Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  I remember my grandmother scratching; she called it eczema but all I remember is her scratching. She’d scratch in the valleys of her arms past where the flower dresses’ arms stopped and at the backs of her knees. She told me that wool aggravated her eczema, but it didn’t stop her knitting and I couldn’t understand that. When it was hot, and it got hot lots in Brisbane, my grandmother’s eczema spread over her body and it made her skin peel and bleed, from her picking at it. When the weather was hot and her eczema grew more vicious than ever, my grandmother would acquire a particular smell about her. I don’t know if it was the fungus that grew under her bosoms, or stale perspiration in the heat, but her smell was distinctive and aversive and I remember it with horror to this day.

  My grandmother always held herself rigid and perfectly upright. As a child I assumed that it had something to do with being Presbyterian because everyone in my grandmother’s church stood stiff like a soldier. And they all looked serious like she did; forever stern. I don’t recall ever seeing her smile, let alone offer any suggestion of a laugh. Nor did she cry. In fact any show of emotion seemed foreign to my grandmother. She never hugged me, not once, but then again I didn’t want her to. I hated her; she was mean. And when she did kiss me, which happened ever so rarely, it would feel like a spot on my cheek, a sticky yucky spot. Not a kiss like those from my Daddy which were soft and squelchy, but a yucky spot which I’d rub really hard when my grandmother wasn’t looking, to try and make it go away.

  Every Sunday we’d sit and wait on the front stairs of my grandmother’s house for her to come back from church. Sometimes when we got to her house particularly early, we’d have to go to church with her and I hated that. In church I’d have to sit up straight like the Presbyterians and pretend to be singing the hymns which I didn’t know. I’d look across at my father and he’d be mouthing the words like me. I don’t think he wanted to be there either, but it didn’t stop him going. I think he went to church when he didn’t want to because he was scared of my grandmother, like I was.

  My mother didn’t ever come to my grandmother’s place on Sundays, but Simon did; he was there the times when we went to church and the other times, when we waited for our grandmother to come back from church.

  chapter 28

  Little-Cathy’s grandma’s house is scary. It stands on top of wooden lumpy things which make houses stand up off the ground. When houses stand up off the ground they have rooms underneath them and the rooms are dark. The rooms under Little-Cathy’s grandma’s house are very dark.

  After Little-Cathy’s grandma comes back from church she goes down to the rooms under her house. Little-Cathy’s Daddy goes down there too and he takes Little-Cathy with him. Bad things happen in one of the dark rooms under Little-Cathy’s grandma’s house and they make Little-Cathy scared. When Little-Cathy she gets scared she disappears and I come out. When bad things happen to me and I get scared other parts come out. Most of us parts were born when the bad things happened under Little-Cathy’s grandmother’s house because that’s when Little-Cathy needed us most.

  When Little-Cathy is taken under her grandmother’s house Simey goes down there too. And other people come too, but Little-Cathy doesn’t know who the other people are. All of the other people under Little-Cathy’s grandma’s house are wearing cloaks. The older children, like Simey, are wearing little cloaks and the grown-ups are wearing big cloaks. The big cloaks have hoods which go down over the faces of the grown-ups and cover them up so Little-Cathy can’t see them. Little-Cathy can’t tell which grown-ups are girl grown-ups and which are boy ones, but she can tell her grandma because she can smell her grandma’s yucky smell.

  I don’t know how old Little-Cathy is the first time her Daddy takes her under her grandma’s house. I think she is five, but she may be six. The first time Little-Cathy goes there, she doesn’t know what she is supposed to do, but all of the other Cloaks do, and Simey does too.

  Little-Cathy’s grandma is a boss of the Cloaks and she is known as an elder. The Cloaks stand in a circle and make funny scary noises. The funny noises scare Little-Cathy and she disappears in her head. I come out, but I’m scared too. The Cloaks say strange words and I try to understand them, but I can’t. The strange words and scary noises get louder and I get scared and disappear back inside. Other parts come out one at a time and they stay out until they get scared and other parts have to take over. The strange noises get louder and the Cloaks stand in a really scary circle.

