A Family Secret

by Maureen Wood

  ‘You picked on the wrong girl,’ I yelled.

  I even managed to see the funny side as he swore and limped away. After what I had been through, nobody scared me. I could stand up to a total stranger, yet I could not stand up to my own parents. My mother terrified me more than any of the escaped criminals and addicts I might find myself sharing a park bench with. And though I was able to recognise, and agonise over, the dichotomy, I could not change it.

  I had no contact at all with my family during these months, but they lurked at the back of my mind, like a malignancy. I never felt completely free of them. I didn’t see Ben at all for five months, yet he and Christopher were all I thought about. I counted every day. I kept in touch with Ben’s social worker, but I knew, without her telling me, that I was not yet well enough to resume contact with him. I had to get off my medication to get my son back. But it was not easy. I was taking stuff to wake me up and stuff to make me sleep, all washed down with half a bottle of vodka a day. My weight went down to five and a half stone and, at 5 foot 7, I was virtually skeletal. I didn’t look well and I certainly didn’t feel well either. I was in no fit state at all to see my son. Yet if I carried on along this path I knew I would never see him again. Deep down, the strength that had carried me through the rapes, that had seen me rise above my mother’s abuse and helped me cope with the loss of my son, came to bear once again. One day, early in 1990, I woke up and decided that enough was enough. I took my entire stock of tablets and flushed the lot down the loo. I felt a small sense of triumph as I watched the tablets fizz and dissolve in the water.

  ‘Mummy’s coming back, Ben,’ I said softly.

  My doctor went mad when I saw him later that week, telling me I could have given myself a heart attack with such rash behaviour.

  ‘You should have reduced the dose slowly,’ he admonished.

  But I had never been one to do anything by halves. And I knew this was the only way. The days that followed were hard, but I had found a new determination and I was sticking to it. Now lucid and sober, I applied to see Ben.

  I was told the first visit would need to be under supervision, which I understood. It was arranged that I could move back to the hostel until I found somewhere more permanent and my social worker agreed to bring him there, along with his foster mother. I was a bundle of nerves and excitement. The hours dragged until he was due to arrive. That first visit lifted and broke my heart, all at once. I felt like he had saved me and destroyed me, just with his chubby little smile. He was a little wary at first – there was a flicker of recognition in his face, but I could tell he had forgotten me. It was understandable, I told myself, it had been a long time, longer for a little boy like him.

  ‘Hello darling,’ I smiled.

  I held out my arms and he reached towards me, and I felt my soul sing. My boy, he was back in my arms, back in my life. I had been determined not to cry, so as not to upset him, but I found my cheeks were wet and I did not know why.

  ‘My, you’ve grown,’ I told him.

  He happily sat on my knee as we chatted, but then he turned to his foster mum, and said: ‘Mummy, a drink!’

  It cut through me and I felt my guts tighten. But again, I reminded myself, she had been a mother to him, and I had not. I had to earn the title, and right now I did not deserve it. It was a short visit, and when it came to an end I had to swallow back more tears. I knew this would take time. I knew I had to do it at Ben’s pace. This time, I had to get everything right.

  ‘Maybe next time you’d like to visit Ben at home, with his foster parents?’ suggested the social worker.

  I nodded, but in reality the idea frightened the life out of me. We made an arrangement for the following week, and I was torn between wanting to see Ben again and dreading seeing his foster parents. I hadn’t taken much notice of his foster mother at the first visit, my focus had been solely on Ben, but now I worried that she would judge me and disapprove of me, and that I would not measure up, in Ben’s eyes or in theirs.

  ‘What will I wear? What should I say?’ I fretted.

  I took a little blue blanket with me, which Ben had always loved as a small baby. It had quite a large label, and he had a fondness for labels of any kind. He would often sleep with a label rubbing against his cheek, as a comfort. I rang the doorbell and stood back, with my stomach churning. I felt like I was going for the world’s most important job interview.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ beamed the foster mum, showing me inside.

