Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  During this particular holiday absence, Kate had referred me to the psychiatrist who had prescribed the antidepressants that I had been taking continually since I first saw him. In one of the sessions with the psychiatrist, I recounted Dan’s discussions with my mother. In seeking to highlight the extent of her emotional unavailability I said, ‘My mother wouldn’t notice if I chopped myself up into pieces and laid the pieces down her stairs. She would step over me and keep walking.’

  The psychiatrist was shocked. My statement was outrageous. Or so it seemed to be. The sad thing is though, that I was not exaggerating for effect; I seriously believed it.

  chapter 17

  The onset of my shower flashback heralded a sudden and sustained aversion to taking showers. Once the memory emerged however, and I validated its existence, my antipathy disappeared and I was able to take showers again without any difficulty. Within weeks though, the very same repellent feeling returned, only this time it was in response to taking baths. I braced myself for the coming crisis. The first related flashback assaulted me at home and it transported me back to an era much earlier than any of its predecessors.

  I’m one, two, three, I’m four years old. I’m four because I already had my four-year old birthday party. It’s bath-time and I’m a big girl because I can take my clothes off all by myself, but I’m playing pretend like I can’t, because then my Daddy will help me, like when I was little and I like that. My Daddy is lying me down on my towel on the floor in the bathroom near the bath, and I’m lifting my arms up and Daddy is pulling my shirt up over my head. I’m lifting my arms up right up to the sky but my singlet is getting stuck on my head and that’s funny because I can’t see my Daddy like I can’t see him when we play hide and seek.

  My Daddy is taking my panties off and I’m wriggling because I have a pink body because I’m nakey. My Daddy is blowing raspberries in my belly button and it feels blowy and tickly and giggly because it’s funny. My Daddy is tickling me on my tummy; I love when my Daddy is a tickling Daddy.

  I’m jumping up and running away from my Daddy but I’m not really; I’m tricking. My Daddy and me are playing chasey like when we play chasey with Cherry outside in our big yard but we’re being careful because when you play chasey in the bathroom you have to be careful because it’s slippery in the bathroom and you can fall over and hurt yourself. I don’t like hurting myself. My Daddy is catching me and giving me a cuddle and now he’s blowing 1,2,3,4 raspberries on my tummy like the same four when I’m four years’ old.

  I love my Daddy and I love having bath-time with my Daddy. I have bath-time with my Daddy every afternoon before we have dinner time. Bath-time with my Daddy is fun, because he makes me wriggle and giggle until my tummy hurts that giggly hurt which is a fun hurt and not a yucky hurt. I like fun hurts but not yucky hurts. Yucky!

  My catching Daddy is lifting me up under my arms and sploshing me into the bath down the end without the taps and the poury thing that sticks out. My Daddy-bath is warm and bubbly because that’s my favourite bath and my Daddy knows it is. I’m kicking and splashing and trying to wet my Daddy because my Daddy looks funny when he’s wet because the wet makes my Daddy’s hair on his head which is curly not be curly anymore. I’m rubbing the soap with my hands to make more bubbles in my bath-time. My Daddy and me are popping the bubbles and we’re blowing them too. I’m blowing the bubbles onto my Daddy’s nose and the bubbles on my Daddy’s nose make him look funny.

  My Daddy is washing me all over to make me clean and make me ‘cleaner than all the other little girls in the world’. My Daddy is taking me back out of the bath and flying me through the air. He’s catching me in my soft fluffy towel and calling me his princess and he’s drying and cuddling me. I love my Daddy; I love my Daddy more than anything in the whole wide world and I love being my Daddy’s princess. My Daddy is a special Daddy.

  More flashbacks followed from the time I was four. I experienced them at home first before reliving them in my sessions with Kate. The flashbacks confused me; sometimes they made me feel happy, but other times they were horrid. I was not prepared for the memories they brought.

  I’m having a bath-time with Daddy. My special Daddy has gone away and I don’t know where he is. I’m not giggling but I’m still wriggling a different sort of wriggling. It’s a wriggling to get away from a Daddy who isn’t my special Daddy because this Daddy is holding me in a hurty way and I don’t like it. This Daddy is holding me up in the air in my pink skin and making my legs kick.

