“Hello my Baby, did you miss me?” asked Dad as he leant across to kiss me. I turned my head and received his kiss on the cheek.
“Hello Dad.” I responded. “This is Megan and that is Tinkie.”
“Hi there girls!” He smiled and asked how the term had been, as he watched them in his mirror.
“Fine, fine.” They babbled away and I seethed. He could always do it! He could always be Mr Nice Guy to other people. Look how he sucked up to Matron! They would never see his temper and everything else…
The other girls raced upstairs to collect their packed cases and rushed them down to the big veranda to await their parents, but I didn’t feel like rushing. I wanted to stay here at school, in the big red building. It was my strong tower. Eventually I had to go downstairs with my case and there I saw Dad and Matron Ruth laughing together as she said, “… anyway … here she is, right as rain. Have a lovely weekend, Jane. Mr Farrell, don’t forget to sign the book, please.”
We signed the exit book and left.
Dad climbed into his side and started the car. I sat as close to my door as I could. He put the car in gear and we pulled away.
“So how are you my big girl?” he asked as he smiled at me. It was that long slow smile where he just looked and looked.
“Fine.”
“I’ve missed you so much,” he said and then added, “Why are you scrunched up in the corner? Come sit next to me so I can hug you.” I didn’t get it. One moment he was talking to me like a baby and the next he was doing things to me that I’d only seen men do to women on late night TV.
He took my hand and pulled me closer to him. He hugged my shoulders then slid his hand onto my leg just above the knee and squeezed it.
“No Dad. NO touching.”
His smile disappeared and he shot me a sudden warning glance as he returned his hand to the wheel, his expression changing. “Have you told anybody our secret?”
“No Dad. Your secret is safe.”
“Are you sure?” He was not smiling now.
“Yes.” It made me so mad that he always called it ‘our’ secret. As if I had any choice!
He looked hard at me and I knew I was looking sullen and feeling surly. I also knew how much he hated that “teenage” attitude. If I didn’t hide it, he’d use the back of his hand to change it before we were half way home.
“Tell me about school!” He tried to sound light hearted.
“I told you on the phone, Dad. You phoned me a lot you know.”
“Well I needed to check up on you. To make sure you were alright.”
“You needed to check up on me to see if your disgusting little secret was still safe,” I thought. Then I said, “Well you phoned more than all the other girls’ fathers. It was embarrassing. They think I am a home-sick baby. I thought I was just meant to phone you on Thursdays. That should be enough…”
“Well I can’t help it if I love you more than all their families love them.”
We were barely on the main road when he again placed his hand on my leg and started stroking my inner thigh. In no time his hand would be in my secret places, touching and disturbing me again. He was far worse than Damon and it was much easier to hate Damon.
“Dad, don’t.”
“Don’t you love me?”
“Dad other cars can see what you are doing.”
“Of course they can’t! Look into the cars going past. What can you see ...?”
“Please stop it, Dad…”
“No-one can see us. You know I love you.”
“What about the lorries? And buses?”
“Nonsense.”
It didn’t matter how much I asked him to stop, he never did. Those hands did what they wanted and if I protested too much he’d become violent.
How I detested my body.
Chapter 6
“Don’t, my brother!” she said to him.
“Don’t force me…!
Don’t do this wicked thing.
What about me?
Where could I get rid of my disgrace?
…. But he refused to listen to her,
and since he was stronger than she,
he raped her.”
2 Sam 13:12-14
I hated that weekend so much! Joanne went to a Tupperware party on Friday night and Dad came to my room. It was the pattern I’d endured for nearly three years already. When Joanne had her babies and I got my first bra, Dad started treating me differently. Over time I taught myself to push each incident into a black space outside my conscious memory and just pretend it hadn’t happened.
But that first night back from boarding school was hell. The war in my head raged on when he left, and all the hated memories that I’d successfully suppressed came flooding back.
I don’t suppose anyone can forget the first time it happens, no matter how many subsequent episodes one can successfully delete. But those first grisly encounters will be etched clearly in my mind forever.
Those life-shattering events took place nearly three years before I went to St Catherine’s. It had been a sunny Wednesday in August when I was still twelve years old. I was in the sixth grade in my primary school and usually Joanne picked me up from school at five pm. That day, out of the blue, Dad arrived to collect me at three. Dad gave me his usual quick peck on the lips but as I climbed into the car, I developed a sudden and inexplicable sense of foreboding which just seemed to hang over me. At home it was still there, this strange feeling in my gut.
Usually, if Dad was in a bad mood I would know to lie low, but he was unpredictable and a few weeks before, after promising never to hurt Anthony or me again, he’d called me into the lounge and beaten me with his belt for no reason at all. Sobbing at the injustice I asked, “What have I done? Why are you hitting me?” He gave me the stupidest answer of all: “Because I feel like it.”
I never did find out what I was supposed to have done that day but bewildered and betrayed, I’d gone off to bed feeling crushed and unloved. Anthony and Joanne had borne witness and hadn’t said a thing!
The next day I was so bruised that I could hardly sit but Dad wrote the school a letter excusing me from swimming ‘because I had a cold.’
