This morning I woke up with agonising cramps. My period is heavier than usual. I wished that I would haemorrhage severely and die.
I needed to wash the sheets and the mattress cover. Dad rose early and left for work without breakfast. It’s always such a relief to hear that front door click shut behind him. I’m able to venture out of my room then.
But this morning there was a substantial amount of guilt mixed with that relief.
I felt this guilt, like an innocent who has unwittingly sinned, as I bundled together the soiled bedclothes, sprayed them with a stain remover and tossed them into the washing machine. As I showered and dressed, then as I prepared my lunch: two pressed-chicken-loaf sandwiches and a couple of too-soft ginger biscuits. The refrigerator and pantry have been near-empty for so long now, I cannot recall the last time they were full.
Were they ever full? I wonder.
Yes, when Mum was alive.
That hardly matters now, anyway. I’ve lost my appetite for tasty food, which, under the circumstances, is surely a blessing.
I hate getting my period. Try as I might to censor this ugly fact (natural to most people, ugly to my Dad), Dad always finds out. And more often than not, merely mentioning the subject of periods gives him apoplexy.
When Dad gets angry, he gets violent towards me. Or he belittles me in some way. “Move your fat hide,” he says. I can’t decide which is worse: the violence or the belittling. Sometimes he frightens me so bad I tend to pull at my hair and claw my own loose flesh as though fear is a physical thing—a perverse alien inhabiting my body—and I wish to tear it out of me before it drives me insane.
I wish I had a lock on my bedroom door, so I can feel and be safe in my own home. There’s really no place I can go to get away from him.
Well, apart from school, but that’s no haven either.
He backhanded me last night, for not making dinner the way he likes it. He got me with his signet ring. There’s a cut and a small raisin-coloured bruise on my right cheekbone. Blink and you won’t miss it.
Nobody at school asked me how I got it. That’s because nobody cares.
Mrs Sinclair glanced at it when she asked me a question relevant to my essay topic, but she didn’t speak of it, which evinced a total lack of interest in my well-being.
Pardon my naivety for assuming that all teachers have an innate desire to show compassion, not to mention the responsibility to acknowledge this sort of thing, and to notify someone with greater authority who can do something about it, someone like the principal or even a social worker.
”Mr Mangrove, I suspect a student of mine is being abused in the home, possibly by her own father. What should I do?”
Mrs Sinclair ignored it, that’s what she did. Does she think I bumped into a door or something? Can an experienced English teacher be that dense?
I’m very quiet at school. I keep to myself and don’t like to provoke or instigate trouble. I’m scared of drawing adverse attention to myself and, in particular, of being laughed at.
I hate my fear, more than I hate myself. It makes me self-conscious, shy and unwilling to interact. It reminds me that I’m ugly and repulsive to other kids. It leads me to romanticise about the knife tucked soundly beneath the mattress, and how very easy it would be to get a hold of and use at will.
I’m not too sure why I’m writing all of this now, because it’s been happening for years. Nothing has changed. Life is as hellish and unbearable as it always was. And God only knows how long it will go on, this hellish nightmare I seem to be stuck in. How much more must I endure before someone pays the ultimate price? That someone being me?
There are possibly two people in the whole school (perhaps in the whole world) who do not blatantly regard me as fetid dog meat: Bain and Pander—weird names, but two very normal, down-to-earth human beings who are revered by hundreds of students, including myself. They are both good-looking, and both obviously deeply in love.
In fact, they are so immersed in each other’s lives and are interested only in what the other has to say or do, they scarcely associate with anyone else.
So, one fine afternoon in April, when the doting twosome handed me a camera and asked me to photograph them posing in front of the ancient eucalypt behind the school library, I was stunned, bewildered—and eager to oblige. I was also the only person within easy reach of the camera, but still. They were very polite. The myrtaceous tree is magnificent and it formed an ideal backdrop for such an enduring couple. Any relationship that lasts more than a year at high school is considered a marriage of sorts, and they have been together since Year 7. I have no understanding of relationships; all I know is that I envy them.
Anyway, Bain and especially Pander have smiled and said hello to me since, like I did them a favour and they wished to return it. Yet I am not easy to fool. The sapid smiles and gestures they impart are not false, but the reason for them is. I know they don’t like me. They only pity me.
Everybody else treats me badly. In particular, it’s the people in my year level—Kitty, Rhoda and Law, and countless others.
My actions cannot be deemed accountable. I’ve not done a thing wrong to them. I hardly ever look at them—and if I do, it’s never voluntarily—and yet they persist in calling me names. They persist in jabbing me insolently with their fingers. Glaring at me from across a room, wolf-whistling as I walk by the basketball courts. They even go so far as to write dirty poems and fake dirty love letters that refer to stuff I’ve never heard of, let alone tried. And the words they use! I can remember something about shoving one’s ‘short arm’ into my ‘honey pot’. Seemingly cute, unequivocally vulgar.
They mustn’t like the looks of me, I reckon.
I suppose I can’t blame them. I’m not exactly model material, yet I’ve never bothered to try.
I don’t meet their standards. I don’t meet society’s standards.
Sometimes I think I deserve it, the callous way they treat me, because if Dad has taught me one thing, it’s that I’m unworthy of anything better.
Each morning I walk to school every bit aware of something ominous lurking just ahead of me. Maybe round the next corner. Something to ensnare me and never let go, like the salivating jaws of a hungry predator.
I never turn back, because I know I can’t escape.
Not by running, anyhow.