Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I (5 page)

“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 over 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.