by Toni Maguire
‘Try again, Emily,’ he said and this time he held the saddle while I clambered back on.
If I had thought he was going to continue to do that while I pedalled, I was wrong.
‘Right,’ he told me and then without warning, gave it a firm push and launched me down the hill. Of course, I was going too fast. Panicking, I clutched the brake hard and sailed into the air, the cycle falling down beside me.
My elbow hurt, my knee was bleeding, but did either of them come rushing down to see if I was all right? No! Instead, Carl just shouted from the top of that slope for me to push the bicycle back up. I forced myself to get up and swallowed my tears – they were not going to get me anywhere.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘the thing is to get straight back on, show who’s in control. Don’t start grizzling, you’ll thank me for it later.’
I didn’t, not ever, because by the end of that day, I had begun to understand just what he was doing.
My next attempt at controlling the bike ended up the same way. The third attempt had me landing in a thorny bush and on the fourth, I ended up bouncing off a crumbling stone wall.
It might have been the end of that so-called fun day out, but it was not the end of me. That little kernel, growing inside my core, the one that had told me that I was not the stupid one, managed to resurface.
Conquer that bike, Emily, or he will have won again, it told me.
For once Fear knew its place and kept silent.
I bit my lip – I wasn’t going to cry, nor limp nor complain. Without saying a word, I moved the bike away from where he could push me in the direction of another bush, tree or wall.
Putting one foot on the ground to steady myself, I got on it again.
Concentrate, I told myself.
It took more than one attempt to manage to stay on it, but by the end of that day, I was able to control the bike. I cycled down that first path he had chosen for me and then pushed it up to the top triumphantly.
Sore I might have been, but that didn’t stop me feeling some pride in myself.
I had stopped him winning.
He managed to praise me and of course, took all the credit for teaching me his way. But this time I wasn’t fooled – I saw the gleam in his eyes that told me he was heading towards one of his dark moods. It would not take long for him to look for any excuse to criticise me.
At least on that day, I felt it was worth it.
My memories of his bike-riding lessons are of being hurt. It was, I knew, down to me that I had refused to be traumatised. Carl’s and my mother’s memories though seemed completely different. As I grew older, I heard them recount what they felt were fond memories of different lessons he had given me. There were lots of laughs and gestures from them.
‘Well, thanks to me,’ he would say with a smirk each time, ‘you know the days of the week and you can ride a bike. I hope you’re grateful.’
My response was a forced smile – I had learnt at a young age to hide my true feelings.
Chapter 20
For several days after that bike incident, I could feel Carl’s barely suppressed temper simmering away – although he should have been more cheerful, as I was clearly too scared to talk. There had been more than one opportunity that he knew of for me to have talked, hadn’t there? Both at my grandmother’s and over the weekend I had spent with my father.
He really must have been feeling so smug at the success of the three stages he had engineered. Now he was living with a woman who let him do as he wished with her daughter and a child who had shown she was completely under his control.
The result of his complacency was that those crazy, despotic rules of his increased on a daily basis, from leaving my shoes at the door to writing down everything I had done at school. He searched those notes hopefully for spelling mistakes and patrolled my room to ensure I had not left one thing out in my bedroom. Whatever rules he had made for my mother, I was not party to – though I’m sure there were some.
I could feel his hold over us growing stronger and stronger. Once he was confident that Mum had no objection to him hitting me, or in other words, her silence showed her acceptance of it, he used any excuse to raise his hand to me. Not only that, but even worse was seeing how much pleasure he took in taunting me with what was to come. He had his own way of preparing for the beating he was going to administer, preparations that became increasingly frightening.
First, he would accuse me of some wrongdoing, however minor, such as leaving a book out in my bedroom. It made no difference – he had already decided what he wanted to do. Once he had vented enough anger in my direction, he would tell me to fetch a saucer from the kitchen, then very slowly take off his rings, one at a time, before dropping them in the saucer that my shaking hands were holding.
Every ping made by metal landing on the china made me shiver and my back muscles twitch at the thought of how much I was going to be hurt. I knew why he took those rings off – they would have torn my delicate skin had he not. Recognisable marks left by them might just raise questions at the school and certainly would if Gran spotted them. This explained why, most of the time, he was careful not to leave marks in the wrong places. Bruises on legs could be dismissed by saying I had knocked against some furniture but a swollen cheek with red fingermarks on it or a black eye, now that would be a different matter.
Unluckily for me, the backs of my legs – the area he concentrated on most of the time – felt just as much pain as any other part of the body. There were only a few occasions where, when his loss of temper was genuine, then not marking me in the wrong place went out of his head. Then blows rained down on whichever part of my body was the nearest to his fists.
It was Mum who shouted at him when she saw he was out of control. The first time I heard her raised voice, I had believed that she was trying to stop him, that she was actually standing up for me. Then I wasn’t listening to the words leaving her mouth. Once I was a little older, I heard quite clearly what they were – ‘Carl, your rings’ – and then I knew who her concern was for.