  The Cloaks pass things around in the circle and they say funny words over the things. They al know what they have to say, but the first time Little-Cathy doesn’t know what to say. But each time she goes down under her grandmother’s house she learns more about what she has to say. And when she isn’t there anymore because she has disappeared in her head, one of us parts is there instead and that part learns what to say and next time it’s Little-Cathy’s turn to say something, one of us parts says it for her.

  The Cloaks make Little-Cathy do things and we help her do them so she won’t get into trouble for not doing them. Some of the things are really bad and Little-Cathy is too little to do all of the really bad things by herself.

  The Cloaks hurt Little-Cathy, and when she leaves her head, they hurt me, and then the other parts when they take over. Little-Cathy doesn’t want to get hurt and we don’t want to get hurt either. No parts want to get hurt; we all wish we could stop the Cloaks hurting us. But we can’t and we can’t run away either. When you run away from Cloaks they catch you and bring you back and chop you up. We know, because our friend Jenny tried to run away and the Cloaks caught her and they chopped her up.

  Little-Cathy doesn’t want to get chopped up; I don’t want to either. None of us parts want to get chopped up. Not ever.

  Some Sundays when my father took me to my grandmother’s house, we didn’t stay there. After she returned from church and everyone was together, we’d pile into my father’s car and drive to a different place. I’m not sure where the other place was because my memory of how we got there is not clear. But I do remember how it looked; to me, a little girl, it seemed like a cave or more precisely two caves adjacent to one another which were connected through a cave-like doorway. I remember the doorway because I was carried through it a number of times, by people wearing cloaks.

  I also recall that my father never came inside the caves with us. My grandmother always did, as did Simon, and I had no choice because the Cloaks forced me to go inside. Sometimes when I didn’t want to leave my father’s side he’d try to carry me inside, but the Cloaks would snatch me away from him and order him to stay outside.

  I remember the first time my father took me to the cave. We drove there, got out of the car and walked together. I was holding my father’s hand tightly. I was scared; I didn’t know what was going to happen.

  *

  As soon as Little-Cathy gets to the front of the cave, big hands reach out from the shadows and grab her. The hands pull Little-Cathy away from her Daddy and make her cry. Little-Cathy stamps her five-year-old feet on the ground outside of the cave, but the hands from the shadows don’t listen to Little-Cathy’s feet and they lift her off the ground. Little-Cathy kicks as hard as she can but she kicks the air and little feet kicking the air can’t stop big hands doing what they want to do. The hands carry Little-Cathy and drop her into the dirt on the floor of the cave. She looks around; it’s dark and she’s scared.

  When the hands drop Little-Cathy down, she hits the ground and hurts her elbow and she cries out, ‘I want my Daddy!’ I come out and rub Little-Cathy’s elbow because her Daddy isn’t there to rub it. The cave is dark and it smells funny. I don’t like it in the cave.

  I cry because I want Little-Cathy’s Daddy too and the elbow which belongs to Little-Cathy, but now feels like mine is hurting. I’m rubbing the sore elbow and as I’m rubbing it, other hands come out of the shadows and grab me. The hands hold me by the legs and I wriggle to get away from them, but I can’t get away from them because they’r
e too big. One of the hands smacks me and the hand’s voice says that I’m bad girl. The hands hurt me and they say that Little-Cathy is a bad girl but she is not a bad girl at all. And I try to tell the hands that Little-Cathy is a good girl but they don’t listen to me. The hands throw me into the dirt and smack me, but then I disappear.

  The hands from the shadow are smacking Pissed-Off now and Pissed-Off wants Little-Cathy’s Daddy, but Little-Cathy’s Daddy can’t help her because he is not inside the cave with her. Pissed-Off cries and they hit her, and Distrustful comes out and takes over. The hands hit Distrustful and she cries and they keep hitting each of us and we keep crying. The hands grab Growly and pick him up, but he doesn’t cry. He lies quietly as he gets hurt by hands from the shadows because that’s what Growly does.

