‘Why?’ I asked, in the petulant, whiny tones of the aggrieved that I had learnt to perfect. They earned me, as I had expected, a stony stare followed by an exasperated sigh.
‘Because I said so,’ my mother replied and, knowing that no other explanation would come my way, I meekly agreed.
That night, remembering how I had been discovered the previous time, I waited until the music was turned up before I crept down the stairs.
The guests were dressed as cowboys and cowgirls. The women’s fringed skirts were so short that they only just covered their knickers and the men were wearing chaps.
I watched through the half-open door as they danced and kissed people who were not their partners, but then, scared that I would be seen, I scuttled back up the stairs to my room.
This time, instead of feeling unsettled by what I had seen, I was just filled with anger. I hated them and concluded they must hate me too. This was why my mother never wanted me around. I knew that what they were up to involved the same sort of things my uncle made me do. Was this what the adult world was all about?
But I knew that other people’s families were not like mine. Even Kat, with all her complaints, had a mother who appeared to love her, and a father who spent time with her whenever he could. I had heard the excited Monday-morning buzz at school as each child chattered about what they had done at the weekend. Enviously I stood quietly by and listened to them talk about family outings to the cinema, going into the countryside for picnics and taking trips to the seaside.
That was the type of childhood I so desperately wanted.
I began to resent the other children in my class. I glowered when I heard them talking of things they had done and they, sensing my anger, avoided me more and more. Little groups of friends stopped their conversation when I approached, which fuelled my rage and resentment.
My fingers started to reach out and painfully nip those smug, contented children who were unaware I was standing near them. My feet tried to trip them up and my fists lashed out when the inner fury swelled so forcefully inside me that a teacher had to rush and restrain me.
As I grew bigger, my small hands were clenched into hard fists when I hit out indiscriminately and my kicking feet were strong enough to inflict pain. By the time I was ten some teachers refused to let me into their classes. ‘Disruptive to the rest,’ they started to say when, once again, I was made to spend my time outside the door. Underneath I sensed a growing fear of me and my wild actions.
There was one boy, however, who did not seem to be intimidated by my behaviour. His eyes would challenge me, his smirk mocked me and he would snigger as I walked past. ‘Loopy Jackie,’ he would hiss aggressively, so that only I could hear.
My glares had no effect on him and his bony fingers would reach out and pinch the soft places on my arms. His foot would trip me. When he did these things to me, I would hear the sniggers of the other children and see the teacher look down, determined not to interfere.
I knew that my classmates and those who tried to instil some knowledge and discipline into me thought it was time I was taught a lesson, which succeeded in enraging me even more. Over the weeks that followed, that boy became the person to whom I redirected all my pent-up anger with the world.
I waited until he, with the confidence of so many bullies, went too far. Not only did he hiss at me when he was giving out schoolbooks but he yanked hard on my plait when he was standing behind me. I saw the teacher, her blue eyes watching us, a slight smile on her face; a smile I had learnt to recognize in an adult – it showed that they derived pleasure from my discomfort. I knew that she had seen what he had done and decided to pretend she had not. I waited, biding my time, for I knew if I kept quiet, the boy would make a mistake. Later that day he did.
It was in the afternoon when he stood in the wrong place, positioned between the wide-open classroom door and the wall behind it. I felt the pressure in my head as I saw my opportunity. ‘Now! Do it now, Jackie,’ screamed the voice that lived inside me. I leapt forward, seized the handle and smashed the door as hard as I could into him so that he was crushed against the wall. I heard him scream, saw him fall and triumphantly stood there watching his fractured nose bleed as he writhed with pain.
The class was in an uproar. The teacher caught hold of me, dragged me from the room and told me to stay outside while she dealt with the injured boy. Then it was back to the headmistress’s study and, once again, my parents were summoned to be notified of my appalling behaviour.
‘What made you do it?’ the headmistress had asked. ‘You could have hurt him even more than you did.’
But I could not explain to her that, as much as the boy’s torments had angered me, it had been the sight of that smile on the teacher’s face that had brought the rage to the surface.
I opened my mouth to try to tell her, but I could find no words, so I gave one of my indifferent shrugs that I had learnt infuriated the teaching staff, and looked expressionlessly at the floor.
That violent act led to another visit to the psychologist and another lecture about what a lucky little girl I was. His questions to me and my mother never once touched on what might have been at the root of the problem. I don’t know what he wrote in his notes, maybe nothing much, as I have no copy of them in my file.
24
I only had two interests before I was twelve: my bicycle and listening to music. I found riding out of our village into the country reduced my anger, and music transported me to another place. Not for me the sweet, catchy harmonies of the boy bands and schmaltzy pop groups, such as Abba, that my classmates adored. I liked the more powerful voices of Annie Lennox, Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux. When my black mood refused to lift, it was the loud thump of heavy rock and the anti-establishment lyrics of the punk bands that I wanted to listen to.
The music I had discovered might not have been the sort that other children of my age or even my parents liked, but I wanted sounds I could escape into, sounds that shared my anger and helped me find oblivion.
