If I thought I was going to get equal treatment to other family members, though, I was sadly mistaken. Even though I was allowed to share my brothers’ room, I was still not allowed to play with any of their possessions and I still had none of my own. At teatime on the first night that I was out of the cellar Mum shouted for me to come down from the bedroom, where I had been banished to, to the kitchen. My heart was thumping as I descended the stairs, already able to smell the hot food but not knowing what sort of reception to expect from the others. The rest of the family were all sitting round the table as I stepped hesitantly through the door and I saw there was one empty chair amongst them. I had never sat round the table with them since Dad had died and I felt self-conscious and a bit excited as I lowered myself timidly onto the chair. I was starving and could hardly believe I was actually going to be given proper hot food on a plate. Amani was looking at me strangely so I avoided his gaze, staring hard at the table in front of me, determined not to misbehave or upset anyone and lose my chance of getting fed. I was aware that everyone had gone very quiet, as though they were all waiting for something to happen.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Mum demanded.
I didn’t understand what I had done wrong but Amani hit me so hard with the back of his hand that I was sent flying onto the hard tiled floor, back where they all thought I belonged.
‘How dare you sit with us, boy?’ he snarled down at me. ‘What have I told you about behaving yourself, you little bastard?’
‘You’re putting me off my food,’ Mum complained, giving me a sharp kick.
‘Get under the table,’ Amani commanded, while Larry and Barry sniggered happily. As they threw my food down on the floor, grinding it in with their feet and ordering me to lick up every scrap, I realized nothing had really changed at all.
Now that I was out of the cellar they told me there were new house rules and if I broke them I would be straight back in my cell. My clothes were always to be kept upstairs in the wardrobe and I was only allowed to wear them if I was going to school or if there were visitors to the house. Amani said that I must always put some clothes on if there were other people around because of all my bruises and scars.
‘You look disgusting,’ he told me. ‘A right mess.’
During the times no one had any other use for me I was told I would have to sit in the corner of the bedroom, away from the window, and to do nothing until they had a chore for me. If I was caught playing with anything or disobeying them in any way I would get a taste of Amani’s leather belt. I was certainly never allowed to play outside the house. It was as though I had been moved to a different cell, but at least this one was warm and light and smelled better. There were moments when I missed the privacy of my basement. Down there I’d had no idea how slowly time was passing, but in the bedroom I could always see the clock and the hands hardly seemed to move at all as I sat there and stared at it for hours on end, willing them to speed up so another day would be over and I would be closer to the moment when I could escape as Wally had. The sound of the clock would seem to get louder and louder in my head – ‘tick tock, tick tock’ – as the days ground past. I would put my fingers in my ears to try to shut it out but I never could.
‘You can’t sleep on the floor any more,’ Mum told me. ‘You’re making the place untidy and you’re making the carpet smell. You’ll have to share the bed with your brothers.’
Larry and Barry were not pleased to have me in the bed to start with, kicking and punching me all the time to let me know how much they disliked me.
‘You stink,’ they told me. ‘You’re an ugly little bastard.’
Amani warned them not to punch me in the face because someone from social services might see the marks, but they were free to do anything else they wanted. It wasn’t long before they realized that having me in the bed with them meant they could relieve their sexual frustrations as many times a night as they felt like, just taking turns to rape me, while sometimes using one another for mutual sexual relief as well. They both seemed to like doing it to one another but they always had to force me because it hurt and I didn’t like it. If I tried to resist their demands they would tell Mum I was doing something bad and I would get a battering for it. I gave in to almost everything they wanted because anything was better than getting a battering from her, even that. I knew she would never take my side against them and I knew that there was always the threat of being taken back down to the cellar hanging over me. Some nights I was scared of going to sleep because of what I might wake up to find my brothers doing to me, and when I did finally drop off out of exhaustion I would immediately fall into the same nightmares over and over again.
In the dream I would be creeping downstairs, trying to get away from them to the front door. I would be able to see a white light under the door, like a thin slither of freedom on the horizon, but the harder I fought to get to it the more I felt myself being dragged back in slow motion, as if by a terrible weight. If I ever managed to haul myself all the way to the door and pull it open I would immediately wake up in a state of terror. I still sometimes get the same nightmare even today.
My bum was nearly always sore in the morning from the things the boys did to me, and often it was bleeding as well, which made me frightened I would leave a stain on the bedclothes or the carpet, which would have been a punishable offence.
Amani still took me to his bed whenever he felt like discharging his frustrations, even though I was out of the cellar most of the time and everything he did was in plain view of everyone else in the house. He didn’t bother to be secretive about it because he didn’t care what anyone thought. The whole family knew he did it and they all knew exactly what was going on. Maybe he did it with some of the others as well – I wouldn’t know because we never talked about such things. It was as if it was the most normal event in the world for a grown man to be having sex with an eight-year-old boy in his mother’s house whenever he wanted to. It was as if I was still there for everyone’s convenience and I sort of assumed that was the way life had to be because it had never really been any different since the first time Mum brought me home after Dad’s death.
