Showing posts with label family abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family abuse. Show all posts

Friday, October 21, 2016

When it is Safe to Sleep

Front:  Gizelle, behind mom (Joyce), me and Yolanda
It is instinctive to want to rationalize disaster or suffering and put them into a framework so that we can cope emotionally.  This may seem like a silly thing, but I can’t go to sleep unless there is perfect silence around me.  This became even more of a profound and troubling situation once I got married, because he could not sleep without the TV going.  I spoke about it, asked about moving the TV, I begged and I got nowhere until the day I just moved out the bedroom and into one of my own where I could have quiet and could sleep.
This started in my childhood.  Pubs closed at 11pm in those days.  My father would come home when the pubs were closed either alone or with some of his drinking pals, mostly the police from the mobile unit.  He would make my mom get up and rustle up food for everyone at midnight, but I knew then it was safe to sleep because there were strangers in the house.  He would be too tired by the time they left to exert the devil within him.   If he came home alone, I would like awake until there was silence in the home.   I listened to all the fights and was vigilant because I thought that if it got out of hand, I could always run down the stairs to save my mother.   I had four younger siblings, the youngest was 10 years younger than I was.  I would have the youngest in my bed and the smaller ones in my bedroom and in the second bedroom which was upstairs.   When they would wake up from the noise of the fighting downstairs, I would tiptoe to their beds and bring them quietly to me, whispering to them to be quiet and trying to comfort them.
One night something bad happened.  I was, as usual, lying awake, waiting for my parents to go to sleep.  The fighting started and it escalated to a physical beating.  I heard my mom scream, “Do that again and I will kill you”, with more noise of bashing and beating. 
My father was screaming, “Tonight I will fucking kill you, you bitch”.
 I jumped out my bed so fast and flew down the stairs.  My father was standing looking at me while my mother sat crumpled up in a chair crying. 
“If you want to listen to us fight, you may as well watch us.  Go and fetch your sisters and bring them down here”, he said.   My brother had a room outside so he was not in this mess with us.
I fetched my sisters, they were awake and crying…and brought them downstairs into the lounge.
“You can now watch us fight”, my father thundered and with that he lifted his hand and beat my mom so hard across her head that the chair she was sitting on toppled over and she was on the ground.   I ran to her, but he pulled me roughly back, all the while screaming “You want to interfere; now you are part of the fight”. 
My memory is a bit hazy after that but the sadistic bastard made us all stand in a row, my mom included, while he went to fetch his camera.  We were all crying and in shock, but he took his photographs of our misery.  When he was finished, he sent us to bed.  At least this time we did not have to strip and have photographs taken of us in the nude.  I still lay awake listening, straining my ears for the slightest sound.  I was sure that that was the night he would finally kill her.   The photograph pinned to this blog is one of the photos taken that night. Look at my little sister's face.  I don’t recall where my sister, Joy, was that night.   He truly was a street angel and a home devil.   

Friday, July 1, 2016

Where my Need to Protect comes From

Me at 14 with my brother and sisters
All the things I write about are things that I have experienced myself. Sometimes I change the names, sometimes the places, and sometimes I just tell the truth.  This is one of the latter stories.

I was 12 years old and the eldest of five children.  Our parents used to argue a lot, but my father used to use his fists.  It was particularly bad when my father came home from the pub.  In those days, all pubs closed at 11pm by law.  I would lie quietly awake until my father came home and if it was quiet and peaceful, I would then go to sleep.  I could not sleep until I knew that my mother would be safe.   There were often times when he did not come home before midnight; those times when he was prowling the streets or the party was continuing in someone else’s house.  When I think about it today, I feel so sad for that little girl who could not sleep for fear of her father killing her mother. 

It was never quiet outside because we lived in a house directly opposite the train station.  The tooting and shunting of the trains was always in the background.  But in our home, we tiptoed around my father.  I got so clever at sensing his mood that I would know whether my mother would be beaten before it even happened.

As I got older, I also learned that when he was in that mood, I could save my mother from a beating by doing something to take his attention away from her, putting myself at his mercy.  I was given more hidings than I can remember, but there was always a pay-off.  I knew that after a hiding, his mood would change and my mother was safe for the next two to three days.  The reason for the beatings was always because “You are too much like your mother”.

When you are a child, you see things very differently.  I know today, that my plan to get my parents to stop fighting would never work, but at that age, I came up with a plan.  My plan was for all of us to run away.  I discussed it with my brother and sisters, arguing that if we ran away, our mother and father would be so worried about us that they would stop fighting to find us.   For such a serious discussion, we had climbed out of the upstairs window and were sitting on the roof, overlooking the railway station.
“How will we go?” asked my sister.
“With the train….we can buy tickets.  I have got R12.25.  Do any of you have any money?” I asked.
Together, we had just over R13.00.   I do not remember, but perhaps that would have been enough to buy tickets for five children to somewhere.

There was an exchange of ideas, including a discussion about what we would eat once we had run away.  Our plans came to nought when my brother said “Let us go when we have eaten all the food in the house”.