By then I had discovered that I was not the only one using arnica. I saw how the tube the cream was in had less in it than when I had used it previously. I’m sure, if I could have counted the tablets, I would have found some of those missing too. She really didn’t have a clue how much I had worked out about what went on in our home. I’d heard his raised hectoring voice through my bedroom walls. There were nights when I was woken to my mother’s cries and his angry shouting. Sometimes I would curl up as tight as possible under the blankets, trying to muffle those sounds by placing my fingers in my ears. Other times, I would creep along the corridor and stand outside their bedroom. I recognised the sound of flesh hitting flesh all right. Not that Mum ever said anything, whatever bruises she had were well covered.
Did she really believe that all the rooms in the flat were soundproof? And didn’t she think I might notice sometimes when a sleeve rode up to reveal a circle of bruises on her arms, or how, on more than one morning, she walked stiffly as though every step hurt. I noticed all of that as well as how pale she often looked and how she frequently winced with pain.
As a child, I could not understand why my mum accepted his tyranny. She was still the mother, who only a short while ago had nagged and nagged at my dad – a man who never laid a hand on either of us. He might have clenched his fist and thumped the wall in frustration when she refused to stop nagging, but that was as far as it went. His escape was not violence – it was to refuse to answer her, or to leave the house muttering he was leaving to meet up with friends.
There were times when Carl’s lowered brows and unsmiling mouth told us he was in a black mood. A knife could have cut the strained atmosphere that caused. Then as swiftly as it appeared, like sun shining through dark clouds after a rainy day, he changed back into his smiling self.
Within hours of that change, my mother simply glowed with happiness. I saw the presents he came back with – big bouquets of deep pink roses, small pa
rcels wrapped in silvery paper, usually containing pretty bottles of perfume or maybe a small piece of jewellery. The adult me has named those periods that were repeated over and over again the ‘honeymoon times’. All the pain of his blows was pushed to the back of Mum’s mind, while the man guilty of inflicting them turned into the person she had fallen in love with.
His warm smiles were turned in my direction as well for he stepped back into the caring stepfather role as easily as if he had never stepped out of it. Lessons and criticisms stopped, replaced by mugs of hot chocolate and the freedom to watch TV with them.
Satisfied both my mother and I were likely to agree to just about anything, he did not waste much time asking me where my paints were.
‘Come on, fetch them out! You can paint on my legs today,’ he said, ruffling my hair.
I wonder if he knew how I had come to loathe looking at his hairy body, something I tried my best to hide. I tried not to touch his skin when I drew on it with my paintbrush and had to stop myself from cringing visibly each time when by accident, I did so. Though now I understand more of how his mind worked, I realise that of course he knew. I hated how he got his kicks by forcing me to do whatever he told me. The fact that it was something I loathed just gave him satisfaction – he would have seen how much I flinched when I was marched to the shower. He was totally aware of how scared I was of the water stinging my skin and getting in my eyes.
And he knew that I already felt what he was doing was wrong.
What he didn’t know was how determined I was not to give in to panic. I remembered then and still do that it was his hands on my shoulders that had held me under that water when I was just five. And his laughter mingled with my mother’s as I struggled to breathe that caused my meltdown. If I had not forgotten that, neither had he. Which is why I was so determined I would collapse again. Well, who would want to be mocked for something they couldn’t help? At five, I might have expected some kindness but by seven, I knew it was not going to be forthcoming.
My future stepfather was a man of almost entirely inflexible habits so I knew what to expect each time my shower was finished. A large towel would be wrapped around me before he rubbed me down. I tried not to wriggle away when, through the thick fabric, I felt his hands linger on different parts of my body. I might just have stepped out of the shower but his wandering paws made me feel grubbier than when I stepped into it.
‘Go and put your pyjamas on and I’ll make you a warm drink,’ he told me each time. It made me swallow involuntarily for I already knew what was to follow.
Hot chocolate had become part of his evening ritual. That part I liked, the second I did not.
It began with him placing me on his knee for what he called ‘a cuddle’. Gradually, it progressed to him moving his body up against mine. I wanted to escape, get off his lap, but as though sensing how I felt, his hand tightened on my hair. This was his far-from-subtle way of reminding me how he nearly pulled it out by the roots. Gritting my teeth, I stayed put as he moved up and down with my face tucked into his shoulder.
The second or third time he repeated that act, he pulled a rug over us.
‘Keep you warm,’ he said as he bounced steadily underneath me. I could feel him, feel that part that was meant for peeing against my bottom. It grew hard as he rubbed against me, making me want to squirm away from him.
Fear warned, You upset him and you know what will happen. Do you really want any more bruises? Just grit your teeth and it will soon be over. Looking back, I’m lucky not to have damaged those teeth for I seemed to have spent much of my childhood gritting them in an effort not to make him lose his temper.
My mother must have known what was happening. I mean, she often came into the room but if she had any thoughts about what he was doing, she kept them to herself. There were even a couple of times when she spoke to him while I was on his lap.
