by Casey Watson
I began to plead with him: ‘Please. Please don’t make me do this! There must be some other way for you to repay the money. I can’t do what you’re suggesting. Please, Kas.’ I was still pleading with him when, without any warning, he reached out his hand and grabbed me by the hair, forcing my head backwards so that I was looking up into his face as he shouted, ‘It isn’t a suggestion, woman. How stupid are you? Don’t you understand? You’ve grown up in a world full of nice things, where you’ve never had to face the cold reality of many people’s lives.’ He sneered as he said the word ‘nice’, twisting his fingers in my hair so that it felt as though a million needles were digging into my scalp. ‘You have always lived in a world where the only thing you have to cry about is the fact that “Daddy doesn’t love me”.’ He mimicked the voice of a whining, spoilt child, and then his tone was cold again as he said, ‘You think that means you’ve had a hard life? You have no idea what a hard life is. You have no idea about the things some people have to do because, in their lives, there is no other way.’
‘I don’t think that,’ I sobbed, a small spark of indignation burning inside me for a moment.
In all the time I’d known Kas – or thought I’d known him – I’d never seen the slightest indication that he could be violent, and somehow it was the abrupt and very emphatic change in his behaviour and his attitude towards me that made me most afraid of him. My mind simply couldn’t process or make any sense of all the new information it was being presented with. I kept thinking that if only we could talk things through logically, we’d be able to come up with a more realistic solution to Kas’s financial problems.
I was so confused that I wasn’t certain about anything anymore, except, perhaps, that Kas wasn’t really intending to make me do the things he was talking about. So, even if I hadn’t been as frightened of him as I had instantly become, I don’t think I’d have tried to run away and escape from him. All I needed, I told myself, was to find something to focus on that would anchor me once again to the real world I was used to and could understand.
I’d never even heard Kas swear before that day, so although I was shocked by the things he was saying, I was completely unprepared for what he said next. His tone was contemptuous when he asked me, ‘Do you think you’re the only woman who’s ever worked on the streets for me?’ Then his mood seemed to change and he stretched out a hand to touch the top of my bowed head almost affectionately before saying, ‘But you’re different. The other girls were all bitches. Do you know what a real whore is?’ Suddenly, he grasped my hair again, yanking my head back and upwards so that I was forced to look at him, and shouted, ‘Well, do you?’
I closed my eyes and tried to shake my head.
‘A whore is a woman who treats a man with disrespect by cheating on him when she’s going out with him. That’s a real whore!’ He sounded almost triumphant, and he smiled as he added, ‘But a woman who sells herself to make money is just being clever. Your pussy will be a goldmine.’
I began to sob, lifting my feet onto the chair in front of me and clutching my knees to my chest to try to stop my body shaking, and Kas exploded into uncontrolled rage. ‘If you give me that look again,’ he screamed, ‘if you disrespect me one more time, you’ll see what I will do! How dare you? How dare you do this to me?’ I dug my fi ngernails into my thighs and told myself, Stop, Sophie! You have to stop crying. Don’t let him see your fear. Your tears are making him angrier. And, as if he’d read my thoughts, he bellowed at me, ‘Stop it! How dare you cry? How dare you do this to me? Just look at yourself! You look terrible. Go to the bathroom and straighten your hair. Pull yourself together, woman, for God’s sake. Go! Go to the bathroom and see how bad you look.’
Still sobbing, I stood up, edged around the table and scuttled out of the kitchen, with the sound of Kas’s fury echoing after me as he called, ‘Don’t close the bathroom door. Leave it open.’ And already I wouldn’t even have dreamed of disobeying him.
In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror at my white, tear-stained face and the wild untidiness of my hair and it was as though I was looking at a stranger. I knew something profoundly significant had just happened, but as it didn’t fit anywhere on my own spectrum of reality, I couldn’t make any sense of it. And then I began to panic as the thought struck me that if I stayed in the bathroom too long, Kas might be angry with me.
I quickly tugged a brush through my hair, splashed water on to my face and crept back into the kitchen, where he was leaning against the sink. His voice was almost tender as he asked me, ‘You love your little brothers, don’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, I do,’ I answered hastily, relieved to talk about something normal and praying that the thought of how much I would miss my family might make him decide to let me go home.