I would let my mind wander as I listened to the harsh, angry rock songs shouted out by young men whose lives were already being wrecked by drugs and alcohol. They bellowed out words that told of a bleak anarchistic future that some did not even live to see. They sang of lost dreams, of disillusionment, and as I listened to those lyrics, my mind was free and the world distant.
I pleaded with my parents for more and more music and, pleased that I had found an interest, they bought me whatever tapes I asked for.
In my room I watched an interview with Johnny Rotten on the TV. With spiky blond hair and wild eyes, he shocked the world with his swearing and disrespect for everyone and everything that people like my parents valued. I loved him. He was ‘the man’, I decided.
25
After that initial occasion, a family holiday in Spain was never mentioned again. I knew that my father still owned the finca, and sometimes I wanted to ask him if we could go again, but pride stopped me. I had overheard too many fragments of conversations not to know that my mother did not want to take me away with them.
Instead I spent half of my summer holiday with my uncle while my parents went to places like Italy and the South of France. I only knew that because I saw the glossy brochures that my mother left lying around.
Staying with my uncle was not just restricted to my parents’ summer holidays and numerous weekends, but as my behaviour became more unpredictable, some of our short half-term breaks as well.
‘Heaven knows, Jackie, why you can behave for him and not me,’ my mother said repeatedly, while my father said little and just looked at me with the puzzled, worried expression I had grown to hate. My weak protests that I wanted to spend time with Kat were ignored. ‘You can see her during the week or next weekend. We’re having a party this Saturday,’ was always the abrupt answer.
Was my uncle scared that as I grew older and more troubled I might also become less malleable? Was it fear that made him arrange what was to happen next? Or
was it that his clients were demanding more? I don’t know, I never asked him, and, of course, it’s too late now. But I do know they were customers, not friends. Over those years, not only had he been able to use me as his toy he had also been able to make money from me. I had come to understand that quite young. The drink and drugs I had been given had not blurred my senses completely, and I had seen the wads of banknotes handed to him by sweaty-palmed men anxious to get their hands on what they had paid for.
Whatever the reasons, he decided to move my degradation up a notch or two.
There had been times, indeed many times, when my uncle was present while one of his ‘friends’ had sex with me. Sometimes he was behind the camera and sometimes he just watched. By then, of course, I had learnt to float out of my body and look down at the child, who lay there passively, drowsy from whatever she had been given. After it was over, I was furious with that little girl. Why did she never refuse to do as her uncle told her? Her submission over the years had turned her into a mute supplicant to his controlling Svengali.
There was always the bright light, which caused her uncle and the camera to merge and become one menacing, misshapen shadow, and the men who twisted her body into whatever position they wanted before forcing that thing into either her mouth or between her legs. And all the time she lay there silently, not protesting. Of course I could feel it inside me, but I was separate from what was taking place.
There were the men who eagerly swapped places and took their turn behind the camera, snapping photos. Then it was their chance to be the observer, the one who watched through the blinking eye of the lens. Some of them I grew to recognize, for they visited several times; others came once, then disappeared. I would like to think that perhaps my body had reminded them too much of a loved daughter or grandchild, and shame had driven them away. But in fact I believe they moved on to pastures new.
Then there were the occasions when, with a new device my uncle had purchased, the camera could be operated remotely and closer to where I was lying. That was when he was asked to join in, which he rarely refused to do.
It was a few months after my eleventh birthday that my periods started and my body began to change. My uncle began to lose interest. However, my new shape had the opposite effect on some of his ‘friends’. They came to his house when his wife was at work, men I had not seen before.
There were the ones whose guilty eyes avoided mine. They did what they did, finished quickly with me, said little, dressed hurriedly, and left. While some leered at my nakedness. And then there were the others, hard-faced men who handed over the cash and demanded speedy delivery from my uncle’s darkroom, stating that they had clients waiting for the latest pictures.
Sometimes they were finished within a few minutes, but however long they took, they were never in that room longer than an hour. But I talk as though their pleasure only lasted while they were there. The photographs extended it for days or even weeks, until the men came back for more.
It was those pictures, hidden in dark, secret places, of themselves or another man abusing a child, which enabled them to play out their fantasies or relive that illicit time. It was the thought of those men relishing every detail in private, as much as what they had done to me, that caused my worst nightmares. Looking at those sordid pictures, they could again feel the excitement of being completely in control and of wielding their power over a person too small to fight back. Instead that child could only turn a frightened face to their tormentor: they knew there was no escape and no one to turn to.
I learnt over the time I spent with my uncle that the men who molest children fall into two categories. Some have the arrogant belief that the children, however much they deny it, like what is being done to them. They watch a small crumpled form crying, hear the protests and the whimpers, yet still they want to believe that three-, four-, five-, six- and seven-year-olds have dormant sexual feelings hidden in their defenceless bodies. When those men look in the mirror, the reflection they see is not of an evil man, but of a man who loves children and whom children love. That man manipulates his victims by brainwashing them into believing that what has been done to them was partly of their own making. It is never ‘my’ secret when he tells the child to be quiet, but ‘ours’. Never him who would get into trouble, but ‘we’. He plays on a child’s emotions and gains acquiescence with barely disguised threats and reassurances of love. My uncle was such a man.
