Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  I don’t want my mother to be angry; I never want my mother to be angry. Nor do I want to hold the doctor’s thing. I don’t understand what is happening but I’m too scared to object. And the doctor makes me rub his thing and he makes me rub it faster. And he breathes on me and he breathes into me and his breath stinks. I can barely breathe at all. The doctor breathes funny and he breathes faster and he makes funny noises and the noises get louder. And the doctor lets out a great big sigh and the noises stop. And he takes his hands away and I take mine back. His thing flops down; my hands are sticky, but I don’t know why.

  The doctor takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, wipes his thing down and puts it back inside his underpants. He straightens his clothes and leaves. His footsteps disappear down the hall. The corridor goes quiet. I peek out and scamper across the corridor to the bathroom. I smother my hands in soap and rub them together until the lather thickens enough to rid me of all the sticky stuff. And I scrub my hands until they are clean and then scrub them again until they aren’t yucky. I listen out; the corridor is still quiet so I scamper back to my cell. I crawl into bed, curl up and pull the covers up over my head.

  My mother calls me, ‘Baba, why aren’t you up yet?

  ‘Sorry Mum, I…I must have slept in.’

  *

  I don't remember anything else that day.

  It’s night time on the second night. I don’t hear the shadow come into my room. The shadow clicks the light on and the brightness lights up the flowers on the shade. The flowers have dust on them. The shadow is the doctor. I pretend to be asleep but the doctor doesn’t care. He rips my pyjama top up over my head and off. Then pulls my pants and my panties down and leaves me uncovered. I pull the sheet up over me but the doctor tears it back off, leaving me naked and exposed. The doctor puts his hands on me and his hands do lots of things that I don’t want them to do. And the fingers on the hands play with the skin on my body and the shadow’s hands play with my bits down below. The doctor’s fingers go everywhere and the doctor’s fingers go inside me. He pushes them up inside me and I scream out. The doctor clamps one hand over my mouth as he slaps my cheek with the other one. I startle, but something snaps inside me and I start fighting back. My hands make fists and my fists beat the doctor’s back. He slaps me again. I squeal into his other hand. He grabs me around the neck holding my head in a vice-like grip; his talons dig into my throat.

  ‘Be a good girl, Catherine or, or your mother will be angry. I’m a friend, a good friend, remember? And good girls don’t hit friends, now do they?’

  The stink of the doctor’s breath makes me gag. He slaps me again.

  I’m hurting badly down below.

  ‘Be a good girl, I said or your mother will be angry. Do you hear me, Catherine? This is special. It’s just for you and no one else, not even for your, for your mother.’

  The doctor does something to me down below, but he doesn’t use his fingers. He uses something hard and sharp and I don’t know what it is, but it hurts really badly. It hurts so badly that I feel like my flesh is being shredded. I want to scream, but I can’t. The doctor won’t let me. I want to run, but I’m not game to even try. The doctor hurts me and he hurts me again and there is nothing that I can do to stop him. As the thrusting quickens and the doctor reaches what I now know to be his climax, the searing pain lessens but the throb beneath it intensifies. The doctor takes the thing out and it is his thing, the same thing he made me rub the day before. The doctor wipes himself down, flops his thing back inside his undies, zips up his trousers, tucks in his shirt and leaves. I am stripped raw.

  As he walks away I lie perfectly still. I’m too terrified to move.

  I’m lying flat on my back drowning in a sea of cold sweat and secretions. Mine is no ordinary bed anymore; it’s been party to my violation. I pull the sheet up over me and curl into a ball. And the tears come and I sob with the pain and confusion about an act for which I don’t even have words. I reach for my pyjamas, but it’s too late because my shame has already become an integral part of me. I lie curled up in a tight ball sobbing, too scared and in too much pain to move, but then the horror of the filth the doctor has deposited within me mobilises me. I am compelled to rid myself of every ounce of him.