  The hands from the shadows strip the little girl naked and throw her into the dirt, and the hands tie ropes around the good girl’s ankles and the little girl can’t move. And a little girl of five lies tied up, naked and scared in the dirt on the floor of a cave. But the little girl doesn’t cry and she doesn’t call out because that little girl is too scared to make a sound. And the girl lies alone in the shadows with no clothes and no sheet and no blanket, shivering without a teddy or a Daddy, waiting to be hurt some more.

  Little-Cathy’s Daddy takes us to that cave on lots of Sundays. Hands grab her, take her to the shadows, strip her naked and drop her into the dirt. And she waits in the little cave. Little-Cathy hates waiting in the little cave, because it’s a bad waiting and a scary waiting. It’s a waiting that makes every hair on Little-Cathy’s little body stand on end. It’s a waiting that makes her ears listen out for hands reaching out from the shadows. And it’s a waiting that keeps her eyes wide open staring into the shadows, checking for Cloaks. Waiting makes Little-Cathy shiver and it makes her tears come. Her tears come but they don’t come out because when her tears come out, the hands from the shadows smack her. And the hands say that she’s bad and Little-Cathy doesn’t want to be bad; she wants to be good.

  The hands say we’re bad and they beat us in turn. They beat Little-Cathy and me and Pissed-off and Distrustful and Long-Suffering and Growly. Little-Cathy cries and we all cry in turn. We cry because we’re sore and we’re scared. We cry because when they beat us, it hurts really badly, but they beat each of us more so we stop crying and swallow hard instead. Little-Cathy wants her Daddy and then we all want Little-Cathy’s Daddy too. And we want Little-Cathy’s teddy, and we want someone to cuddle, and someone to cuddle us. And we want someone to tell us that everything’s alright; even when it isn’t.

  When we’re in the little cave, we can hear things happening in the big cave next door. The things that happen make noises which sound like the noises from under Little-Cathy’s grandma’s house, but different. More noises come out of the big cave and they go on for longer and they are bigger noises which make us put our hands over our ears. And the smell that comes from the big cave is the same, but different to the smell that comes from under Little-Cathy’s grandma’s house. It’s the smell of smoke that burns from the special burny things out the front in the shadows and the smell from the things the Cloaks do, all mixed together.

  The smoke puffs into the little cave and it makes us feel sick in our tummies while we wait. It sits on top of us and it pours all around us. Little-Cathy is tied up and she can’t get away from the smoke and the smell and the noises that come from the big cave next door and we can’t either. Little-Cathy wants her Daddy and we want her Daddy too, but her Daddy isn’t in the little cave and he isn’t in the big cave. We don’t want to lie in the little cave, but we don’t want the Cloaks to come and get us either. We don’t want them to take us into the big cave because they do the bad things in the big cave.

  The first time the Cloaks carry Little-Cathy into the big cave she whacks them and so do we. And she whacks them the second time too. And she screams and kicks. But after those two times, Little-Cathy doesn’t scream anymore. I scream the third time and Growly screams the fourth, but after that none of us scream, except the sometimes that we can’t help screaming because we’re little, but after that, we can help it even though we’re still little. We’re little and the Cloaks are big and there are lots of Cloaks and they’re hurting us and the Cloaks don’t stop hurting us when we whack them and the Cloaks don’t stop hurting us when we don’t whack them. The Cloaks hurt us and beat us until there are no screams left to come out and there are no more tears on the inside. And when we stop screaming and when we stop crying, the Cloaks hurt us some more.

  When the Cloaks stop doing the bad things to us, they leave a little girl lying in the dirt in the little cave. Lying naked in the dirt alone and sore from beatings and hurtings which come from hands in cloaks and shadows, she waits. She wants her Daddy but there is no Daddy in the little cave and she lies alone in the dirt waiting to be hurt again.

  Simey doesn’t wait in the waiting cave and he doesn’t get tied up. Simey goes into the big cave by himself. Simey knows what he has to do and he does it. Simey’s little but he’s three years bigger than Little-Cathy and he doesn’t say ‘no’ to the Cloaks; not ever. Simey knows what happens if you say ‘no’ to the Cloaks.