Well, this particular Wednesday in August, the day my dad first violated me, was quite different. Dad was not angry in the car, just brooding. Quiet. I thought we would collect Anthony too but Dad said he was playing at a friend’s for the afternoon.
At home, as I unzipped my school dress to change into play clothes, Dad came down the passage and walked straight into my room without even knocking. He walked over to me saying: “Give Daddy a hug.”
Even now, my stomach tightens as I recall that feeling of apprehension. If I’d known something bad was going to happen then, why didn’t I run? For years I wondered if my inaction could perhaps have made it my fault.
I hugged him; just a normal hug for Dad, but when I tried to pull away his hold had tightened and something I didn’t recognize began. He pulled me tightly into himself and started to rub his private parts against me. I looked up at him, confused and embarrassed.
“What are you doing?” I objected.
His hard blue eyes looked into mine. “Does that feel good?” he asked.
Horrified, I said, “What am I supposed to feel?”
His icy hand glided across my bare back where the dress was still open. His stare unnerved me and I felt sick. Then he turned suddenly. “Get changed and come to my room.”
His voice was steely, the tone I knew not to challenge.
My world started to spin. As I walked into his room he uttered the ugliest words I had ever heard: “Take off your shorts and underwear and lie on the bed.”
His voice had been unflinching but I remember saying, “No! I’m getting out of here!”
He grabbed my arm as I tried to flee. “Jane, do you want another hiding?” With his other hand he was taking off his belt.
“No Dad.” My heart was pounding and my tears were falling. “Then lose
the shorts. Now!” He continued to take off his belt.
“Dad …!”
“Do it!”
“Why?” I began to cry.
He raised his belt and I took off my shorts.
“And the underwear. Get rid of it.”
Who was this stranger and what was happening? My legs began to shake and my body trembled. More nausea welled up. This couldn’t be happening. This was my Dad!
“Please, God, no! What is my Dad doing?”
“Get on the bed!”
As I fell onto the bed, desperately looking for somewhere to hide, I stared at the ceiling and tried to concentrate all my fear and pain onto that one spot above me.
He sat next to me and started to touch. Like Damon and Stephen but worse. They were just stupid boys being nosey and I hated them anyway. But this was my father! Part of me loved him. He was all I had. Now here he was, looming over me, probing my inmost secrets!
The room began to swirl in a mass of blackness and I was drawn down into the miry depths of unreality and disbelief. It was like my body and mind had been sheared in two.
Crying, I begged him, “Why are you doing this Dad? Please stop!” but he didn’t answer.
His distorted face stared through me and pain ripped deep within my soul as his rough fingers pierced the depths of my body.
When I screamed, “Ouch!” he responded with the words:
“Don’t lie, that’s not sore.” I felt sickened as I sensed his scorn.
From somewhere above the bed, I seemed to watch as this man whom I no longer knew, took off his trousers and knelt above some girl who looked like me. I watched in disbelief as he tried to insert his private man’s parts into that girl’s helpless body.
I remember crying out as he drove into my flesh. Betrayed! This was my father and now he had torn my body and my heart in two!
He became angry as he couldn’t get the thing fully inside me. It seems I was too tense, too small. He told me to go and wash. I left the room, feeling small and dirty. I was sore, degraded and bewildered. Why would my own Dad do this to me? I was only twelve. What terrible sin had I done to deserve this?
That afternoon my crotch was tender and walking was painful. I began to limp, feeling somehow detached from my body. The very next day, after school, he did it again but this time, all my crying and all my pain couldn’t stop him.
A week or two later I began to itch and scratch. “Why the hell are you scratching like that?” Joanne asked me. “Scratching your private parts is not lady-like!”
“I’m really itchy!”
“Well, how long have you had this problem?”
“For about a week or two.”
“Does it burn when you go to the toilet?”
“Yes.”
Joanne took me to see Doctor Harris. Joanne explained about the itching and burning as I blushed and looked away.
“I want you to go behind the curtain and take off your jeans and underwear,” he said. Those words made me nauseous but then he added, “Would you like your mom to be with you?”
“Yes please!” (Even if she was only a stepmother).I shook as I took off my underwear. He seemed ancient and sweaty and his fat cheeks wobbled when he leant over me. I closed my eyes tightly, clinging to Joanne’s hand while the doctor performed a brief cursory examination.
In a short time he covered me up with the sheet and said, “Well, Jane, it’s a little bit swollen down there; I think you are just getting ready for menstruation.”
What was he talking about? What was menstruation? I couldn’t tell him what Dad had done because Dad had threatened me and made me promise never to tell, but secretly I was hoping the doctor would find out by looking down there and say my dad must never do that again.
Instead he gave us a script for some medicines that seemed to help the itching and burning and he told Joanne, “You’ll have to tell her about the birds and the bees, Mrs Farrell.” I was furious.
The talk in the car on the way home was as brief as possible. I was embarrassed and Joanne had remained aloof.
