Broken

by Oliver T Spedding

  ***

  The main problem that I had regarding my abuse was that I didn’t understand what had happened to me and I blamed myself for my ignorance and my helplessness. Even as I grew older and began to learn more about sex I couldn’t come to terms with what my father had done to me. I could understand a stranger abusing me but not my own father. And the fact that my mother must have known what was happening to me and did nothing to protect me made me question my understanding of what a family really was.

  I began to fight back at the world by being vindictive, malicious and hateful, but I never understood that my behaviour was being driven by my past. I believed that I was going through a phase in my development that required me to oppose any kind of authority. My behaviour infuriated my father and he continued to assault me but this only made me more determined to defy him.

  For reasons that I didn’t understand my attraction to Garth Gilmore persisted. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t reciprocate. His indifference towards me didn’t deter me though. We were in different classes at High School but I still managed to be near him during the class breaks. He continued to ignore me though.

  I became a very troublesome student, fighting with the other pupils, arguing with the teachers and often having to be punished for not doing my homework. My resolution not to be affected by my past faded into obscurity but I also didn’t link my behaviour to my past.

  The girls that I associated with at school were becoming more and more fashion conscious and, in the afternoons when they weren’t occupied with extramural sports activities, they would hurry home and change into their most fashionable clothes which always included sheer stockings and high-heeled shoes, and meet at the Espresso Coffee Bar where they flirted with the boys all afternoon. I asked my parents to let me wear stockings.

  “You’re far too young to wear stockings!” my father said. “What are you trying to be? The local whore? You will not wear stockings until you reach the age of eighteen. Then you can wear anything you like as you’ll no longer be living here. When you reach the age of eighteen you can go to hell as far as I’m concerned but until then you will do as I say!”

  As my parents hardly ever gave me any money of my own to buy clothes, I only had unimaginative clothes that were far from fashionable and had been bought for me by my mother. I was determined to have a pair of stockings and eventually I decided that the only way to get them was to steal them.

  After school one afternoon I walked to the nearby supermarket and wandered about in the fashion department surreptitiously watching the staff as they went about their duties. When I felt sure that nobody could see me I quickly grabbed my packet of stockings and pushed under the seam of my panties beneath my school skirt. I then wandered around the store and finally walked out onto the pavement.

  I hadn’t taken more than five steps when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned quickly to see a store security guard staring at me.

  “Excuse me, Miss.” the uniformed man said. “Please come back into the store. We suspect that you’ve taken goods without paying for them.”

  I stood on the pavement and stared at the man, so shocked that I could hardly move. He stared back, unmoved. I managed to hold out my open hands in front of me.

  “I haven’t taken anything.” I said. “Look. My hands are empty.”

  “Miss.” the guard said. “Please don’t make things more difficult for yourself. Just come back into the store and we’ll sort out the problem in the manager’s office. If you don’t have any unpaid goods on you them you have nothing to fear. We’ll apologise and you can go.”

  I felt my shoulders slump as I realised that the guard wasn’t going to let me go. I walked back into the store with the security guard. I noticed people staring at me and I looked down at the floor in front of me as we walked towards the manager’s office. We entered the room and the guard closed the door.

  The supermarket manager, a short podgy man with black hair combed forward over his forehead and wearing black-rimmed glasses looked up at us, his eyebrows raised enquiringly. The wall behind him displayed a large number of framed certificates and citations.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mister Harris.” the security guard said. “But I saw this young lady take a packet of stockings, hide it under her skirt and then try to leave the store without paying for the item.”

  Mister Harris looked at me, his eyebrows still raised.

  “Is that correct, Miss?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath and sighed. I looked down at the floor in front of me, realising that I had no chance of escaping.

  “Yes.” I said as I reached under my skirt and withdrew the packet of stockings. I noticed Mister Harris staring at my legs.

  “Put the packet on my desk.” he said.

  I stepped forward and placed the packet on the desktop.

  “Okay, James.” Mister Harris said to the security guard. “Well done. You can leave the young lady with me and go back to your post. I’ll take the matter further from here.”

  The security guard turned and left the office, closing the door behind him.

  “What’s your name?” Mister Harris asked.

  “Cindy Bedford.” I replied.

  “Cindy.” the manager said. “You do realise that shoplifting is a criminal offence, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I said softly, still staring at the floor in front of me.

  “Having a criminal record at such a young age can ruin your whole life.” Mister Harris said. “And have you given any thought to how your family and friends will react when this incident becomes known?”

  I continued to stare at the floor.

  I heard Mister Harris get up from his chair and I watched him walk past me to the office door. He locked the door and walked back to his desk and sat down in his chair.

  “How old are you, Cindy?” he asked.

  “Thirteen.” I said.

  “You look a lot older.” Mister Harris said and I saw him studying my body, lust filling his eyes. “Do you know what a “blowjob” is, Cindy?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what it is and if you give me one I’ll forget about this whole shoplifting thing and I’ll even give you the stockings as part of the deal.” Mister Harris said.