  I try to get up but my legs won’t work. I’m paralysed with fear and with pain.

  I talk to my legs and explain to them why I have to get up. I instruct my legs to carry me to the bathroom so I can expunge the doctor’s yuk from the inside of me. My legs listen and allow me to swing them around and onto the ground. As my legs touch the floor; the throbbing intensifies and a hideous ooze trickles down my thigh. Seeing and feeling the ooze forces me to my feet. The lino feels cold against the soles of my feet. I push myself to stand, but can’t stand straight up because it hurts too much. I limp to the bathroom bent over in two.

  I grab a washer from the basin and bathe around all of the bits that are too sore to touch. I stand stooped over that basin until every last bit of the doctor and his ooze have been purged from inside of me. A puddle forms on the floor beneath me and I bend forward to mop it up, but bending down hurts too much, so I leave the puddle to itself.

  I check out the corridor before embarking on the return journey. The other side of the corridor seems a long way off. Half way back across my legs buckle underneath me. My bottom strikes the lino and I bang my head. As my head bounces against the floor, the squiggles and swirls in the lino go fuzzy. I lie dazed for a moment before pulling myself up to sit. I sit cross-legged on the floor, tears streaming, and I throw my arms around myself, but the lino is too cold and hard, so I crawl back to my room.

  As soon as I get there I notice the doctor’s ooze on my sheets, so I cross back across the hall for the washer. I scrub the ooze off the sheets, return the washer, put my pyjamas on and climb gingerly back into bed. I curl up into the tightest ball possible and pull the sheets up over me, but can’t rest because it kills down below.

  I spend the next day in bed and only get up to go to the bathroom. I have to go a lot and when I do go to it stings really badly. I hate going. As the sun sets, I hear more footsteps advancing down the corridor.

  And so it is each night at the doctor’s house.

  The process of recovering these memories made me more fragile than ever. I needed to see Kate frequently and sought her constant reassurance. And yet I didn’t recover any of the memories to do with the doctor in Kate’s office; they only came back when I was with my husband at home. At first I couldn’t even tell Kate what was going on. I felt too ashamed. There was also a part of me which could not accept that the assaults had actually happened. ‘If I was finding my memories hard to accept, how would anyone else believe me?’ I reasoned. What if Kate didn’t believe me? What then? Perhaps I was going crazy. Perhaps I was mad. Perhaps I was making everything up!

  But I wasn’t; I couldn’t be. I had a witness. My husband had witnessed every act perpetrated; at night in our marital bed, he was my witness.

  When I started to tell Kate I spoke in generalities about the doctor, the doctor friend who did bad things to me. And every time I opened my mouth to speak I would look away, or cover my face with my hand. I couldn’t make eye contact with Kate, because the shame I felt withered me. I was worried that Kate would realise how filthy and disgusting I was and that, as a result, she wouldn’t want to see me again. My shame was a bomb, ticking away inside of me. I sat with that timer ticking away, session after session, with help at hand, but unable to harness it.

  I was agitated, restless and quickly becoming self-destructive. The bomb was about to explode and the only way to stop that happening was to let the secret out. Kate understood the pressure that was building up and suggested that I write down what I was remembering as a way of reducing it.

  ‘When you write, you’ll be putting the memories outside of you, getting them down on the page. That way the pressure won’t build up as much.’

  I’d written during the process of therapy before an
d found it useful, but committing details such as these to paper was not an easy task. I resisted doing so for several weeks and once I started, I still resisted saying much. I’d endeavour to let the thoughts flow, write them for as long as I could bear and then quickly put the writing away. Often I couldn’t read over what I’d written previously. It was as though reading about what had happened would grant the horrors an authenticity which they didn’t deserve.

  Thirty years later, my husband’s arms should have felt safe, but as soon as I heard those footsteps down the corridor of my mind, I would panic.