Amani wasn’t there every night, I discovered. I found out that he was still staying at Aunt Melissa’s as well as at Mum’s, moving back and forth between the two of them, getting the best of both worlds. I believe he told Melissa that he was working away from home and it was some time before she found out how complete Mum’s revenge against her had been. I don’t know how Mum felt about having to share her man with another woman yet again. As it was her doing the stealing of another woman’s husband this time, maybe she felt better about it than she had when it was her husband who was messing around.
When I found this out, I hoped briefly that Amani would mention to Melissa some time how badly I was being treated. Surely she would ask what went on at the house? Wouldn’t she wonder how I was? But I guess he told her everything was fine, because I never saw or heard from her.
Every night before going to bed Mum had the same routine. She would get Ellie and Thomas up for a wee because otherwise they were likely to wet their mattress, and she began to include me in the ritual too. She would waken us up by shouting at us and dragging us out of bed by our hair at about midnight. She was always drunk by that time of night and the alcohol would have fuelled her anger and resentment towards us, making it impossible for her to resist hitting Thomas and me.
‘Get!’ she would shout and we would have to scurry to the bathroom to avoid the slaps and kicks she would try to administer along the way.
The effort and inconvenience of it always seemed to stress her out, making the veins stand out on her forehead and her eyes go all bloodshot. It was like having the Incredible Hulk towering over us as we tried to do our business. If Amani was there, he would be waiting for her in bed, which was a disgusting thought in itself, and she would have no patience with us, eager to get back to him. Her breath would stink of alcohol as she pushed her
face into ours and bellowed her abuse. I would go first and she could never resist slapping me round the head when I finished and walked past her back to bed. Thomas always had trouble getting the wee to come with her standing over him, screaming at him to hurry up.
‘Do you think I’m standing here for my fucking health?’ she would yell. ‘What’s the fucking problem with you?’
I would pull the sheets up over my head to try to block out the sound of my little brother’s screams as she whirled him around the bathroom and the landing by his hair, swinging his feet off the ground and then letting go of him, sending him bouncing off the walls. By then I had learned the knack of making myself hit the walls quickly because I knew she found that satisfying. Thomas wasn’t as good at it and sometimes just flopped onto the floor, so she would pick him up and do it again and again until she got it right.
One night she was so drunk when she came to get us up she lost her balance and fell over while she was chasing Thomas around, banging her own head on the wall, which pleased me. I could even hear Larry quietly chuckling on the other side of the bed. Seeing his chance, Thomas took it and made a run for his bedroom while she was still down and we all fell silent, knowing that now she would be really mad. She pulled herself unsteadily back to her feet, swearing that this time she truly was going to kill him. I was frightened that she really would so I climbed back out of bed and tried to shield him from her, shaking my head wildly as she bore down on us, as if that would have any effect on her.
‘What the fuck are you doing out of bed, you little bastard?’ she demanded.
She whacked me around the head and grabbed me by the cheeks, throwing me across the bedroom floor as if I weighed nothing at all. She then lifted Thomas by the throat, dragged him out onto the landing and hurled him down the stairs. I could hear his little body hitting every step on its way to the bottom. I knew exactly how much that hurt from all the times I had been sent tumbling down into the cellar. Then it went eerily quiet for a few seconds before I heard Amani shouting at her angrily.
‘What the fuck have you done? It’s everywhere.’
‘Oh, it’s only blood for fuck’s sake,’ Mum screamed back at him before they disappeared into another room and I couldn’t hear what they were talking about any more.
Ten minutes later I heard the sound of an ambulance approaching, siren blaring, and screeching to a stop outside the house. The front door was opened and I strained to listen to what was being said downstairs.
‘He lost his balance on the landing,’ Mum was telling them in her reasonable voice and they seemed to be accepting her story without any argument.
Mum’s sister Pat was staying with us that night and she agreed to go in the ambulance with Thomas. Pat visited from time to time and didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with the way Mum treated us; I suppose that’s the way she had been brought up herself by their mother and father. An hour or so after the ambulance took Thomas away the phone rang and I could hear Mum answering it. I could tell from her tone she was talking to Pat.
It sounded to me as though the police hadn’t accepted her story quite as easily as the ambulance men had, because she said ‘The police are coming round here? Now?’ I could hear her telling my aunt what she should tell Thomas to say when they questioned him. I couldn’t make out all her words because Barry was snoring.
When he heard the police were on their way Amani left the house fast, pulling on his clothes as he ran out the door. Once he’d gone I heard Mum’s footsteps approaching our bedroom. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep but she grabbed my hair and pulled me back out of bed.
‘Get down to the kitchen,’ she ordered me.
I obeyed as quickly as I could, not wanting to be thrown down the stairs as Thomas had been. I could see blood splatters on the steps and across the floor and walls in the hall. Mum followed me into the kitchen and went to a drawer, taking out the biggest, sharpest knife she could find. From the look on her face I felt sure that this time she was going to kill me as she had always promised she would. Her face was contorted with anger as she came towards me. She grabbed hold of me and pressed the blade hard against my throat. I couldn’t stop myself from shaking even though I was terrified I would cut myself on the sharp edge if I moved so much as an inch.