The second type sees children as having been put into the world purely for his pleasure. With crafty, calculating knowledge, he understands that a child who is merely made to feel pain might talk. But when the humiliation is so complete, a small child’s agony is overridden by shame. Then that man knows the child never will say anything.
The Chubbys of this world belonged to the second type and, at eleven, I was to meet the worst of them.
There had been occasions when two men had performed sexual acts on me at the same time, and there had been times when pain was inflicted clumsily. But as my body started to develop, my uncle decided to add another dimension to what he would allow.
This time, a group of four men rang the bell. Earlier he had turned the settee into a bed that dominated the workroom so I knew he was expecting company. He had given me the drink that made everything hazy before he led them into the room. I could hear them talking in the hall, rough, deep male voices that sounded more businesslike than excited.
As they entered I made that part of myself, the part of me that they could never touch, leave my body. Almost devoid of feeling, I rested somewhere above them, watching as they spoke to the young girl sitting on the bed. I could not make out the words and when they did not receive a reply, they ordered her to remove her clothes. She swayed slightly as she stood up and undressed, but no gentle hand steadied her. That group just watched through narrowed eyes.
I could see her long plait hanging down her back, her slight shoulders hunched, the beginning of tiny breasts, still not large enough for a teenage bra but showing all the same, and a white, white face wiped clean of any trace of animation or even apparent awareness of what was happening to her.
She laid her jeans and T-shirt over a stool, then sat down again on the bed-settee, where she thought they wanted her.
‘Not there,’ said one. ‘Move, girl.’ He pointed with a nicotine-stained finger to a hard wooden chair. Dazed, she looked at him, as though the words made little sense. With an impatient snort he yanked her to her feet and sat her down by pushing her shoulders hard so that the bottom of her spine crashed against the seat. Before she could realize what was happening, another man had pulled her arms back and tied them behind her. Her head flopped to one side with dizziness as the men circled their captive. She was not fully developed, that girl, but already her waist tapered above her small sharp hip bones and her skin stretched tautly across her stomach. I could see a faint shadow between her legs, proclaiming that her body was changing from child to woman as, wraithlike and invisible to them, I watched those men and observed from above what they did to her.
Large rough hands stroked those small budding breasts, then one squeezed her nipple hard. The sudden pain made her body twitch and a faint groan escaped from her pale lips. They smiled then, gloating, leering smiles.
They took out bulldog clips, the big ones used for keeping piles of paper tidy, placed them on those tiny breasts and, forcing her legs apart, somewhere between her legs. I knew they were hurting her for I also felt a sharp stabbing pain shoot through my body, as though in sympathy with what she was enduring. Her eyes closed, but behind her lids I saw them fluttering.
They had oral sex with her. With as much care as a man urinating, they unzipped their trousers, held her head and jerked their fluids into her mouth, but still she did not stir. Then, bored with her passivity, they wanted something else.
They untied her, threw her on the bed and climbed on top of her.
Two of them could not get a second erection and, watching, I breathed a sigh of relief, for th
ose men were big. I thought then that if all of them stuck those purple engorged things in her they might damage her small frame beyond repair. It was the third, who I saw had become rock hard, who suddenly flipped her over, spread her slender child-legs wide, then entered her.
I think I lost consciousness then. I felt that unimaginable pain going through her body and I knew flecks of blood were spotting the tops of her legs. I saw her struggle to regain awareness, but her eyes as they flickered open were dull from whatever had been given to her. She watched as the men zipped themselves up and straightened their clothes and she saw the thick wad of money passed to her uncle.
I felt no pity for the girl and the pain I knew she was suffering. Instead it was anger that coursed through me; anger not at the men or even the man who had once professed to love her, but at the girl and her acquiescence. How could she have just accepted what had happened without putting up any resistance?
She was calling me back to re-enter her body; the body that was so dirty, so defiled. I wanted to stay where I was, in the air, looking down, but a stronger force compelled me to return.
That was nearly the end of the first part of my story, the one I waited more than twenty years to tell.
26
‘It wasn’t then,’ I said to the woman sitting quietly opposite me. ‘It should have been, but it wasn’t then that my uncle lost me, lost his control over me. It was a few weeks later.’
‘Take your time, Jackie. When you’re ready, tell me what happened next,’ said the sympathetic voice of the person from whom I had been seeking help.
I paused, for it was that part more than any other that still fills me with shame and had finally driven me to seek professional help. I needed the movie in my head to stop. It played continuously, on a loop. The characters were the child, my teenage self and many others. The therapist waited patiently, as she always did, for me to continue, understanding what it must have cost to reveal that part of me.
Can't Anyone Help Me? Page 10