by Toni Maguire
‘I like it when she reads to us,’ was the only answer I could think of.
* * *
It was after that first inquisition that Carl announced another new rule.
During the week I was not to sleep over at my grandmother’s.
Both he and Mum would be back by five if not earlier and I was to be brought home from school once they rang and announced they were back.
‘Your cousin Ben has already agreed to bring you. I’ll give him some extra pocket money and he’s fine with that. It gives your mother some time to get our supper ready if he brings you home.’
Or he did not want to face my grandmother every day, was my thought much later on when I got to understand how his mind worked a little more. Then, I just felt sick, knowing that he had already arranged this.
‘We are a family now,’ he told me, ‘and that means we all sleep in the same house each night. Understood?’
I did, and my heart sank.
* * *
Once my stepfather had orchestrated that little loss of my liberty, he told my mother that he had no choice but to add some home schooling to my routine.
‘She’s clearly backward,’ he said, ‘and we both know that, even if your mother thinks she’s bright. But unless we do something about it now, she will be dependent on us for the rest of our lives.’
Amazing what some adults will say in front of a child they think is slow in learning!
Those words worked all right. Mum just shrugged and told him she would be really grateful if he took over helping with my education as he was much cleverer than she was.
Chapter 15
My first lesson with him, I named ‘Days of the Week’ when I locked it away in my mind’s filing cabinet. It was the first lesson he decided on when he found out that I was a bit wobbly when it came to naming every one of the seven days of the week. I knew Sunday was the day people went to church and Monday came after it, because then I went back to school after the weekend, but I was still unsure of the ones in-between. Up until he quizzed me, I had not thought it was important. My mistake, it seemed. With his finger wagging in front of my eyes, he told me in no uncertain terms it most certainly was.
‘Now, let’s see if you can get them right . . . What’s today?’
That one I knew, but the next one, when he asked what tomorrow was, I stumbled over.
‘Try again, and get it right this time.’
Now before you ask how on earth I can remember the words he used each time I came home, when I had hardly turned five, it is because they were the same ones that left his mouth every time he stepped into his teacher role. Not that he would have lasted more than five minutes in today’s schools. It would not have taken more than one day before a mob of angry parents came storming across the playground to get to him.
There he stood, towering over me, hands behind his back, looking as though he had just stepped out of a Dickens’ book. Except I was not a boy and he was not holding a raised cane. Not that he needed one; his hands could inflict stinging blows on my legs as I found out when I forgot to answer Wednesday for the third time. And again, when I could not work out what the day after tomorrow was.
For five minutes, he shouted clues at me: ‘Think of those stupid cartoons you watch. Now what days of the week are they on?’
‘Schooldays,’ I whispered.
His fist thumped the table.
‘Are you being deliberately stupid, Emily? I mean, the names of the days! Now, what day comes after Monday?’
My mouth went dry and I could feel panic rising into the whole of my body and going right through me into my hands, which made them fidget and shake.
‘Right, I think you need a little help in learning,’ and his hand lashed out and slapped me hard across the legs.
Of course, I screamed, only to be told if I made that noise again then he would give me a good reason to make it.
‘Now get those days right!’
Of course, I stuttered my replies, got them wrong and was slapped again and again until he gave up, leaving my five-year-old self trembling with shock.
‘It’s your family,’ he shouted at my mother. ‘Them spoiling and cosseting her has turned her into a retard!’
My mother finally lifted her head from the magazine she was flicking through.
‘Oh, why do you always act so weird, Emily? Can’t you get anything right?’ she snapped. ‘You listen to him!’
And I saw a gleam of triumph in his eyes, telling me if nothing else did that she was not going to support me. Carl knew it too. He had just gained her backing to punish me in whatever way he wanted. Spinning back to where I was standing, he grasped the back of my neck and squeezed hard.
‘If you don’t want to be a retard, you’ll do as I say. Retard, Emily, that’s what you’ll be if you don’t listen to me! Do you understand?’
All I understood was the pain I was feeling as his grip tightened. I didn’t know what that word meant, but over the years as he repeated and repeated it, I soon learnt.
It’s a word I never want to hear again.
Stage Two was completed.
Just remembering how he fired questions at me that he must have known I could not answer gives me a small shot of adrenaline. I can still hear that hectoring voice of his repeating them over and over as though the answers would suddenly appear in my mind. Not that he wanted them to. What would have been the fun in that? No, his enjoyment was in making me feel stupid and incapable of learning without his help.
But he was wrong, and as young as I was, there was something small and hard growing in my core, telling me that it was not me who was the stupid one. Even then it was that burgeoning certainty that helped me, though my knees shook nearly every time I was brought home from school and walked through that door.
Every waking hour I thought with such longing of how it had been before his arrival. All right, you will say, hardly perfect, but that hadn’t stopped me before from being happy most of the time.