‘I’m only going to say this once,’ she hissed. ‘Do you understand?’
I gave a tiny nod.
‘The police are coming to the house to ask questions about Thomas falling. I’m going to tell them that you and him got into a fight on the landing and you pushed him down the stairs. Do you understand?’
I nodded again.
‘Good boy.’
She took the knife away from my throat and put it back in the drawer. Then she made us both a cup of cocoa as though nothing had happened, as though we did this sort of thing together every night. She gave me a huge fake smile as she handed me the steaming mug to try to calm me down before they arrived and to stop me from shaking.
There was a knock at the door and Mum went to answer it, giving me one more warning. ‘Remember what I said.’
I nodded, and sipped cautiously at the hot drink. I could hear a police radio going off in the hallway as she brought them towards the kitchen. I listened to Mum telling her story and she sounded so convincing I was sure they would believe her, as they always did.
‘Come into the kitchen and meet him,’ she said.
‘Hello, young man,’ the police officer said as he came in. He was tall and had a loud, deep voice. I glanced up at him and then bowed my head in shame at the lies I was about to have to corroborate. He repeated everything Mum had just told him.
‘Is that what happened?’ he asked.
‘He’s a mute,’ Mum explained. ‘You have to ask him questions that he can nod or shake his head to.’
‘Have you been fighting with your little brother, Thomas?’ he asked after a moment’s thought.
I nodded.
‘Did you push him downstairs?’
Nod.
‘Well that wasn’t very clever, was it?’
Shake.
‘I feel sorry for your mum and for poor Thomas. Do you realize that what you did was very serious?’
Nod.
‘Are you going to start being a good boy for your mum now?’ He gave me a stern look.
I nodded one more time. He shook my hand and said goodbye and I felt so angry inside I thought I was going to explode. If only I could speak. If only I had the ability and the courage to tell him that Mum was lying. She showed him back to the front door, chatting all the way as though she had never done a single thing wrong in her entire life, and I carried on gulping my cocoa until she came back into the kitchen. I wanted to get as much of it inside me as I could before she took it away or threw it all over me.
‘Now get back to bed, you little bastard,’ she shouted the moment she came into the room and I scurried back upstairs past the bloodstains.
Thomas ended up having twenty or more stitches in his head that night and once more I had been shown to the authorities to be a violent, disruptive child, while Mum came out of it looking like some sort of long- suffering saint.
Almost nobody outside the family ever witnessed the violent side of Mum’s personality. She was a Jekyll and Hyde character – all sweetness and light to the authorities and an ogre inside her front door.
There was one exception – our neighbour Paddy. Paddy was from Ireland and drank as much as Mum did. I could never understand a word he was saying but I knew he hated Mum because he would shout at her from outside when the drink had made him brave enough, calling her a ‘big fat witch’. Mum had beaten him up several times but he never seemed to learn from his mistakes, his courage bolstered by the Guinness and whisky. One night, soon after I had been released from the cellar, we were all woken up by the sound of him shouting up at the bedroom windows from the street. I could make out Mum’s name amongst his slurred, drunken ramblings and I heard her getting out of bed
, going downstairs and opening the front door. Larry jumped up and rushed to the bedroom window to see what was happening.
‘Go on, Mum,’ Larry cheered. ‘Holy shit, she’s beating him up again.’
I could hear Mum’s voice now, drowning out Paddy’s shouts. ‘You Irish bastard, I’ll give you something to knock on my door about in the middle of the fucking night.’
‘Come and look at this,’ Larry told Barry. ‘Hurry up.’
Barry bounced out of bed to take a ringside seat, but I didn’t move. I didn’t want to watch because I knew what she would be doing and I dreaded to think what was going to happen to poor old Paddy. I also knew that Larry and Barry would have given me a beating if I had tried to join in anyway. I could follow what was going on from listening to their running commentary and from the noises outside as Mum got Paddy round the throat and smashed his head through his own front window, leaving him there to bleed on the jagged edges of the broken glass.
‘Shut the window and go back to fucking bed,’ she shouted up to the boys before stamping into the house, slamming the door behind her, and going back to bed herself as if nothing had happened. I don’t think we heard much more from Paddy after that night. He wasn’t exactly the type that could have gone to the police with a coherent story and insisting on pressing charges against her. If he had been, she wouldn’t have done it. Mum was too clever to get caught out in the wrong. No matter how much she drank, she always had a survival instinct that allowed her to stay out of trouble herself.
Chapter Nine
Starting School
September rolled round and with it the start of a new school year. The authorities had decided that I was to be put into a normal class with other children my age, but assigned a special teacher to help me. I still couldn’t speak beyond making a few primitive and unintelligible sounds and I certainly couldn’t read or write. I was eight years old and all the other kids in the classes had been in school for three or four years by then and had developed mentally way beyond anywhere I could have got to sitting alone in my cell in the dark.
Joe Peters Page 9
