Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  I pass out again and sleep more peacefully knowing that I have my arms back, but awaken with cramps in my calves where my legs are tied together. But I’m mistaken, my legs are not tied together anymore because I can move them and wriggle my toes and run my toes up and down my shin and feel my legs and my legs can feel one another and I can be whole again.

  Then I remember that the doctor is going to lock me away where no-one will ever find me. That I’m going to perish alone in the dark. And even though all of my bits hurt, I don’t feel I can help them, because I’m going to die and that means there’s no hope. I don’t get up and go to the bathroom to wash the doctor away because I’m going to die. I am naked, but I don’t cover myself. I’m going to die. I pull the sheet up and try to go to sleep, but I can’t because I’m going to die.

  I curl up, throw my arms around me, squeeze tight and pray that the end will come soon. I stay snuggled in the corner where the bed meets the wall and spend the whole night, listening out for the doctor’s footsteps to enforce my live burial. I can’t hear any footsteps because the rain is falling too heavily on the roof. I can’t hear him coming at all.

  My mother comes to get me bright and early the next morning.

  ‘Baba, why aren’t you ready? Don’t you realise that we have a long drive today?’ My mother is angry because I’m not up and dressed. And I haven’t packed.

  ‘Catherine is taking a little longer to recover than I expected Lucy, but don’t you worry. Just leave her be, and let her rest. Catherine needs lots of sleep.’

  I do need a lot of sleep. The doctor is right.

  I climb into the back seat of our old Hillman and fall asleep before we reach the highway. ‘Little Half’ falls asleep as soon as we get into the car and doesn’t wake up for another thirty years. I think that she just wants to forget about it and so do I.

  I sleep for most of the two days it takes to drive to Brisbane and by the time we get back, I don’t remember why my bits are throbbing.

  And I don’t ask.

  chapter 15

  For thirty years I had forgotten about how a family friend had feasted on the flesh of an innocent child. How he’d plundered her soul and stolen her spark. Now that I remembered, the rage that I’d kept locked inside for years, cascaded. At first I feared that I wouldn’t be able to control my fury, but as I allowed myself to express it, I was able to direct it against the person who had caused it instead of turning it against myself. I started to appreciate the depth of fury that leads to murderous rage. I wanted to make the doctor suffer as he’d made me suffer and fantasised about how to get my revenge! No punishment seemed too extreme as my head plotted against him. But I was deluding myself. I would never get my revenge. The damage had been done and the wounds inflicted. I already had the scars and no matter how much work I did, those scars would always be an integral part of me. The past could neither be undone, nor avenged.

  Besides, the doctor was already dead. He’d died a good ten years before I had relived my first night of horror. A heart attack, a little pain across his chest and it was all over. The doctor had escaped my wrath before I even comprehended its source.

  Aside from the fury, I grappled for a long time to accept that all of my memories were authentic. I repeatedly questioned their veracity and struggled to accept the possibility that such dastardly acts could be forgotten, especially by me. Prior to remembering, the nature of many of the acts was foreign to me. I questioned how it was possible for me to adopt such acts as my own, when I had never heard of such occurrences.

  These discussions rattled around Kate’s office for weeks. We reviewed the phenomenon of repressed memories and acknowledged the existence of the process. We reviewed the authenticity of my terror and pain and how real the range of sensations in my body had felt. And when I rejected everything I’d recalled, primarily because I couldn’t bear to acknowledge it, Kate recounted her experience of my memories in therapy. She described her observations of my reactions in sessions; the way I’d recoil, the terror in my eyes, the contortions of my body. But even then, the doubts kept coming because there was no-one who could provide the validation I really needed. There were no actual witnesses, none to the acts themselves.

  There was, however, one person who could potentially provide some insight into the period in question and that was my mother. I knew that she wouldn’t be able to help much, because my abuse had occurred in secret. I was also aware of how much she idealised the doctor and how that idealisation might colour her version of events. Nevertheless, I did expect her to be able to provide me with some details about the holiday, and perhaps confirm that I’d reported the doctor’s inappropriate touching on that first day, to her.

  *

  Since my mother had returned from overseas she had sensed a change in me. I was keeping my distance from her and on the few occasions on which I did see her, I was ill at ease. I couldn’t help it. I resented the secrets she had kept over the years and the angst they had consequently caused me. On some level she was aware of how I was feeling. When we spoke, she did confirm that we had visited the doctor in Sydney after my father died. She also acknowledged that I’d told her about the doctor touching me, but denied that the touching had bothered me and questioned why it was bothering me now. She also confirmed that she had dismissed my concerns when I was fourteen and then proceeded to dismiss them again!

  ‘Yes Monty was a bit of a womaniser. I remember how he used to pinch some of his female patients on the bottom as he was taking them into the surgery. But everyone knew that was how he was and they loved him regardless. He was a wonderful doctor and a very loyal friend. Your mother could not have done without his support over the years. He was amazing after your father died.’