  Hers was not the stiff, grand house I had envisaged. It was a normal, friendly, messy family home, with four other children, and lots of colour and noise and laughter. I felt instantly at ease.

  ‘Ben!’ she called. ‘Mummy Maureen is here! Come and say hello!’

  To my delight, he came tearing into the living room and flung himself at me for a hug. I was choked with emotion. He remembered me well from the previous week and he took the blanket from me as though he had been waiting for it. To my amazement, he took the label between his finger and thumb and rubbed it against his cheek. It was as much a comfort for me as it was for him, and I found I could not stop smiling. His foster mother was wonderful, supportive and caring, and I felt so lucky that she had helped him when I could not.

  Coming away this time was very hard. I hated leaving him behind. Ben waved at the window, shouting: ‘Mummy Maureen! Mummy Maureen!’

  I waved and waved until I could see him no more, and I let the tears fall. But I had lots of hope too. I’d had a glimpse of what might be possible, of what the future might hold. I wanted a house like that, I wanted my boy back. And I knew I could do it. From then, my visits became my only focus in life. My social worker had initially been quite offhand with me. It was as though she’d had her fill of young girls having babies and relying on the state to clear up their mess. She didn’t think I would last the course, I could sense it. But over time she softened towards me; she realised I was serious.

  ‘You’re ready for unsupervised visits, Maureen,’ she told me. ‘Well done.’

  I punched the air in celebration. I was moving forwards, without a doubt. Sadly, Ben’s first foster mother had become ill and he had to move to a new placement. I felt guilty that he was going through more upheaval, more upset in his little life, because of me. Before, I might have used this as a reason to slump back into a depression. Now, I used it as a catalyst to get better. This was more motivation to get him home with me, where he belonged.

  For the unsupervised visits I needed a place where I could take Ben, and one of my sisters, who was by now married with her own family, offered to let me take him there. I needed an address to give to social services, as part of my bargain, and I was eternally grateful. This was my hour of need, and she was there for me. Seeing her, with her house, her children and her little garden, made me so envious, but it gave me something to strive for. It was what I wanted, and it was what Ben deserved. As I watched him playing with his young cousins, I made a silent promise to him that this time I was going to prove myself as a mother. And I would never ever let him down again.

  Chapter 10

  Just before my nineteenth birthday, social services had insisted that I started counselling sessions. After the previous abortive attempt I really didn’t want to go, but I accepted it was a piece of the jigsaw, another tick on the list that was required to get my son back. But when the day came around, I felt a flash of annoyance. What could these people do to help me? They knew nothing about me. Nothing.

  ‘It’s a waste of my time and theirs,’ I grumbled.

  For my first session I arrived, disgruntled and plastered in makeup, in a barely there mini skirt and six-inch red stilettos. I marched right up to the reception desk and said:

  ‘I am here to see someone called Mary.’

  A few minutes later, a lady appeared and introduced herself as Mary Johnson, my counsellor. She was in her early forties and was quite pet
ite, with a shoulder-length dark-brown bob. She wore a pale blue, buttoned-down summer dress, with a floral scarf tied around her neck.

  ‘Oh, she will never understand me,’ I groaned inwardly. ‘This is worse than I even imagined.’

  She looked and seemed friendly enough as she led me into a small room. But I didn’t trust her at all. To me, she seemed old and out of touch. And she seemed like a snob, too; someone from a different class and a different world. Someone who would have no idea of what I had been through and how to help me. I looked at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall, lit a cigarette and said: ‘If you think I am fucking talking to you, think again. I’m here because I fucking have to be.’

  I was being obnoxious, and I knew it. Rather unsubtly, I was trying to let her know that I was a lost cause. Mary said nothing. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow at my colourful language and she didn’t flinch as I blew smoke around the room. We spent the rest of the hour in total silence, me smoking and sighing and her simply sitting quietly. At the end of it, I realised it had probably been more uncomfortable for me than her. For the next year, that was our routine.