  ‘Put me down, Daddy! Put me down!’ I cry and that Daddy does put me down and that Daddy lies me down with hurty hands into the bottom of a bad bath. That Daddy plays pretend games but they’re yucky pretend games and I’m not giggling at all. That Daddy’s fingers are poking and scratching me and I don’t want them to do that and I don’t want them to touch my pink skin and not the pink skin between my kicky legs.

  That Daddy’s arms take my pink body out of the hurty bath and that Daddy has a scratchy towel and the scratchy towel scratches my little girl’s bits that the bad Daddy hurt. It’s not a washing bath and a playing bath and it’s not a warm special bubbly bath; it’s a hurting bath and a bad bath.

  *

  It’s another bath-time and my special Daddy is giving me a giggly bath because this is my special Daddy and my special Daddy loves me. My special Daddy wraps me in a friendly towel and the friendly towel makes me warm and soft. My special Daddy wants to play, but my bits are hurting from that other Daddy and I don’t want to play with any Daddy.

  ‘I love you princess,’ my special Daddy says and he wants to cuddle me and I want to cuddle him, but I don’t want to cuddle him all at the same time.

  ‘Princess, I love you,’ my special Daddy says, because my special Daddy calls me his princess and I feel bad because I love my special Daddy more than anything, but I don’t love that Daddy who hurts me and sometimes I don’t know which Daddy is my special Daddy anymore.

  I was having a session with Kate.

  ‘Cathy, what’s happening? Can you tell me what’s happening?’

  I was being swept away by a bath-time memory, aspects of which I’d started recalling at home. Although I was sitting in my chair in Kate’s office my body was recoiling from the fingers of a father who was hurting my four-year old body. My eyes were squeezed shut.

  ‘Cathy, what’s happening?’ Kate’s gentle voice sounded out of the darkness that existed behind my eyelids.

  ‘My Daddy hurting me! My Daddy hurting me!’

  I wasn’t able to say anything else that session but terrifying flashbacks just like that one continued to strike me both at home and in my sessions. One day when I was at home by myself with only fifteen minutes to go till my next session, a devastating image assaulted me. I’d felt the pressure building up all morning. By the time the image had crystallised, my level of agitation had reached fever pitch.

  A monster is bearing down on me and pushing me backwards. The monster grabs me; I cry out but I’m trapped and can’t get away. I had no idea how I’d be able to wait the fifteen minutes out. I decided to take a shower but instead of stepping inside the shower recess I began to jump involuntarily, up and down, on the white-grey tile floor screaming, ‘No Daddy! No Daddy! No!’ As I jumped up and down my mind flipped back.

  ‘No Daddy, no!’ The floor tiles are lime green. I stop jumping and look up into Daddy’s eyes, but they are not the eyes of my special Daddy; they are the eyes of a scary monster Daddy and I don’t want to stay with that scary monster Daddy. I drop onto the floor to try and get away. My body starts to rock and I rock hard and fast on the yucky lime green tiles of the bathroom floor. My special Daddy comes back and he bends over me but then he goes away again and the monster Daddy comes back instead and the monster Daddy puts his arms under my nakie bottom and hurts me. ‘No Daddy. No Daddy! NO!’

  It was ten past two. I was ten minutes late for my two o’clock session. I was sitting curled in a ball on the white grey tiles in the corner o
f our bathroom, rocking, listening to the insistent ring of the phone in our bedroom. I suspected that it was Kate calling; she usually called when I was running late.

  ‘Daddy, it’s Kate! I have to go!’ I said to the Daddy in my head.

  I wriggled out of the Daddy’s arms in my mind and hopped into my car. I asked the little girl to go away so the grown woman could come back to do the driving. I pushed the buzzer. There was no answer. I pushed it again. ‘Answer, please answer!’

  ‘Hello.’

  I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for Kate, but she was taking a long time. The little girl in me started rocking while the adult sat and waited. I slumped down in my chair in Kate’s office, shut my eyes and was transported back in time.