  Over the months that ensued, I told my mother more about what her wonderful doctor had done to me. I didn’t describe any of the more extreme acts and often watered the details of the other acts down. I suspected that she would not accept a lot of what I was saying. Besides I didn’t want to be discredited; I was having enough trouble accepting my new history without my mother fuelling my doubts. Although I didn’t reveal everything, I did give enough information to leave her in little doubt about the thrust of what had happened.

  ‘Come on now Baba. Monty was a wonderful doctor. You must be exaggerating.’

  ‘Oh Baba, Monty was a womaniser, that’s all. Do you think that your mother would have let him hurt you? What sort of a mother do you think I am?’

  It was curious. Even as a grown woman, in my late forties I wanted my mother’s acknowledgement. Her validation could have provided a much-needed balm to my troubled mind. As she continued to reject my memories and sing the doctor’s praises, I found it progressively harder to see her and speak with her. Whenever we did speak, we usually ignored the topic of the doctor altogether but failure to acknowledge the elephant in the room caused the tension between us to grow. When we did discuss it, we would invariably reach a discomforting impasse.

  My mother is a lousy listener at the best of times. She habitually interrupts whoever is speaking in her enthusiasm to get her point across, and commonly jumps in before the other person has finished. When discussing contentious issues, she jumps in even earlier and with greater conviction. I finished writing my first book within a year of these conversations and gave it to my mother to read. The advantage being that the written word denied her opportunity to interrupt my flow. It also denied her the chance to invalidate me to my face, until she was finished reading what I had to tell her.

  My first book didn’t pull any punches. It provided a factual account of the events at the doctor’s residence. As I handed the book over, I explained that the narrative had been constructed from my memory and that nothing had been knowingly fabricated or embellished. Still, her rebuttals came.

  ‘Baba, I couldn’t read a lot of what you wrote because, well, you don’t quite understand how it feels to be a mother.’

  ‘But Monty could never have done those things; I’m su
re of it. And do you know? He was the most wonderful doctor.’

  ‘It was a good piece of fiction. You write well, but it wasn’t real Baba, was it?’

  ‘You don’t know quite how it feels to be a mother who always did her best. Baba, don’t you ever remember anything good about your childhood?’

  ‘Honestly Baba, you’ve lost your sense of humour. I liked the old Baba a lot better!’

  While my mother failed, repeatedly, to acknowledge both my history and my pain, I spiralled into a series of self-destructive tailspins. Not only had she dismissed me at fourteen, but she stubbornly proceeded to do it again some thirty years later. I felt profoundly betrayed and had to face the fact that I had a mother who was incapable of putting herself aside. While she proved beyond doubt that she was emotionally unavailable to my needs as she always had been, I worked on giving up any hope that she would ever be any different.

  Kate and I spent many a session grappling with how I could reconcile having a mother who espoused her love, but never demonstrated it and with how she not only failed to protect me, but also was incapable of taking any responsibility for doing so. I was an adult and yet I was a child. As my mother’s adult child, I desperately searched for some sign that she would accept some of what I was saying and that maybe, just maybe, her doctor was not so wonderful after all. My mother’s relationship with the doctor was undoubtedly more complicated than it seemed. She told me repeatedly about how special their relationship had been and I grappled to accept her loyalty to him. She also shared with me another family secret, about her third pregnancy and how she’d flown to Sydney so the doctor could perform an abortion. Indeed, their relationship had been special too.

  Kate and I reviewed my mother’s childhood and the influences which took their toll on her during her formative years. The unfathomable horrors of the Holocaust, the incomprehensible scenario which saw her send her brother back to the ghetto, the dehumanising desensitisation, degrading humiliation, constant fear, emptiness and loneliness of her war years. As Kate and I reflected on the destruction of my mother’s soul we grieved her losses, but I could not forget how her failures had left me grappling with fundamental losses of my own.

  When my mother failed to take any of the many opportunities I gave her to acknowledge my pain, new feelings of worthlessness swamped me. The child in me was reawakened and the feelings of intense isolation that I had experienced, dominated me. As a child I had felt worthless because my mother’s actions telegraphed the message that I wasn’t worthy of love or protection. As a child I concluded that something must have been wrong with me and those beliefs were re-agitated in the adult.

  My mother’s second severing of the umbilical cord cut me loose and my mood plummeted with my morale. I relived the isolation of my childhood, shunning family and friends and once again, I started to frequent The Gap. I was driven by the belief that if my own mother didn’t care for me, nobody would. The born again child part of me did not appreciate my life in the present. That part of me had no connection with the family I’d created. I became more detached from them, pulling away from my husband when I needed him most. While one part of me realised that I needed to reach out to him, the other part stopped me from doing it. Kate pressured me to share my feelings with him. Sometimes I could speak up a little, but I mostly kept my angst to myself; my child-self didn’t know how to seek the help and comfort I needed.

  Sometimes, judging me to be in imminent danger, Kate would insist that I talk to Dan. Although I resented being told what to do, I generally folded to her ultimatums and as soon as I did speak with him, I would feel relieved by the caring warmth he offered. On the rare occasions on which I refused point blank to broach the subject with him, Kate would tell me that she was going to call him and I’d get really pissed-off.

  ‘I don’t want you to!’