She said: “Menstruation means now you’re becoming a woman and you’ll bleed for about a week once a month. Most women call it ‘the curse’. You use these…” She stopped at a chemist and bought me a packet of pads and ended the discussion by saying: “It means now you can get pregnant and have a baby – so no messing around, get it?”
I nodded but didn’t get it at all. Naively, I thought babies went with marriage and no-one had told me what ‘messing around’ actually involved.
At school we’d all seen frogs piggy-backing together in the pond. The teacher said they were mating and we knew tadpoles would hatch from the strings of eggs. However I was unable to extend that image of reproduction to people.
I was sure none of the girls in my class were having this menstruation thing, so how come all these things were happening to me? “Why does everyone and everything hate me so much?” I wondered desperately.
When we arrived home, Dad made it even more embarrassing by wanting to know absolutely everything the doctor had said and done. He wanted me to describe in detail the examination.
“I can’t tell you, I had my eyes shut,” I answered, feeling my face burn.
“Oh please!” Joanne rolled her eyes. “He did a cursory internal with his finger,” she snapped.
“You don’t have to tell him,” I whispered. “It was embarrassing.”
“You’re so ungrateful, Jane. Honestly, your dad is one of the most concerned parents anyone could wish for. He’s allowed to know. He’s your dad!”
I wanted to scream at both of them and say: “Can’t you see why this has happened. You did this, Dad. It’s your fault! I was never sore and itchy before you started hurting me!”
Instead I burst into tears and as I headed for my room, I heard Joanne yelling, “That child deserves a damn good hiding. It’s high time she went to boarding school! She’s so immature and selfish – and lately she just has a tantrum for everything!”
My only release was to write in my diary.
Saturday 24 October 1987
Things are getting really bad here at home. Joanne will not let me talk to Susie or hold Mickey since she took me to the doctor. She says I have a disease. I’m not good enough for her kids! The doctor said I’m about to start menstruating. I wonder why God is letting these things happen to me. I pray to Him every day to save me from this hell.
Now my dad is always doing that bad thing to me. He makes Anthony go and play far away from the house, then he makes me lie on the bed and he hurts me. He does it whenever he picks me up from school and Joanne’s not here. Sometimes he even hurts me when she is here. But it’s when she’s bathing her children. Then he’s really quick and rough. He does it to me every day. Sometimes he does it three or four times in a day in the weekends or holidays. And he touches me whenever we ‘re in the car together.
I really hate him. I wish I could go away to boarding school.
Well boarding school had certainly helped but now the weekend at home had ruined everything. Joanne took her kids to visit her parents and made me go to the soap factory with my dad.
While he was showing me some new glycerine installation he put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “You know I love you, Jane.”
How ironic! Every time Dad said those words I cringed. Yet more than anything in the world, I wanted to hear my own mother say them! It was more than two years since I’d seen my mom and she never even made mention of me in her notes to Anthony.
Once, I showed one of the notes to Dad and asked why Mom never spoke of me or wrote to me. His eyes had filled with tears but he couldn’t answer. I never understood his tears.
“Come here and see the newly painted toilets,” he said and I knew what that meant.
Saturday 18 February 1989
I hate the long weekends at home. Why do we have to have them? It’s so not fair!
He hurt me again today at the factory. I had to bend down ove
r the loo. Boy, do the toilets stink! I nearly gagged. I hung onto the basin on the right. The pressure from the back was so painful. He even hit my head on the basin this time.
Once, before I went to boarding school and he did it at work he swore about his rubber thing breaking. That day, when I walked out of the toilets, all his workers were looking at me. I’m sure they knew what he was doing. It was so embarrassing. I ran into the work kitchen and cried. At least there were no workers at the factory today. I really hate him. I hate myself. I feel so ugly. So unclean. So ashamed. How do I face Tinkie and Megan on Monday? How do I answer what kind of weekend I had? I suppose I lie again. Oh God, I wish I was dead.
I wonder if I will ever be brave enough to kill myself.
Chapter 7
“You have stolen my heart
With one glance of your eyes…”
Song of Songs 4:9
Arriving back at school on Monday evening was both a relief and a trauma. The busyness of school comforted me but the humiliation of the weekend left my emotions in tatters.
Matron Ruth was on the outside veranda where she could check that all the girls came right on in. I watched Dad amble over to her and stretch out his hand, greeting her and saying, “She seems okay now but I hope she’s not coming down with something. She seems a little tearful today.”
“Hmm, they’re often tearful after the first weekend home. It passes, so don’t you worry,” answered Matron.
In that instant I saw a pact being made. “They’re all together in this, all against me!” I thought.
Dad returned to the car to offload my case. “I’ll bring your case up, Baby,” he said.
Joanne looked annoyed. “Leave her, Honey, she’s a big girl now. She can take her own case.”
“Joanne, I won’t be long!” He slammed the boot closed, picked up the case and walked in ahead of me, flashing Matron another of his ‘good guy’ smiles. Joanne waved a disinterested farewell from the car. Dad placed the case on the floor, and then he hugged me too tightly, and as before, whispered, “Remember it’s our special secret. Don’t tell anyone… I love you. I’ve given Matron the telephone money. Phone me every Thursday.”
Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I Page 4