  “What’s a blowjob?” I asked.

  “Come here and I’ll explain it to you.” Harris said.

  I walked around the side of the desk and stood next to the manager. He swivelled his chair so that he sat facing me.

  “Get down on your knees, Cindy.” Mister Harris said.

  I stared at the man not really understanding what he meant.

  “Just get down on your knees.” Harris said, his voice turning menacing. “If you don’t do as I say I’ll be forced to lay a charge of shoplifting against you and you don’t want that to happen, do you?”

  I knelt down in front of Mister Harris and watched as he unzipped the fly of trousers. His hard, rigid penis pushed itself into view.

  “Now all you have to do is take my cock in your mouth and suck it gently.” Harris said. “At the same time tickle my balls. That’s all you have to do.”

  I took a deep breath and blanked out my mind just as I had done whenever my father had abused me. I leant forward, closed my eyes, and took the hard piece of flesh in my mouth. I heard Mister Harris gasp with pleasure. I sucked and tickled him gently. I heard his breathing quicken and suddenly his whole body tensed as he gasped and shuddered. I felt a hot sticky fluid burst into my mouth. I drew back.

  “Swallow it!’ Mister Harris gasped.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed. I looked at Mister Harris. He sat in his chair with his eyes closed and then he zipped up his fly and smiled at me.

  “That was wonderful, Cindy.” he said. “For your first blowjob you were fantastic! Okay, you can stand up now.”

  I stood up and so did Mister Harris. He walked to the office door and unlocked it.

  “Bring your stockings, Cindy.” he said
. “I’ll walk with you to the front of the store.”

  I followed the manager to the front of the supermarket.

  “Okay, Cindy.” Mister Harris said. “You can go now.”

  I turned and walked away along the pavement.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Your Honour.” James Foster said to Judge Bester. “I’m going to interrupt Miss Bedford again at this stage as my colleague, Paul Greave, would like to recall Garth Gilmore.”

  The Judge nodded and Cindy left the witness stand. I got up from where I’d been sitting and walked towards the witness stand. As I passed Cindy she smiled faintly. I stepped onto the witness stand.

  “Garth.” my attorney, Paul Greave, said. “You were telling us about your discovery of your parents’ tragic demise. What happened after that?”

  ***

  While the estates of my parents were being wound up the Child Welfare authorities arranged for me to live with my mother’s only sister, Rosemary Cooper who lived in a small two-bedroom house in the suburb of Rosettenville, only a few houses away from where Cindy Bedford lived with her parents. My aunt had been the secretary of the nearby South Rand Hospital and had retired three years ago on a very generous pension. She now spent much of her time reading, cooking and tending to the small garden in front of the house.

  My parents’ funeral was a small affair as neither of them had many friends. As for my own friends, the only person that I knew from school who attended the service was Cindy Bedford. I found this surprising as we had hardly ever spoken to each other and we weren’t even in the same school class.

  The welfare authorities helped me move my clothes and other items to my aunt’s house. Like most houses in Rosettenville it had been built nearly eighty years ago to accommodate the immigrant miners who came to the country to work on the gold mines.

  The house faced north with a deep veranda spanning the whole of the front of the building. The walls were built of a dark brown face brick and the corrugated roof was painted a dark red. A narrow central passage ran from the front door straight through to the back door and on the one side were the two bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen while on the other side were the lounge, the dining room and the laundry. A small neat garden consisting mainly of daisies and other annuals filled the area between the brick front wall and the house. A single garage with brown wooden doors had been built onto the left side of the house. As Aunty Rose had no need for a car, the garage was used as a storeroom.

  Unlike my mother who had been short and blonde, Aunty Rose, as she insisted on being called, was tall with short dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, a large nose and a straight thin-lipped mouth. She tended to dress in dark-coloured out of fashion clothes and, because she had never married and had lived on her own all her adult life, it soon became obvious to me that she resented my intrusion into her privacy.

  I had expected that the deaths of my mother and father would reduce my anger and hatred towards other people but as I walked away from the cemetery I realised that, although I felt a certain amount of relief that I would never again have to deal with them, my attitude towards the indifference of the world towards me remained the same. This surprised me somewhat as I had believed that they had been the main reason for my antagonism.

  I continued to take offence at the slightest provocation and, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the people who upset me knew of my unusual physical strength and quickly backed away when I became angry, I could quite possibly have found myself facing charges of assault. Many of my fellow pupils shunned me or avoided contradicting anything that I said. On many occasions I sensed that people were agreeing with my point of view simply to prevent a confrontation.

