn’t understand most of them but they sounded harsh and terrifying, certainly not loving.

  I knew he must be coming back soon when Mum sat down to cross off whole months’ worth of days on the calendar. She obviously wanted him to think she had been pining for him and counting the days, when in reality I had never seen her so relaxed and happy.

  Just as suddenly as he had disappeared, he came back, and the familiar black cloud settled once again. They spent the first few days locked in their bedroom. Mum would get up, go to work and then go back to bed with him, while I stayed off school and looked after Kat. Sometimes they would lock us out in the garden, which by now was overgrown with weeds. I never did get to plant the flower and vegetable garden I’d wanted.

  After a couple of days of peace, the rows started again. Dad began shouting, swearing and smashing things, convinced Mum had been with other men while he was in prison, and she did her best to placate him. It was her habit to try and make light of things, hoping to appeal to whatever good sense he had left: ‘You’re being silly now,’ she’d say. Sometimes this worked and Dad would run out of steam and accept a cup of tea and a cigarette she would light for him, but other times her attempts at reason failed miserably. A few days after he was released from prison, he beat her up very badly.

  I came down to the kitchen the next day to find her standing there, her face bruised and the flesh around her mouth looking like a deflated Yorkshire pudding. She held her purse in shaking hands and asked me to go over to the shop.

  ‘I want two packs of cigarettes, and two pounds of King Edwards,’ she lisped. Her voice sounded funny. She couldn’t pronounce the words properly, and it was then I noticed her two front teeth were missing.

  My jaw hung open with shock and my eyes filled with tears, but neither of us commented on the state she was in. She hated it if I ever mentioned her injuries. I just took the money without a word and went to get them for her.

  Later on, when I was hanging over the banisters, I heard Mum say, ‘You’ve knocked me fucking teeth out, you bastard. That’s nice, ain’t it?’

  ‘I’ve told you I’m sorry, Donna,’ he said in his low, rasping voice. ‘I’ll never lay a hand on you again.’

  The next day she went to the dentist, and by the end of the week she had two new front teeth, which looked much better than the old ones had done, except these were bright white and strangely at odds with her other nicotine-stained teeth.

  Even though Mum had been through a terrible ordeal, she looked almost happy as Dad fussed over her for a few days. He had hurt her badly in the past but she had never lost any teeth before and for the first time ever, Dad was contrite. It was as though the previous black eyes, split lips and bloodied noses meant nothing compared to this atrocity.

  As far as I remember, apart from the odd shove here and there, he never hit her again. He didn’t need to any more. The threat was always there. Dad only had to raise his voice and clench his fists to make Mum back down in an argument. Once beaten, twice shy and all that.

  He may have stopped beating Mum, but it was around this time, when I was eleven, that he started lashing out at me a lot more than he ever had before. Now that I didn’t have any other family members around to witness his cruelty, he was freer with his slaps, kicks and punches. He didn’t have to worry about me telling anyone as I no longer had contact with anybody other than him and Mum–and Mum didn’t count because she didn’t seem to care what he did. He’d be careful not to mark my face, because it might get noticed at school, but I always had bruises over the rest of my body. Someone had to bear the brunt of his temper when his horse came in last, and it looked as though it was going to be me now.

  At the same time as he was getting more violent towards me, Dad also started to become more affectionate. It was as if he liked to hurt me and make me cry as an excuse to pull me onto his lap and smother me in scratchy kisses.

  ‘You know I love you, don’t you, Lisa?’ he’d say, stroking my forehead. ‘You’ve always been my special girl, ain’t ya? Have been ever since you were little.’

  I knew this wasn’t quite true because when I was younger he saw me as nothing more than a nuisance, not special at all. He was always calling me a ‘useless spastic’. I remembered how he used to banish me to my bedroom and instruct everyone not to talk to me for weeks on end. It was only since we moved to Nunhead and away from the rest of the family that Dad had begun to show me anything approaching genuine affection. But I nodded in agreement anyway.

  ‘I love you, too,’ I said automatically, knowing it was what he expected me to say. If I appeared the slightest bit unfriendly it could set him off in a bad mood. Besides, when he was in a good mood, he could be nice. He was far from perfect but he was the only dad I’d ever known, and ironically, now that the rest of my family had gone, he was the only person to show me any affection whatsoever. Mum remained as cold and distant as ever.

  Everyone knew that Dad was incapable of maintaining any one mood for long. He blew hot and cold with people. He was known for changing like the wind. Soft and warm one minute, a cold hard tornado the next. As I grew older, this hot and cold treatment became ever more pronounced. At times he treated me better than he ever had before. Everything I did was brilliant, everything I said made him laugh. He couldn’t kiss and cuddle me enough and, mu
ch to Mum’s obvious irritation, he would lavish me with praise.

  ‘You’re a fucking diamond you are, looking after your little sister, cleaning the offices and helping round the house. Ain’t she a diamond, Donna?’

  Mum would grunt something noncommittal without so much as looking at me.

  ‘You’re going to be a heartbreaker when you grow up. All the boys will be trying to get into your knickers,’ he’d cackle, and he’d give my bum a sharp squeeze.

  I knew that now we had moved, Dad wasn’t worried about Uncle Bob beating him up again. He was starting to go back to his old ways. I didn’t like it when he spoke about rude things, but I had to be careful not to react in the wrong way in case he got angry. It felt strange receiving all his attention and praise, not only because it made me feel uncomfortable a lot of the time, but also because I could sense it made Mum angry. Once I overheard her asking why he paid so much attention to me and ignored Kat. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘she’s your own daughter.’

  ‘How can you be jealous of your fucking daughter?’ Dad barked back. ‘You’re one twisted bitch.’

  ‘I ain’t jealous. It’s just peculiar, that’s all.’

  ‘I tell you what’s peculiar,’ he snapped. ‘My fucking fist’ll be peculiar in a minute when it knocks you spark out.’

  I couldn’t work out why Mum didn’t like Dad being nice to me, especially as she knew as well as I did that no matter how nice he was being, it wouldn’t last and soon enough I’d be the odd one out again. I knew that I would eventually make a mistake, and cause Dad to lose his temper. I might forget to stir the sugar in his tea, or have the ‘wrong look’ on my face, and then all hell would break loose and his sharp slaps and kicks would knock me to the floor.