  ‘Sorry Cathy. You’re leaving me no option. Either you talk to him or I will.’

  When I refused to talk to Dan, Kate would ring him, just as she’d threatened. Each call would take him by surprise; I was so expert at hiding how desperate I was feeling. He’d be shocked to hear that I’d hit rock bottom again. That he hadn’t picked up on it or seen the signs. At first I’d be angry that Kate had interfered, but my fury would abate as soon as Dan arrived home. Her call would mobilise him and he’d drop everything to be by my side. The moment I’d see his face and feel his loving care, I would feel safer and his support would mark the beginning of a turnaround in that phase of my recovery.

  Despite my withdrawal I still made myself available for my children as much as I could. I didn’t have much energy, but the little I had, I reserved for them. At my worst I couldn’t get out of bed and my children had to deal with seeing me languishing; yet again. Even though I tried to time my sleeps to fall within my children’s absences, I couldn’t always manage it. They were lumped with a mother who was absent, sleeping her days away, more times than was healthy. I regretted the impact that had, but at the time it was the best I could do.

  I worked hard to disguise my mood when I was up and about. Sometimes I could convince everyone I was okay when I wasn’t. Often times, some or all of my family could see through my charade and that made them worry about me. The reality was that for those months of returning doctor memories, I was deeply depressed. It was a state my children had seen before and it affected each of them differently at different times: one became hyper-vigilant; one stayed home from school; one felt sick a lot of the time; one acted out; another withdrew. Such is the domino effect of trauma.

  Over weeks and months and years of processing I came to accept that my mother could never provide the succour I needed. I accepted that my mother had never been able to empathise; nor would she ever be capable of providing me with any empathy. And once I could stop hoping to receive something my mother was incapable of providing, the pressure eased and I felt more able to cope.

  I presented my brother with a copy of my first book at the same time as I gave it to my mother. He read it and didn’t question my memories outright. He was more circumspect and stated that he couldn’t remember any of the things which I could now recall. Simon didn’t come to Sydney often, so we didn’t see much of one another; however, we did chat over the phone and when we did, the false memory debate was a regular topic of conversation. From the time I’d started recovering memories I’d read extensively about ‘repressed memories’ and the concept of false memories. Simon told me about my mother’s conviction that my memories were false and implied that his view was the same; without actually stating it. He went on to say that he couldn’t validate any of my memories because they didn’t marry with any of his. I challenged him and asked him what he did remember about his childhood. He told me that his childhood had been happy up till the age of eleven, and after that, he recalled a pervasive sadness which he couldn’t explain. I asked him for details of what he did remember and he told me that he’d fill me in later, but he never did.

  I am well aware of the controversy surrounding repressed memories which peaked in the 1980s and 90s. In cases like mine, where victims of abuse had recovered memories, the disclosure typically elicited vehement denials from the accused and resulted in the alienation of the alleged victim from their family. This happened particularly in cases where a family member was the accused perpetrator. False memories can, of course, occur; their existence has been well documented. Their occurrence has generally been associated with a number of dubious therapeutic practices; however, extensive evidence also exists regarding the validity of many recovered memories. As with all memory, some details can be distorted. Recent studies have shown that traumatic memories are at no more risk of distortion than other memories, but with no-one to validate them, such memories can be readily debunked and the alleged victim labelled, a ‘troublemaker’. There have been innumerable cases in which families have disintegrated after protracted court cases to establish the innocence of the accused, while the victim is ostracised.

  I acknowledged to
Simon that sometimes memories are ‘false’ but stressed that many are also valid. I told him about the well-established phenomenon of amnesia following major trauma, not just from abuse, but after war trauma and other cataclysmic life crises. I explained that I believed I had a case of dissociative amnesia, a condition in which a person who has been traumatised discovers serious gaps in their personal history due to this memory loss. I gave him some books and articles to read and asked him to consider the evidence they held.

  I shared my previous doubts about my retrieved history and observed that with each new memory which returned, that I’d spent session upon session doubting my recall. I proffered the concept that there must be an explanation for the forgotten years of my childhood. As well as an explanation as to why I spaced out and dissociated as much as I did. My therapist had never used any dubious therapeutic methods, nor had she suggested any facts to me which I hadn’t first uncovered without her input. Many of my memories had returned independent of therapy. I’d experienced a series of flashbacks in which each of my senses had been assaulted, and a range of emotions triggered. I had lived and breathed every memory as if the events were happening in the present. I told him that I was beginning to understand the reasons behind some of my behaviours and reactions. I told him that certain reactions made sense in the context of the abuse I had suffered and that my memories were providing me with much greater insight.

  He listened, but he didn’t respond.

  It was difficult for my brother. His memory of the years I was talking about, was poor and the memories I presented to him challenged his retrospect. Simon was wedded to his views and not prepared to let them go. He believed the family folklore of a happy childhood; it defined him as it once did me.

  For years I had been the peacemaker in the family, hosing down the tension between my mother and my brother, trying to make things right. I had been available for their needs and often denied mine in the process. The dynamics were starting to change, because now I was the one who was needy and seeking to have my needs met.