When my tears dried up that night my heart was desolate. Part of me loved my father but now I knew he didn’t actually love me. If he did, he wouldn’t have been doing all those things to me! I’d always been different from the other girls and now I knew why. I was a freak and my dad was a stinking liar and a traitor!
‘You have been having sex with your father for years and years and now you know it’s wrong. Shame on you’…said the accusing voice within.
‘Surely, deep inside you must have always known it was wrong? So then why did you let him do it? It must have been your fault.’
‘The book said it was not the victim’s fault.’
‘But it must have been. You never stopped him. Maybe you liked it’!
I agonised over it for hours. Why else would Dad have done this to me? What if I do tell someone? Will they think I’m a terrible person? The voice of accusation tormented me day and night.
‘Of course they will! You’ve heard the way the girls talk about each other. They call the ones who’ve been with their boyfriends names like sluts. You’re worse. You’ve been doing it with your father!’
For the next few nights, nicking myself with the razor in the bath helped release my rage as I watched my father’s betrayal flowing out of me. How dare he? How dare he?
In that cesspit of agony I prepared my speech and my topic was Child Abuse!
When it was my turn to deliver my talk, my cheeks reddened as usual and with my heart drumming a faster rhythm, I considered for a moment saying I’d left my work at home. However, since the speech cards were in my hand, and I was loath to lie to Mrs May, there was no retreat.
I stood there hoping my terrified bladder would hold out. Uncomfortably, I pulled at my short socks as I began, aware of the Band-Aids covering my ‘shaving accidents’ and rather too many recent ‘falls’ down the stairs.
“Child Abuse!” I said and my face began to burn.
“… Abuse victims can be beaten up or neglected or made to feel like they are worth nothing. Some parents harm their small babies because they cry too much. Even babies and small children can be victims of sexual abuse. Their parents betray them and use them as if they are their possessions….” I went on for a couple more minutes sharing my personal revelation of shocking fact after shocking fact. As I spoke, I became aware that I was speaking passionately and emotionally and amazingly, my classmates were actually listening with interest!
Suddenly, I was terribly vulnerable and transparent. It seemed they were all looking with X-ray vision, straight into my heart, my life and my soul!
By the end of five minutes (which felt like hours), I had the devastating sensation of a tsunami crashing down on me. I was deep inside the wave, barely breathing. My heart was throbbing and my chest was consumed with fire. I burst into tears and ran out of the classroom, a drowning soul. Would someone hear my desperate plea for help and throw me a lifeline?
No one followed.
That night in hostel, Megan bounced a ball to Haley Blair. Haley threw it back. Megan threw it again and it hit me square in the stomach. I doubled over and screamed out, “You hit my operation. You hit my operation!” I fell howling onto my bed, sobbing loudly.
“I’m sorry Jane, I didn’t mean it!”
“Yes you did. You hate me. Everyone hates me. The whole world hates me.” My tears were loud, hot and melodramatic.
“No we don’t…” responded Megan.
“You do, you do!” I wailed.
“Don’t…”
“Well actually, I am sick of you!” interjected Tinkie. “You are a big cry baby and your operation is old now. You are being a drama queen again, just like Mrs Edgerton called you in P.E. last week. You’re always looking for attention. Well now you’ve got it…!”
Tinkie threw a pillow at me and I threw it back with a deep throaty scream of rage. Tinkie threw out a string of abusive names at me and I responded in kind. Other girls joined in and in no time the dorm sounded like a cattery.
Eventually, I grabbed my duvet and pillow and removed myself to the passage in protest. I would sleep, bundled up on the floor facing the wall, discarded, rejected, and engulfed in my own misfortune.
“Oh Jane go back to your room, you’re being so silly,” came some girls’ responses.
“Yes. You’re just looking for attention.”
“Megan didn’t do it on purpose!”
“Yes she did…”
“Tinkie didn’t mean it…”
“Yes I did…”
The arguments continued a while but eventually they ended with someone saying, “Just leave her. Let her freeze, she won’t accept an apology and she’s just being ridiculous.”
I lay there listening to the girls, my friends, my enemies. I cried. I wallowed. I prayed.
“Dear God I know I’m being stupid but they’re all against me. They don’t know what I’ve been going through. They don’t know that I’m an abuse victim and that my father’s been lying to me about his ‘special love’. They don’t know how horrid it is for me to find out how betrayed I am. How could you let my Dad do those sick things to me, God? How? When you knew it was wrong.
“Lord I really want it to stop and the only way is to tell someone but what if they don’t believe me? What then? Last time I tried to tell, the nun phoned and told on me. Dad beat me up! Surely you remember that! If they phone my Dad again and tell him, then you know he’ll really kill me. You know he has a gun. I’ve seen it in the gun safe. It’s that big old collectors’ rifle he’s so proud of.”
As I lay quietly, a moment of calm drifted across my mind like a cloud in front of the moon. In that moment I felt, rather than heard the words, ‘My strength is sufficient for all your needs’.
Fear returned. ‘Your father will beat you and kill you’.