  The relationship between me and Auntie Rose started off on a very civil level with both of us maintaining a strict distance from each other. We established a routine that would avoid any accidental embarrassment or disruption of the strict regimen that prevailed in the house. I soon began to resent the strict schedule that I had to adhere to mainly because I felt that I was entitled to more freedom, having had so little of it while my parents had been alive. Instead of coming straight home from school on the days that I didn’t have extra-mural sports activities I began to frequent the local corner café where I spent hours playing the pinball machines. I also began playing snooker at a nearby snooker saloon. Because of these afternoon activities I often arrived at the house late in the afternoon and this angered my aunt as she usually prepared lunch for me which was then wasted as it was too late to eat it before supper.

  Even on the days that I had extra-mural activities I seldom went straight back home. This wasn’t a conscious strategy though; it had become natural for me to resist any kind of discipline that others tried to impose on me. I also had no sense of guilt for the anger and anxiety that I caused. If people didn’t like the way I behaved, that was just too bad. And whenever I was reprimanded or punished for my indifferent behaviour I stored the memories of these supposed injustices with a view to exacting some kind of revenge at a later date. Even the smallest censure or scolding became a reason to strike back. Anger was the dominant emotion in my life. It had always been with me but I had never been aware of it before. What I didn’t realise was that much of this anger was directed at myself. The helplessness and frustration that I had experienced during my formative years persisted.

  The three boys that I played snooker and the pinball machines with were all older than me and had been frequenting the saloon for several years. At first we played without betting and I was surprised at how competent I was considering how seldom I had played. I often beat all three of the guys and I soon realised that if I continued to play regularly and we started betting I could very likely cover my share of the costs for using the snooker table.

  Ian Visagie, the eldest of the three, was a tall thin boy with thick black hair and a prominent chin who tended to become extremely nervous whenever he found himself under pressure and needed to play a difficult shot. Bruce Smith was slightly younger than Ian, with a short stocky build and blonde hair cut in a crew-cut. He seemed to have difficulty following the snooker games and often had to ask what colour ball he had to play. Vic Brown, also short and stocky like Bruce, wore thick black-rimmed glasses and his eyesight was so bad that he had difficulty focussing on the far side of the snooker table. All three had dropped out of school and none of them had the slightest interest in trying to find work, happily whiling away their time in the snooker saloon. They all lived with their parents and relied on money from them to finance the cost of using the snooker tables and the pinball machines. As I was still at school they usually paid my share of the cost of using the snooker tables and playing the pinball machines.

  The fact that Ian, Bruce and Vic paid my share of the costs worried me as I wanted to avoid becoming indebted to them in any way. Although Aunty Rose gave me a small amount of pocket money each week, it wasn’t nearly enough to support my snooker and pinball playing. On top of this, I had also started smoking, a habit that I really couldn’t afford but also couldn’t break. I decided to ask my aunt to give me an advance on the money that I would be getting from my father’s estate once it had been wound up. I brought up the matter one evening while we were having supper at the kitchen table.

  “What do you need the money for?” Aunty Rose asked. “I know that you’ve started smoking, and although I disapprove, I won’t try to stop you. What else do you need money for?”

  “There are lots of things that I need.” I replied. “I need new clothes, toiletries, a computer and printer and a cell ‘phone. I also need money for entertainment like the movies and going to football games.”

  “How much is all this going to cost?”

  “The clothes, computer and cell ‘phone will probably cost about seven thousand Rand and the clothes, toiletries and entertainment about four hundred Rand a month.” I said.

  “That’s an awful lot of money.” my aunt said. “Do you really need a computer and a printer? Can’t you rath
er use the computers in the library?”

  “No.” I replied. “I need a computer and the printer to help me with my homework and I can’t do that at the library.”

  My aunt finished her meal in silence and then stood up from the table.

  “Get some quotes for the things that you need and we’ll take the matter further.” she said as she picked up her plate and walked to the kitchen sink.

  Over the following two days I visited some clothing shops and the computer department of a large department store in the nearby shopping centre. I got written quotes for the computer, printer and the cell phone as well as sales brochures and prices for the clothes that I wanted. I showed them to my aunt after supper that evening.

  “Are you sure that these are the best prices that you could get?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I replied. “The computer and the cell phone aren’t the cheapest models but they’re also not the most expensive. The clothes are from Woolworths, so they’re a good quality.”

  “Okay, Garth.” Aunty Rose said. “I’ll speak to the bank manager and let you know. But, if we do decide to buy the computer I want you to assure me that you’ll spend more time on your homework than you’re doing at present and less time doing whatever it is that you’re doing in the afternoons.”

  I nodded my assurance.

  The total cost of the items that I bought came to seven thousand two hundred Rand. Aunty Rose paid for them and also began to give me one hundred Rand every week on a Monday. Aunty Rose had furnished my bedroom with a bed, a small wooden desk and a chair and the computer and the small printer fitted comfortably on the desk top and still gave me enough room to do my homework. I used the computer to find the required answers to my homework and occasionally I looked at the news pages. Apart from that I found little of interest on the web until the day I mentioned to my snooker companion, Ian Visagie, that I had a computer.

  “Really?” he asked. “What do spend your time looking at on the web?”