  I’m four years old and it’s dark. I don’t like when it’s dark because the dark is scary. Scary things are touching me in the dark and they’re trying to grab me and I don’t want them to grab me. I want to get away but I can’t.

  ‘Cathy, what’s happening? Can you tell me what’s happening?’

  Even though my head was foggy I could still make out Kate’s voice. Hearing it reassured me; I wasn’t alone, she hadn’t left me. She’d been watching; she’d seen the whole thing. She’d be able to explain what was happening for sure.

  ‘Cathy, what’s happening?’

  I sank lower into my chair. Kate didn’t know what was happening either.

  ‘I… I…’

  ‘Cathy, what’s happening?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I mouthed to the air. ‘I don’t know.’ I was stuck in limbo between being a terrified little girl of four and a terrified forty-six year old patient in a therapist’s office.

  ‘Cathy, you’re going to have to start coming out of it. Sit up now, come on!’ Kate was speaking in the business-like voice she used when we were running out of time and she had to call in the patient after me.

  ‘Come on now, Cathy, sit up! Would you like some water?’

  I nodded.

  I heard the consulting room door open, the rumble from the water dispenser in the waiting room outside as the water trickled into the cup. I made out the door being pulled shut, Kate walking towards me, the plastic cup striking the side table to my left, and Kate walking away and sitting back down.

  ‘The water, Cathy, drink the water!’

  My eyes were shut and I couldn’t see any water. I couldn’t see anything at all. I sat forward and forced my eyelids open. The room was glary and my eyes struggled to stay open in face of the bright lights. I caught a flash of ceiling and apricot walls, then looked down and glimpsed a small plastic cup on the side table next to me. I shut my eyes again and reached out to pick up the cup but my hand couldn’t find it. I told my hand to go back and have another look for the cup, stretching my fingers out until they could feel it and could pick it up. The cup felt cool; the water was cold.

  ‘Good girl, there’s a good girl; you don’t want to spill the water now, do you? Hold on tight, you hear!’ I instructed myself inside my head.

  ‘Now lift the cup up carefully. There’s a good girl. That’s it; right up to your lips, all the way now. Now lips feel the cup. That’s the way. Feel the edge first. You can feel it, can’t you? You can feel it’s there. Now tip the cup up slowly; tip it up; tip it up carefully. You don’t want to spill any water. You don’t want to spill any. If you spill the water, your mother will be angry. You don’t want your mother to be angry. You don’t want that!’ I never wanted my mother to be angry.

  The water felt cool and refreshing against my lips. It filled the inside of my mouth, cooling my gums and my palate and the roof of my mouth. As I swallowed, the water flowed down the back of my throat and woke more of me up.

  ‘Finish it, Cathy. Finish it.’ Kate insisted.

  I sighed knowing full well that the four-year old would never be able to finish a whole cup of water in one go. The water spun its magic and woke the grown up inside right up. As I returned to the present, the images in front of my eyes wavered. I closed my eyes, opened them again and struggled to focus. I glanced across at the paintings on the opposite wall and tried to pick out the detail in them but I couldn’t. I looked up at Kate’s face, but it was still blurred. I didn’t want to stare so I looked away. I looked back at one of the paintings and I could make out some of the people in it. Then the vase by my chair became clearer. Kate’s face, yes, nearly and the carpet on the floor. Kate’s face, yes, perfectly and the titles on the spines of the books piled on her desk.

  Kate got up out of her chair and walked over to her desk. She always walked over to her desk when it was time for me to leave. I looked up at her longingly. Can’t I stay a little longer? Please pretty please, cross my heart and hope to die. I won’t be any trouble; I promise.

  Kate shuffled a few papers on her desk. It was a further signal; I had to go. I didn’t want Kate to be angry. I messaged the soles of my feet and instructed them to make contact with the floor. They pushed through our socks down into our shoes and trod down hard on the floor to make me stand. I was a little wobbly but managed to stabilise myself before I took a few steps towards the door.