I prayed again, fervently, fearfully, hopefully.
I thought about the sermon from a few Sundays ago.
“I need God as my protector. Do you hear that God? I need protection if I am going to tell. I need your protection…if you really do care about me…”
I still had doubts but a verse I’d often read on the stained glass window drifted through my mind. ‘Turn to me all you that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest’.
‘Think of all the ugly things you did with your father. Why should God protect you’?
“Oh, God I’m scared,” I whispered as thoughts raced through my head like voices arguing.
‘If you betray your father, everyone will know about the ugly things you did’.
“Oh God speak to me. My heart is breaking…”
“This sin is too big for God to forgive …’
“No!” I spoke out of the silence in a whisper at the accusing voices. I didn’t do it. He did. I said ‘please stop doing it’. He said, ‘no’. I said, ‘I don’t like it.’ He said, ‘then I don’t love him.’ It wasn’t my fault…”
‘You asked him for friends to visit when he was lying in your bed…’
“Well it was the only time he listened to me or was nice to me!”
‘You encouraged him.’
“I didn’t! I always told him ‘No’.”
‘You said you loved him…’
“He was my father!”
A calm thought came whispering through my mind like a gentle voice of reason; the cloud in front of the moon again. ‘It is not my will that a child should suffer for her father’s sins.’
‘But you’ve done so much wrong! You are not good enough to deserve help.’
‘No one is good except God alone.’ The voice in my head seemed gentle and strong. It spoke again. ‘Tell someone; keep telling until someone believes you.’
I remembered. That’s what Ms Cooney wrote!
Somewhere in that frightening battlefield that was my adolescent mind, somewhere between darkness and light, I drifted off. I awoke from a terrifying sleep to find myself cold and stiff on the passage floor. Pathetically, I crawled into my bed and started wre
stling with my conscience again.
I awoke in the morning with swollen, red eyes but also a calm resolve. It seemed like I’d prayed all night. Reverend Simons once told us the story of Jacob who wrestled all night with an angel. I felt I’d wrestled all night with a demon and now I was sure that God wanted me to tell.
Today was the day it would all stop. I prayed a final prayer that morning. “Dear God, if it was not all a dream, if you were talking to me, if you gave me this courage, and I’m meant to tell, please let there be someone to listen to me. And please don’t let my courage fail me again. Amen.”
I had no idea what ‘amen’ meant but in church you always said it after a prayer. I used it because if felt like the official stamp that sent the words to heaven.
Chapter 17
“Listen to my cry,
for I am in desperate need;
rescue me from those who pursue me,
for they are too strong for me.
Set me free from my prison,
that I may praise your name.”
Psalm 142:6-7
Our first lesson of the day was computers. I stared vacantly at little moving images on my screen with absolutely no idea what the teacher was talking about. Issues of far greater magnitude than cursors and margins preoccupied my thoughts. This was life and death for me, but how could I tell and who could I tell?
“Help me God, you are all I have…”
Gaynor Browne looked across at me and smiled.
Gaynor? Should I speak to her? Gaynor was a day-girl. I didn’t know her well but she was different, special. She never mocked me or called people names. She seemed wiser and older than the rest of us and suddenly it seemed obvious. I would tell Gaynor. She’d know what to do!
“Gaynor, please can I talk to you outside the classroom,” I whispered.
“What about?” she whispered back.
“It’s private.”
“Okay,” she glanced at Mr Fuseli who was absorbed at a computer with some of the clever boys in our class. “Fuzzy is busy with the boys as usual. Come now.”
As we slipped out, the sheer enormity of what I was about to do seemed to pulverize my heart with fear and guilt.
‘You are going to pay dearly for this!’ Fear’s evil voice was threatening me again.
“Help me God!” I prayed.
In my braver moments, I’d often rehearsed how I could start this terrible confession - so I launched forth and the words came tumbling out.
“Gaynor … I have a friend who is being abused and I want to help her stop it. What must I do?”
“Is this friend you?” she asked quietly.
“No!” I answered vehemently, but promptly burst into tears.
“Jane I think it is you,” she responded gently.
“No. Yes.” How could she know?
I couldn’t lie again. Not to her. “Yes. It’s me,” I murmured into my hands. “How did you know?”
Gaynor placed her arm around my shoulders and hugged me.
“My Mom is a counsellor and she deals with lots of children who’ve been abused and she’s told me a lot about it. I’ve been worried about you for a while. You’re never happy or relaxed. You’re always afraid and tearful.”
“Gaynor I’m so scared. My father said he’ll kill me if I tell and he said no-one will believe me. Ages ago I tried to tell a nun at the convent but she slapped me and called my dad. He beat me. What if no-one believes me again?” I sobbed.
“I believe you, Jane. I believe you. Let’s go and talk to Mrs May. She’s the nicest teacher…I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”
“Yes, and she did ask me if anything was wrong once before,” I recalled, vaguely hopeful.
‘But you lied to her then so why should she believe you today?’
As we approached Mrs May’s room I asked God fervently, “Please let her be alone. Please let her believe me.”