‘How old are the twins? Thirteen? Fourteen?’
‘They’re thirteen,’ I said, trying to speak in what I hoped was a ‘respectful’ tone of voice.
‘Hmm.’ He smiled at me and I felt an almost imperceptible glimmer of hope, which was shattered instantly when he said, ‘So you would be very sad if anything happened to them?’
It sounded like a question, although I knew without any doubt that it was a statement – or, more precisely, a threat.
‘Of course, I know where your family lives,’ Kas continued, twisting his body slightly to one side so that he could pick up a carving knife, which he turned slowly in his hand. ‘So, if you disrespect me again, I will have your precious little brothers taken from their home. It will happen as easily as that.’ He stepped forward and clicked his fingers in my face. ‘You have no idea what I can do. If you ever try to get away or do anything to disrespect me, I will have your little brothers taken, just like that.’
He snapped his fingers again and as the sound rang out like a shot from a gun, the room began to turn and I sank to my knees on the floor, screaming silently in my head, No! Oh my God, no! This can’t be happening. It isn’t real. What am I going to do?
Kas pulled me up roughly by my arm and pushed me towards the open door. I could sense his disgust as he spat out the words, ‘Get out of my sight! Go on! Go! Go to bed, and tomorrow I’ll take you to see where you’ll be working.’
That night I slept in a single bed in Kas’s bedroom, although, in fact, I barely slept at all. My mind was racing, and every time I began to slip into exhausted oblivion, my eyes snapped open and I’d try again to concentrate on thinking of some excuse that would convince Kas I had to go home. I attempted – without success – to comfort myself with the thought that, Tomorrow everything will be okay. When he wakes up, he’ll be all right again. I’ll explain to him that I don’t want to do it and he’ll understand. Everything will be fine.
In the morning I told him, ‘I’ve got to go home. I can’t just leave my family and my job. And I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. I don’t want to do it, but even if I did, I can’t because of the operation and the problems I’ve had …’
He’d shrugged his shoulders and made a dismissive ‘pfff ’ sound when I’d mentioned my family, but suddenly he erupted into fury and shouted, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, woman. You’re being a hypochondriac. You’ve had your operation. It’s over. There’s nothing medically wrong with you. You’re fine. You need to stop thinking about yourself and your imagined illnesses and think about all the people who are far worse off than you are.’
But on that first morning of the new life Kas had planned for me, all I could think about was finding some way to explain to him why I couldn’t stay in Italy and work to pay off his debt. I told him all the excuses that had sounded so reasonable in my head during the night, but he didn’t even listen. For four years, he’d been nice to me. Even when I’d told him on the phone that I’d met Erion and he was upset and said he didn’t want to hear about my new boyfriend, he hadn’t sounded angry. And then he’d said he was in love with me. So I still couldn’t believe that when he realised how distressed I really was, he wouldn’t change his mind and tell me
he was sorry and of course I didn’t have to do the horrible things he’d talked about. What I hadn’t yet understood, however, was that Kas’s idea of what was normal and acceptable was quite different from the normality of most other people.
‘Please don’t make me do this,’ I begged him again. ‘I want to help you, but I really can’t do what you’re asking.’ And again he shouted, ‘Don’t you dare to disrespect me,’ slapping me so hard across the face that he sent me flying into a corner of the kitchen, where I cowered on the floor. ‘You will do whatever I tell you to do,’ he bellowed. ‘If you try to make contact with anyone without my permission, your family will suffer. Is that what you want, woman? Are you so selfish that you’d let something bad happen to your precious little brothers just because you have to do something you don’t want to do?’
I shook my head mutely.
‘Do you think anyone will listen to you anyway?’ He took a step towards me as he spoke and I recoiled, covering my head with my hands and pressing my body against the wall. ‘Do you think anyone will care what happens to you? All you are now is a piece of pussy on the street.’
The harsh crudeness of his words made me flinch and he laughed as he asked, ‘Do you know what Italians like most?’ It didn’t seem to be a question that required an answer, but he suddenly bent down towards me and shouted, ‘Do you?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I whispered.
‘The three Ps,’ he said, smiling his humourless smile. ‘Pussy, pizza and pasta. So who’s going to give a fuck about what happens to you?’
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This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.
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First published by HarperElement 2014
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© Casey Watson 2014
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