  ‘Cathy, are you alright?’

  I nodded but I was anything but alright.

  I stumbled out of Kate’s office and perched myself on the brick wall along the side of Kate’s house. I sat on the wall listening to the birds twittering in the trees, car engines driving past. A faint breeze brushed against my cheeks and I felt it and that meant that I must still be alive. I sat on the wall outside Kate’s until my head was less foggy and sat a little longer until I had grown up completely.

  I got up and walked up the driveway to my car. Got in behind the wheel and felt the heat from the sun streaming in through the windscreen. I put the key in the ignition, tilted the seat back and passed out. The little girl of four fell asleep. The adult did too. I stayed asleep for ages and it felt good because it was safe to be asleep out the front of Kate’s place.

  *

  I don’t know how long my father subjected me to the bath-time games, but I suspect that they took place at different times during my early childhood. I believe that my mind ‘forgot’ them in a similar way to the manner in which it pushed all memories of the doctor away.

  It took me some time to assimilate these bath-time memories. Try as I might to deny them, they continued their battering. I needed to resist them because they threatened my perception of my father. His warm and caring nature had comforted me during my earliest years and helped me form a core, strong enough to help me survive. I had no option other than to idealise him; he was my sole nurturer. I couldn’t allow the ‘bad’ things he did to penetrate my psyche because then I couldn’t have held him dear. Nor could I have used my idealisation of him to sustain me further.

  Children’s minds utilise a range of defences to protect them. One of those defences works to expunge whatever information threatens the child’s survival. My mind ‘forgot’ those things which could have destroyed it and clung to those which provided it with sustenance. Through that process in childhood I had quarantined the abusive events from one another. By compartmentalising each horror, I had ensured that one episode of abuse didn’t compound another, and that combined, they didn’t destroy me. I only continued to function because this defence mechanism had taken over.

  One of the most crucial processes in my therapy has been that of integration - to finally bring the fragments I was recalling together to form a coherent history, but before I could progress further through this process, I needed to collect every possible fragment of memory that I could, and establish precisely what and how much information I had to work with.

  And so the memories continued….

  One day driving home from therapy I passed a stack of cardboard sheets which had been dumped onto the footpath awaiting collection. The stack conjured an image of a hunched body, and that began to trouble me. Within a few days the image crystallised, and even though I couldn’t put a face to it, I could visualise the
body of a man and was picturing him standing in a doorway. I soon recognised the door in my mind’s eye picture; it was the door to my bedroom in Redcliffe.

  I immediately thought of the doctor, and wondered whether he was the man in that image. After all, he and his wife had visited our family in Queensland on several occasions. But soon, feelings of warmth began to accompany the image. I then knew for sure that the image was not that of the doctor.

  It had to be someone else.

  chapter 18

  I’m eight years’ old and I’m sleeping in my bed in my Redcliffe house. I wake up and see a shadow and the shadow is standing in the place where you come into my bedroom. I blink my eyes to make the shadow go away because sometimes blinking does make things go away, but it doesn’t this time. I rub my eyes but the shadow still doesn’t go away. I pull my sheet and blanket up over my head and that makes it go. But I don’t go back to sleep because I feel something touching me on the shoulder through my sheet and blanket. I don’t like that touching feeling and I don’t like shadows. I pull the sheet and blanket up more, but the shadow touches me on the shoulder again so I take a little baby peek. The shadow is right next to my bed and it smiles; the shadow is my Daddy.

  My Daddy doesn’t say anything but he waves his hand to the side to make me wriggle over so he can sit next to me on my bed. I wriggle over to make room straight away because I want my Daddy to sit on my bed next to me. My Daddy does sit and he touches me on the cheek with his hand. His hand’s a little bit cold and his touching me makes me tingly. My Daddy hasn’t been talking or playing with me for a long, long time. I look into Daddy’s eyes and they look at me and they are sparkly like the stars in the sky. My Daddy’s eyes haven’t been sparkly for forever. They haven’t been sparkly from when he stopped working at my Humpybong School and that’s when my Daddy’s leg started its dancing.