  ‘No not again! No, please no! The doctor’s coming.’ I would announce to my long-suffering husband. And as my body replayed the acts that the doctor made me perform, like a body possessed, the adult me had no idea what would happen next; it all depended on what the doctor had made the fourteen-year-old in mourning do.

  My husband would observe helplessly as I writhed around on the bed, crying out against the degradation and agony. Sometimes he would try to stop the memories when he felt I was becoming too distraught, but I wouldn’t let him. When I was in the midst of them, I couldn’t let anyone come near me, not even him. Although on some level I was aware that he wanted to protect me, in my fourteen-year-old state, I had no husband. All I knew was the man who was hurting me in my mind. And so I would push my husband away and face the horror alone.

  Each time the doctor approached me his foetid breath made me want to hurl all over again; but there was nothing I could do. I was trapped. He was in control and he knew it. He whispered sordid instructions into my ear which manipulated and instructed me at the same time. As a girl of fourteen I had listened and complied. The re-enacting adult would repeat his words out loud before complying with the acts again. Now there would be a witness to his instructions.

  ‘Be a good girl, now. You’re special. You know you are, don’t you? I’ve chosen you because you are special, but you must be good, you hear? You don’t want your mother to be angry now, do you?’

  The doctor shoves his thing up inside me, thrusting. All of a sudden the thrusting stops and he takes it out. I’m not sticky like I usually am. I see his thing coming towards me. The doctor bears down on me. I see his face, the sadistic pleasure in his eyes and his demented sneer.

  ‘No, please no!’

  He pushes his thing into my mouth, stretching it wide. He forces my tongue down and his thing chokes me until I can barely breathe.

  My husband watches aghast as I fight for air. My husband shakes me and I slowly come around.

  Sometimes, the doctor returns several times a night. Strides into my room, switches on the lamp and strips me naked. I am an animal stunned by the glare of headlights, expertly prepared for the kill. The doctor removes his trousers and folds them neatly on the chair in the corner of the room and parades around in his underpants, leaving his starched short sleeved shirt on, fully buttoned. After it’s over, he takes his handkerchief out and cleans himself off, leaving me fouled and fumbling for a sheet. Every night I pray that he won’t come, that he’ll leave me alone. I reason that maybe he is giving me special treatment and I don’t understand. Maybe I am being ungrateful; he is my mother’s friend and he is looking after me. I have to be good. I don’t want my mother to be angry.

  My mother pops by to see me most days and is puzzled that I can’t get out of bed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lucy. Leave Catherine to me. She just needs plenty of rest. She’ll be fine, just fine. I’ll take care of everything.’

  And the doctor does take care of everything. Every night as the sun goes down, he takes care of everything.

  In the months during which those memories returned, the abuse occupied my every waking and sleeping thought. Daily journaling was providing me with some release and at Kate’s insistence; I was bringing whatever I’d written to my sessions. At first Kate would have to read my journal to herself because I couldn’t bring myself to read it to her. And whenever she read out loud I would bury my head in my hands to avoid hearing what she was reading. I felt as though the words I’d written were announcing my shame to the world.

  When after a few more weeks I was able to read some of what I’d written, I would still skip the sections that I wasn’t ready to face, or dilute some of the details of the memories which sounded too bizarre to believe. Even though I knew that articulating what had happened to me was an important step in my recovery, doing so took its toll. With every word I uttered out loud, I detested myself a little more.

  I detested myself for being young. I detested myself for being gullible. I detested myself for every act the doctor had perpetrated against me. And I especially hated myself because I hadn’t done anything to stop him. I felt worthless and hopeless and soon became convinced that I would be better off dead.

  From a phone booth opposite The Gap I dialled Kate’s number. She picked up.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. I… I’ve had enough. It’s too hard.’

  ‘Do you think that your family would agree? What about them?’

  ‘I can’t. It’s too hard. I… I’m sorry.’