  Simey is out the front in the shadows and they do bad things to him. The Cloaks do bad things to Simey and they hurt him, but he doesn’t whack them back and he doesn’t cry. Little-Cathy covers her eyes when the Cloaks hurt Simey because she can’t watch her Simey getting hurt. The Cloaks take our hands away and they make us watch. We turn our head away but the hands from the shadows turn our head back around and we close our eyes. But the hands make us open them, and we can’t watch but we have to. And we watch because they make us, and we watch when Simey’s eyes go glassy and we hope that he can’t see. And we hope that Simey can’t hear, and we hope that he can’t feel. We want the Cloaks to stop; we beg them to stop on the inside, but they don’t stop. And the Cloaks hurt Simey, and they hurt him a lot. Simey gets hurt even though he does everything that the Cloaks tell him to.

  They toss Little-Cathy back into the dirt and they beat her and they beat us in turn, but Little-Cathy doesn’t cry and we don’t cry; we won’t cry. The beatings beat the cries away and the beatings take Little-Cathy away and I come and they take me away and they take all of us and even Growly because none of us can take it anymore. When none of us can take it anymore we decide that we want to die and we pray to die but we don’t know how to die even when we want to. But we do know that if we die that we won’t feel the really bad things anymore, and we won’t feel the hurt and the pain and we won’t cry tears that don’t even come out.

  ‘Dead, please my Daddy make us dead!’

  But Little-Cathy’s Daddy doesn’t make Little-Cathy dead and he doesn’t make us dead either. And the little girl has to stay in the little cave until they take her to the big cave where they do bad things to her and make her do bad things to others. The little girl hates what they do to her and she hates what she does to others. She hates the Cloaks and she hates doing bad things and being bad, but she has no choice because nothing makes her die even though she wants to.

  chapter 29

  Hands are holding Little-Cathy’s body in the air and the hands are passing it around. Little-Cathy’s body has gone wobbly like a dead body, but her body isn’t dead. It’s not dead, but it can’t feel anything anymore; Little-Cathy’s head has made all of the feeling in her body go away.

  Now it’s my body and the Cloaks are passing me around the circle, and the Cloaks are making funny noises over my body. I’m nakey and I’m in the big cave and the Cloaks are dropping water on me. Hands that I don’t know are carrying me out the front of the cave and they are holding my body high up above where they do the bad things. It’s smoky with thick smoke like when there’s a fire and I’m coughing and the mouths of the Cloaks are shouting and I’m scared.

  My head flopped from side to side as a Cloak presented my ‘limp dolly’, naked body to the group assembled around the circle.
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  The sadistic mob mumbled and grunted alone and together, loud then soft; foreign chilling calls from the mouths of Cloaks filling the darkness. They sprinkled ceremonial water over my body; the drops pinged against the skin of my face, stinging my eyes. I shivered, my naked body racked with fear, peppered with dirt from the ground, mixed in with icy water from the special bowl, the taste of dirt meeting the taste of fear in my mouth.

  One of the elders laid me out on the roughly hewn stone altar. As the smoke thinned and the chanting stopped, I lay shuddering, a snivelling sacrificial offering to a cave of monsters. A searing agony split me down below and I let out a primal cry which shattered the silence of the ritual. As soon as the first Cloak split one of my parts, another part took over and in my head my parts worked together. We would gather up each obliterated part, cuddle it and tend to its wounds, then lie it back down so it could recuperate as well as any of us could while we were being repeatedly brutalised.

  Little-Cathy is lying back in the dirt in the little cave. There’s blood coming out and we’re hurting bad, but we’re going away from the hurt in our heads so we can’t feel the hurt anymore. Little-Cathy is sleeping, but I’m watching out. The hands from the shadows shake my nakey body and carry me into the big cave. The hands give me my bowl and make me carry my bowl around the circle of Cloaks. My bowl is a special bowl because my bowl carries the special bits from the bad stone where they do the bad things. And sometimes when my bowl has special water in it the Cloaks take some special water with their lips and put their fingers in to make them wet. And the Cloaks put the wet on animals and babies and bits of the people that are on the stone out the front in the shadows.