  Every Tuesday evening I turned up for my appointment, without fail. I sat in her office and smoked, and never said a word. One problem was that I was an ignorant, immature teenager who thought I knew better than she did. But the other issue was that I physically could not have found the words even if I had wanted to. I just didn’t know where to start. The shame of the abuse had left me dumb. Literally dumb. Even so, for reasons I did not understand, I never missed a single session. I could not say I looked forward to them, but neither did I dread them. Though I never spoke, I was clearly getting something out of them. Mary was like no one else I had ever met. She put up with my arrogance, my hostility, my downright rudeness without a single complaint. No matter how hard I tried to rile her, she simply didn’t take the bait.

  She later said to me: ‘I could see the wall, and every week a little bit crumbled. I knew I could help you if I was patient.’

  She had such extraordinary vision and tolerance. She could see my defences coming down, even before I could. One year on, I took her a poem I had written, about my childhood. In it were references to the abuse I had suffered, though there were no names and no direct allegations. I refused to discuss the poem with Mary, but I let her read it, and it was a huge breakthrough. The following week I took more poems, entitled: ‘What are families for?’, ‘What, Where, Why and When’, ‘My Tears’, ‘What is Love?’ and ‘Why?’. Each poem was an outpouring of my distress. Then, in a whisper, as I clutched my poems in my hands, I told Mary that I had been raped, but I could not say who by.

  ‘We’ll take it at your pace,’ she told me simply. ‘Let’s not push anything.’

  Slowly, week by week, I started to tell her about the abuse by John Wood. I told her about the rapes in my bedroom and about the time he had said: ‘You are my wife.’ He was not a blood relative and so it was easier, somehow, to focus on him. In my mind, I wanted him to shoulder all the blame. I wanted him to be the ring-leader. I didn’t mention Jock or my mother. It would be a long time before I could even acknowledge the abuse by my mother. Yet despite the violence of the rapes, my mum’s abuse felt like the worst betrayal and the worst taboo. And try as I might, I could not convince myself otherwise. So, I concentrated instead on telling Mary about John Wood. Hour by hour, I shared the pain, agony and shame. By the end of my counselling I had told her more than I had ever told anyone before.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else?’ she asked gently.

  I shook my head. I wanted to forget it. I wanted it gone. I think she knew, as I did, that the worst was yet to come. But right now I could not contemplate it. And I was still insistent that I could not go to the police. I couldn’t take it any further, not yet, at any rate. What I had achieved so far, with Mary, felt cataclysmic. I felt as though I had run a marathon and I needed to get my breath back, and repair my limbs, before I ran again. And the more I compartmentalised the different abusers, the more I managed to blot out the other two. But over the years, just a whiff of old Spice, Charlie perfume and stale beer and I would be gripped by a panic attack, unable to speak or breathe. I was whirled back, like a leaf on the wind, to that bedroom with the flowery curtains and the small TV. I had to get a grip on those situations. I had to avoid all triggers as much as I could. I wanted my son back; that was more important to me than justice or closure. And so, as time wore on, I buried the abuse deeper and deeper. If I wanted to be a good mother, and a sane mother, I had to lock it in a box and throw away the key. The only way I saw a future, with Ben, was by blocking out the past completely. And so that is what I did. I dug so deep into my own consciousness that I managed to cut out the abuse totally. It was almost as though I had amputated a part of my memory.

  I stopped drinking too and became completely tee-total. My friends all laughed and said: ‘You will never last.’

  But I was serious about this. Serious about moving on. I applied for custody of Ben, a process that would take eighteen months to complete. And from that day, I never touched alcohol. I didn’t take medication. I never looked back.

  Keen to prove myself to social services, I left the hostel and found a rented room in a house, shared with four or five other young adults. As the weeks went on I became friendly with another resident, Steve. For a long time we were just pals; he was going through a divorce and I had my custody application weighing on me, so we gave each other a shoulder to cry on. We each had our problems.

  ‘We’ll get through this, together,’ he told me.