  ‘Think of your children, Cathy. They need you. Your children need their mother. Think about what this would do to them. You, more than anybody, must understand that. What it means to lose a parent. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Please. You tell them. You explain to them how hard it’s been.’

  ‘Cathy, listen to me. So you think your children would be better off without their mother then?’

  I tried to concentrate on what Kate was saying. I’d heard those words before and they always resonated when I was incapable of feeling the least bit connected to my life in the present. But when my angst escalated past a certain point, I would become deaf to any rational argument. On this particular occasion I was able to listen to Kate long enough for her to convince me to drive straight back to see her. Within fifteen minutes I was sitting in my chair in her office.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just no good. I don’t feel any different now from, from when we spoke.’ I pleaded.

  ‘Would you like to write something? Would that help?’

  On several previous occasions, when I’d felt suicidal, I had signed a contract to seal a commitment that I wouldn’t hurt myself. We had come full circle.

  ‘No not now. I don’t want to. Not today. I can’t do it today. I wouldn’t have a way out. I need a way out. But I’ll think about it.’

  Kate sat forward in her chair and looked me in the eye, ‘But Cathy, you can always ring me and we can talk. You know that, don’t you?’

  I nodded. ‘You know that we can talk about anything. That there’s nothing you can’t tell me. Cathy, you can’t give up now. Not after everything you’ve been through. Don’t let him win. Here, see what you can do with this.’

  As I took the pen and blank sheet of paper from Kate I thought about what I could write.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t do it today. I need to think about it first.’ I handed the paper back.

  Kate looked at me intently. ‘That’s fine. But promise me; promise me that you’ll ring me if you feel bad. You know that I’m here and that I’m thinking about you. You know that you can always ring me, don’t you Cathy?’

  I nodded, got into my car and drove back home to my family. I didn’t say a word when I got home, not a word about how close I’d come to never coming home again.

  I saw Kate first thing the next day, accepted the blank sheet of paper and pen from her and filled out my contract: ‘I commit to not visiting The Gap or the area around it. I also commit to not hurting myself or putting myself in any danger.’ I signed and dated my contract and she added it to her file.

  chapter 14

  I don’t remember how many times the doctor raped me. Or forced me to enact whatever sordid deviation took his fancy. I lost count early in the first week of my captivity. Why didn’t I bite it off, one snap of the jaw; my teeth clench tight? Why didn’t I do something to stop him? Why didn’t I even
try?

  I shudder to accept how often I betrayed myself by feigning enjoyment when he ordered me to. Every second of doing so was excruciating, but I had no choice; I was his slave and he, my master.

  ‘Oh, yes please, I’d love to. I’d really love you to, yes!’

  ‘I…I’m sorry. I haven’t done this before. Forgive me, please forgive me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much. No, no I do love it. I… I really do. Thank you. Yes, it is special, yes.’

  Not only did he commandeer my body, but he also stole my self-respect. I was forced to meet all of his demands and in doing so, he all but took my soul. The longer the doctor abused me, the cockier he got. My master would force me to kowtow to him and drop to the floor to pay my respects.

  ‘Yes, master. No, master. Thank you so much.’

  ‘I… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, master. I’ve never done this before. I am trying, I’m sorry. I really am trying. Yes master, yes. I’ll try harder.’

  On the rare occasions on which his thing refused to do his bidding he would turn on me.

  ‘You’re hopeless, you are. You know that, don’t you? Hopeless and, and good for nothing, yes, good for nothing! I knew that I should have chosen your mother. I just knew it! She would have known what to do.’

  When I threw myself on the floor and relived the incomprehensible display of deviations forced upon me, my husband watched from our bed; aghast. Toying with me was a game to the monster. I was a set of holes to penetrate, an inanimate object to manipulate. He flipped me over, and onto my back, face down, and back onto my side. Positions and acts changed constantly, on a whim. With each thrust of the doctor’s member came the throbbing of fresh wounds reopened; and the sacrifice of another layer of myself.