Chapter 16
I can’t remember when it was that my mother insisted on my taking a pill every night. It might have been after the second or third time Carl had beaten me and she realised he found it too enjoyable to stop. I heard her telling everyone from my teachers and her family how clumsy I had become since I had grown a little – ‘Always dropping things and bumping into doors and cupboards,’ she said, more than once, followed by a light laugh, ‘Well, that’s kids like her for you, I guess.’
I saw a worried expression cross my grandmother’s face when she heard those remarks: ‘Well, I’ve not noticed anything,’ was all she said.
Other people just seemed to see it as a running joke. ‘If there’s a hole, you can be sure she’ll fall into it!’ was another observation. This was told to everyone, from family and friends to teachers. Looking back, of course, she was beginning to cover up for him, for the bruises were showing.
I can’t remember when Mum started buying arnica – maybe about a year later, when the beatings grew more severe. It became the one thing we never ran out of. There was the cream to put on bruises and the pills that were supposed to prevent them forming in the first place. I remember being given those pills daily. My mother told me they were vitamin pills to make me grow strong, but she didn’t know I could read. Or that I was already adept at using a dictionary. I knew what they were before I was seven – they kept the bruising to a minimum.
A secret I kept to myself.
I liked the fact that I knew far more than he thought. My ambition was to ask him questions he could not answer. I knew that might take a few years but the thought brought me comfort.
Anything could make him punish me, coming home later than my mother and finding me watching my cartoons was one.
‘Not going to happen in this house,’ he said firmly before turning the TV off. ‘Betty, what have I said? She’s not to watch television, she has homework to do.’
Which I didn’t, but there was no point in arguing with
him.
Every day, I thought with such longing of how it had been before his arrival. That warm welcome at my grandmother’s was the complete opposite of how he and Mum greeted me when I was brought back home: ‘Oh, here you are,’ was the best I got. It went without saying that there were no warm smiles and hugs, and that making me feel loved wasn’t going to happen either.
Barely had I got through the front door than he, armed with questions, was waiting for me. He would wait a couple of minutes until my coat was off, even smile pleasantly, then tell me that Mum was cooking supper.
‘Now, before we sit down, I want to know what you’ve learnt today,’ he would add and the inquisition would begin.
We had been learning our times tables, we had done some simple arithmetic and practised the alphabet in the morning. In the afternoon, we listened to a story and then drew pictures so I only told him about the afternoon’s lessons.
I was fooled that first time, but no longer. Not after he had mocked me about telling the time. I could have answered those questions if he had asked. I had gone to the teacher and she had explained what 22 hours meant: ‘There are 24 hours in a day,’ she told me, showing how the hands moved. So, now I knew.
That I had the answers to those questions gave me a little bubble of confidence. Not that I was going to tell him, any more than I let him know I could read. Now, I had two secrets, tucked away in my mind.
Not that they stopped my growing fear of him.
Every day, when the phone rang, telling me it was time for my cousin Ben to take me home, my stomach felt as though a lead brick had inhabited it.
Chapter 17
It’s the week after Christmas and the house looks nothing like the pristine place my partner and I turned it into before his father arrived. Now, I do not turn my back on my children, but let’s face it, no mother – and I don’t care what anyone says – can watch them every second of the day.
Especially the one who at five considers herself old enough to tell me to go away!
So how long had Sonia been in her room, drawing a surprise picture for me? I asked myself, looking at one depicting brightly coloured falling leaves. Well, that’s what I saw anyhow. Not for her the different height, stick-like figures showing how she sees her family, nor is there a picture of a cat nearly as big as me in it. Hers show, in bright colours, whatever it is we wish to see. In this case, falling leaves – they are also painted onto a wall that only the day before had shown a clean, blank surface.
Now, it has not been the first time we decided that washable paint might just work on the walls. I have tried to explain to Sonia that she mustn’t draw on walls, except in her bedroom. Well, we had to do that, didn’t we? We stiffen ourselves against her bewildered look. That in itself was a battle for us. Because hadn’t I told her that her pictures were pretty and that I loved them? And then later, she had walked over to me and placed one in my hand: ‘For me?’ I asked and her reply was one of her beaming smiles that lit up her face and an enthusiastic number of nods. I had kissed her then and pinned the picture to the wall, where we could all see it.
Well then, if I like the pictures so much, why don’t I want them everywhere?
Not that she says those words, I just know that is how she thinks.
Ever since she discovered crayons, she has drawn on walls, not colouring books. I understand why – she did not want them hidden away from us. She had even ripped off wallpaper to draw underneath it and the worst, when she was no more than three, somehow managed to pull a radiator off the wall. Thank goodness it was an electric one so no damage done to her or the wall – I think she thought it was too ugly to be on show. She had a point, I must admit, but still . . . Back on the wall it had to go.
It took a long time to explain why this was not one of her best ideas!