  In the evenings we’d watch TV in his room. At weekends we’d go for drives in his car, out into the countryside. Steve worked at a pottery factory and was a gentle, quiet sort of bloke. I found him really easy to be with. One night, as we watched a film, half asleep in his room, Steve said: ‘Do you want to come to the pictures with me?’

  ‘What? On a date?’ I asked.

  Why would anyone want to take me out? Why would anyone fancy me? I was completely taken aback.

  ‘Of course on a date,’ he grinned. ‘I really like you.’

  ‘OK,’ I stuttered. ‘If you like.’

  It had never occurred to me that we would be anything more than friends, but I went along with it because, I suppose, I was grateful and flattered.

  We got on well, and I couldn’t see a reason why we shouldn’t take it further. Again, as with Dave, there was no spark there. I was not in love. But I doubted whether it would ever happen for me, whether I would ever feel the flush of romance I’d heard my friends mooning over. That first night out went well, and four months on I found I was pregnant. Steve was over the moon, but I was torn in two. My first thought was for Ben. My little boy. How would this affect my application? I went immediately to see my social worker, with my stomach churned up with anxiety.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I told her. ‘I’m only a matter of weeks, it’s early days, but I wanted to ask if this will go against me in my custody application? Because if it does, I will have a termination. That’s how serious I am about getting Ben back.’

  The social worker’s jaw dropped.

  ‘I mean it,’ I insisted. ‘I have to think of Ben. I have to learn from the past.’

  An abortion would have ripped me into pieces. I would never normally have considered the possibility. It wasn’t that I didn’t want this baby, not at all. But I knew that Ben had to be my priority. I had let him down and I had to rectify my failings. I owed him. If that meant terminating this pregnancy, I would do it. I had made the fatal mistake before of allowing my bond with one child to colour my relationship with the next – and it had ended with Ben going into foster care. I could not let that happen again.

  ‘Really, there is no need to think like that,’ the social worker assured me. ‘Another baby won’t stop you having Ben back. In fact, a little brother or sister might be nice for him.’

>   Her words washed over me in a wave of relief. I could have wept with gratitude.

  ‘But what you do need is a house,’ she continued. ‘You need a home for your babies.’

  I knew she was right. I couldn’t bring up two children in a rented room. But I found myself stuck in the middle of a mass of bureaucratic red tape. When I applied for a tenancy, the council told me I could not have a house because I didn’t have a child. And social services told me I could not have my child back without first having a house. It was a ridiculous situation and one that would drive me mad, over the months, making endless phone calls, sitting in endless offices, pleading my case, again and again. Steve and I were still very much together and happy, but I wanted to do this on my own. I had to show I could cope – I had to prove myself.

  ‘I need the house,’ I insisted. ‘You’re holding me back. You’re holding my son back.’

  I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. But I was determined not to give up. And my visits with Ben spurred me on. Thinking of his little face, upturned towards mine, lifted my spirits. Mary was a wonderful crutch too. She and I had kept in touch after the counselling finished, and I would often meet up with her at our local Christian fellowship.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Maureen,’ she said. ‘I really am.’

  Nobody had ever been proud of me before, and I was bowled over by her words. I found myself choking back tears and blushing at my own fragility. It was early days, but I felt so positive, as though everything was coming together, at last.

  The first few months of my third pregnancy proved to be very difficult, and when a scan showed I was carrying a girl, I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Typical,’ I smiled. ‘This baby is going to be hard work, just like her mother.’

  I had sailed through my pregnancies with my sons, without a single hitch. But this time I felt so unwell all the way through. I had recurring kidney infections and I was in and out of hospital. I was drained of energy and nauseous all day. My visits to see Ben were the highlight of my week. By now I was allowed to take him out for the day, and we would go to the park or the museum or, if I had enough money, I’d take him out for tea. When I knocked on the door of his new foster home, I could hear his little voice shouting: ‘Mummy Maureen,’ and he would throw his arms around me before I’d even got into the house. I loved the feel of his hand in mine, his soft cheek against my face. I tried to push away the memories of how I had hurt him. I had to look to the future. And some things – many things – were best left in the past.