‘Be still and know that I am God.’
Gaynor peeped through the glass panel in the door. “She’s alone. She must have a free. Come…” She knocked and we entered.
Mrs May looked up. As she glanced at my tear-stained face and the concerned expression on Gaynor’s, I guess she realised her preparation time had just gone up in smoke, for under her breath I heard her whisper, “Oh Lord! I don’t need this. I’ve a marks’ schedule to get ready…” But then she put down her pen and gathered together a smile.
“What can I do for you girls?”
“Sorry for disturbing you Mrs May but please could we speak to you?” asked Gaynor. I looked at Gaynor and considered her adult demeanour and my juvenile tears. We were such an unlikely pair.
“Sure. What’s wrong?” Mrs May asked in a caring tone.
Gaynor spoke first. “Mrs May, I think Jane’s father is abusing her.”
My teacher’s sweet face stared at us in horror.
‘What’s she going to think of you now, Jane?’
Mrs May gathered her composure quickly and said, “Go on…explain to me what you mean… why do you think that?”
I baulked at answering but then, a reassuring thought spoke up.
‘A truthful witness is no liar.’
“He does things to me that he shouldn’t,” I sniffed looking desperately at her. “Like I told you about in the oral yesterday.”
“Hmm. Which things?” she asked. “You talked about a lot of stuff, Jane.”
“Everything!” I burst out. “The hitting and the sexual stuff and the threats and keeping it a secret. All of it! He does it all.”
My teacher was quiet for a while, staring at her hands and then she looked up at us again. “Jane, Gaynor, it’s a very serious thing to accuse someone of abuse you know. Jane, you read up a whole lot of information for that presentation yesterday and it’s easy to start imagining things.”
“I’m not!” I wailed. “I’m telling the truth. He is abusing me. He hits me for no reason. Sometimes with a plastic pipe, or a belt or his shoe. Or his fist. And he does… sexual things to me…” I whispered this part.
‘She thinks it’s just more attention seeking.’
“Jane, I’m confused. When I talked to your dad about your very tearful nature, he appeared very understanding. He told me your mother had run out on you and you missed her enormously. He said he realised you were homesick in the hostel, but he believed you needed to grow up. He seemed like a very caring father who’s had to raise both you and your little brother on his own. Could you perhaps be exaggerating a bit?”
‘See. She thinks you’re lying.’
I gasped and turned to Gaynor. “I told you adults never listen!” I was desperate; not actually meaning to be rude to Mrs May.
“Jane, what sort of sexual things does he do?” Mrs May asked.
“He touches me in private places and he…he gets into my bed at night and…he makes me watch movies with him…ugly movies… sex films.”
“Where is your stepmother when all this is going on?”
“Bathing her kids. Out shopping. Going to bed early.”
‘She doesn’t believe you.’
‘Keep talking. Make her hear. Make her believe.’
Perhaps my answers were too general, too unspecific; but explaining in more detail to her – especially in front of Gaynor – was just sickening.
Then that accusing voice started again. ‘Give it up. Tell her you lied, just like when you told Joanne about the rape. You’re a good liar. Just say you lied and get out of here.’
‘No Jane. Truth spoken stands firm forever, but lies live only for a moment.’
“Jane, I need to think about what you’ve told me. You need to go back to class now and don’t tell anybody else about this. You must also think about what you’ve told me. Sometimes children…well, they make up things to get attention. You need to consider whether the things you’ve said are the absolute truth….”
Gaynor looked at Mrs May in horror. “Mrs May,” she said, sounding just like an adult to me. “My mother once
told me to consider what teenager in her right mind would want to put herself through the humiliation of telling someone that she’s a victim of sexual abuse if it wasn’t true?”
Mrs May gasped. “Gaynor, Jane, I’m sorry. I’m not used to this sort of thing. I need to think. I don’t not believe you. I just need time to make a plan.”
The bell rang and classes were changing again. A group was gathering at the door.
“I think I should go,” I said numbly, staring at my shoes. It was no use. She didn’t believe me. No-one ever would.
“Yes, you probably should go,” Mrs May agreed. “We’ll talk again.”As we walked out of the classroom, Gaynor’s disappointed face must have spoken volumes to the teacher.
“She didn’t believe me!” I raged to Gaynor.
“It doesn’t really matter if she does or not,” Gaynor said quietly. “It’s a crime for a teacher not to report a story of child abuse to the authorities. She has to follow up on your report. And I’ll tell my mother about this, so that she can also follow up with Mrs May. Someone will help you out now Jane. I promise.”
Although I was convinced that Mrs May neither believed me nor cared, I found out later that she did make the phone-call that changed my life.
Chapter 18
“The Lord is known by His justice;
The wicked are ensnared
By the work of their hands.”
Psalm 9:16
Feeling dejected and desolate, I attended choir and play practice without any enjoyment that afternoon.
It was Thursday so predictably I would have to call my father later. I was apprehensive all afternoon, wondering how I was going to answer ‘the question’ tonight. I was certain he would detect that I was lying if I said I had not told and I had.
Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I Page 10