Of course, friends and relatives tell us she should be punished, that I’m far too soft with both of them. I try and explain that neither of my little girls understands what it is they have done wrong – they are wired up just a bit differently than us is how I see it. Naturally, they get punished if they’ve done wrong, but there’s no physical punishment, insults or raised voices. And if I feel I was unfair, I always apologise. Just because I’m older doesn’t mean I know better. Basically, I make sure that they grow up in an atmosphere which is the complete opposite of my own childhood.
But Patrick and I do speak very clearly when we need to lay down our house rules to the kids. Not that it always gets through. Seeing our disapproval is usually enough though. Mainly we just tell them not to do it again and fix it, for I never want my children to be afraid of adults who are over twice their size and never to crawl into bed, their whole bodies shaking with fear. So, I let Sonia paint and draw and if it gets on the clothes or furniture, I clean them.
No big deal. We create beautiful memories together instead of traumas.
So, in her bedroom I smile but as I do so, I feel my hand has reached for my hair. My fingers are twisting it so hard, it makes my eyes water, but I can’t stop. Those drawings she’s showing me with such delight have made another one of those dratted drawers spring open.
One labelled ‘Punishment for Being a Liar’.
Well, I did say the Christmas period has its triggers that make my old fears easier to release. Oh, not the presents, the tree or the windows lightly dusted with December frost. No, it’s not that, but certain words take me back to that part of my childhood and can set off my panic attacks.
So, let’s just say this time it was the combination of the drawings and the season.
* * *
I see myself at six, just a short time after he moved in with us, living in such a dark, gloomy place that it gave me the creeps. ‘All this flat needs,’ he had said within a week or so of his boxes arriving in our hall, ‘is a revamp.’ That was his way of saying he was going to choose the colour scheme and fill every room with his dark furniture. Not one pretty thing was left – he had, in less than a week, exorcised any reminder of my mother’s past life with her husband.
All the photographs had disappeared, little ornaments that once meant something to her departed with them and not one picture was left hanging on the walls. As for my bedroom, with its dark gold and burgundy striped wallpaper, I simply hated it. Even the lovingly made patchwork bedspread my grandmother had given me had been thrown out and replaced with a thick, dark plum coloured eiderdown that I felt smothered under.
Not that in the years I spent there, I ever felt it was my room. When I was little, no toys or colouring books were ever allowed to be left out anywhere. His head would suddenly appear around the doorway and if one small object was in what he thought was the wrong place, he took it away from me. When I was older and had real homework to complete, I tried to make it a place I was happy to work in, but the only concession he made to my changing my room around was to place a desk and a hard-backed chair under the window. Once finished, all paperwork had to be placed either in my satchel or in one of the drawers. And no, I couldn’t hang a picture or pin up a poster. Even my pens had to be lined up neatly. As for books, there was a library, wasn’t there? No more than two books were allowed in our house at any one time.
The flat was his domain and he controlled every part of it. And how had that come about? I simply couldn’t understand how my once-bossy mother had become so subservient. It’s as though once he came into our lives the badness within him seeped into her as well. I soon came to realise that she was not just putting up with his tyrannical behaviour, she was enjoying it.
‘I’m doing it all for you and your mother,’ he told us repeatedly when at weekends he rolled up his sleeves and armed with a variety of paintbrushes, commenced work. He decided we needed a nice place to live in, my mother would say proudly to both her family and me.
A pride she had never shown in anything Dad did when they were together.
Right from the start, I knew that when he said the flat had to look good enough for us, he meant good enough for h
im. God forbid he’d live somewhere that didn’t look expensive or cost a lot!
Now I did say everywhere was dark, that is everywhere except the narrow hall that we almost had to squeeze through the front door to enter. For some reason he chose the palest wallpaper he could find, so pale it was nearly pure white, patterned with rows of faint blue dots. It hardly went with the rest of the house – not that I thought then that maybe it was there for a reason.
* * *
I was in my room feeling almost happy when I heard the front door open and knew he was in. Just what lesson was he going to start on that evening? The day before, it was sums and even though I had got everything right, he still yelled at me.
I knew it made him furious when I did well.
‘Idiot savant,’ he once called me. Then, gripping me by the arms, he leant forward, his face inches from mine. ‘That means, Emily, that you are nothing but a clever idiot so don’t think for a moment because you can add up, it means anything. Even an idiot can get one thing right!’
Good thing he hadn’t found out I could read as well, I thought, when I heard the front door open and knew with a shiver that he was back.
What’s going to happen tonight? I wondered, thinking for a moment that he was going to question me about my day at school. But something far worse occurred. The roar of rage that climbed up the stairs and into my ears told me to be wary of him.
‘Emily, get yourself down here now!’ he bellowed.
With shaking legs that barely held me upright, I left my room and went into the hall where he was standing, my mother at his side. I started to ask what was wrong, but before I had the chance, a firm grip on my shoulders turned me to face the wall.