Although I knew that Carl’s good moods were never going to last long, the repugnance I felt at what he was doing to me was mixed with relief that he was going through a good-tempered phase. Another reason to stop me protesting? I had been there too many times not to know the slightest thing could set him off. An imaginary insult, disregarding his wishes or just that he had got out of bed on the wrong side. Once I saw that darkness return, I did my best to make myself invisible as, quaking with fear, I tiptoed around the house. But until then, he ceased shouting at me for what he considered my numerous misdemeanors. Even better, he stopped both forcing lessons on me and interrogating me on what I had learnt at school the moment I walked through the door.
He even stopped making comments about my eating habits, though I was aware that they were being watched carefully.
* * *
When I separated my vegetables into small individual piles, I could feel his eyes on me. I felt his disapproval at my portion of red meat always being well done. Not that my mother did that out of kindness, more because she didn’t want me throwing up. I had heard him say more than once that she was just pandering to me, which was his way of saying she was enabling my habits. Her answer was that she had learnt to tolerate them.
I always had a sense of foreboding that one day, he would do more than just voice his disapproval. Though when he was in a good mood, Mum didn’t seem to care how I ate. She was just happy that there was peace in the house. Not to mention being presented with those little gifts of flowers and perfume.
The school was also fairly easy-going. My mother had explained some of my ‘quirks’, as I prefer to call them, to the head teacher when I first started there. Not, I think now for my sake, but because she didn’t want a phone call informing her that I had just had a meltdown and upset the whole class. Now that she would have found really embarrassing. Plus, she might have worried just what I might tell them when I was in that state. She also told the headmistress that she had consulted a doctor about my habits and his response was that there was nothing to be concerned about.
Well, that’s the story she told Carl – another one of her lies. It was her mother who had done that. I had heard Gran telling Mum exactly what it was the doctor had said. His advice was there are children who are sensory sensitive and for them, routine is very important. They get confused, even upset, with too many changes. The word ‘autism’ was not mentioned, nor was there any suggestion of my being assessed. Even in the nineties, it was not something that all doctors were aware of. But at least he understood sensory processing problems, which was a bonus.
He did admit, my grandmother told her, that he didn’t understand what caused it, but as long as the right allowances were made, there was nothing much to worry about.
‘So, you’re telling me that she’s not going to grow out of it?’ snapped Mum when that was explained to her.
‘Now, Betty, that’s enough! It’s not much of a problem now, is it?’
Not to Gran perhaps.
I once heard Mum ranting about it to my dad, asking him if ‘idiot’ behaviour ran in his family. His answer was that I was hardly an idiot just because I had some rather odd ways. Then he picked up the newspaper and held it high above his head, letting her know that all conversation on the matter was over.
That was then, or rather before Carl came into our lives.
If I have anything to be grateful for regarding my genes, it is that I’m so low on the spectrum. I do have empathy and a sense of humour, thank goodness. I shudder to think what might have happened to me, had I been just a tiny bit higher on it. Even if my body had survived my childhood, I doubt my mind would have. And no one would have been able to tell why.
Now, there’s a frightening thought.
Chapter 21
I was right in thinking that Carl didn’t want to put up with my eating habits any longer. He had the same way of thinking as a man who would punish his son for being left-handed: his home had to be perfect and that included the people who lived in it.
Unfortunately for me, I had no warning of just what he had planned.
I had
arrived back from Gran’s just after five to be greeted not by him, but my mother, wearing one of her pretty dresses and smelling of perfume. Fully made up too, I noticed. She certainly seemed in an elated mood. She even gave me a warm smile and asked how my day had been.
‘Your stepfather,’ as she insisted on calling him, ‘is cooking for us tonight. That makes a change, doesn’t it?’
As I had hardly ever seen him help with any of the domestic duties, I wondered just what he was up to.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because he wants to do something nice for us, Emily, and we have something to celebrate which involves you as well. So, he wants us to tell you about it once we are all sitting down.’
I had a premonition then that this was not going to be the pleasant evening she was trying to say it was. All right, it was Carl who had planned everything but then, hard as it is even to accept all these years later, she already knew what he was up to.
Let’s just say he must have had a load of fun putting together that menu. No wonder he busied himself in the kitchen for the first and only time.
I watched my mother as in between laying the table and opening a bottle of red wine to allow it to breathe, she busied herself in running back and forth to the kitchen to see if he needed any help.
‘You go and tidy yourself up,’ she told me. ‘Your hair could do with a brush and make sure you wash your hands as well.’
I should have smelt a rat, a big stinking one – him cooking and her being nice to me was more than a little unusual. But I was just happy that there was no bad atmosphere and that she was being so friendly. At that age I was easily won over all right! So, trustingly, off I went to tidy myself, wondering what the surprise that I was to be included in was going to be.
When I came back, the kitchen door swung open, letting out the aroma of my least favourite smell – meat cooking.
Big smile from him as well, they certainly were a happy pair that evening. ‘A little celebration,’ he told me as he crossed the room to pour them both a drink.