‘I hope you behaved yourself,’ was all Mammy said as I fell in the door. My eyes were dead. I couldn’t speak. ‘Thanks for the sherry, Frank!’ Mammy called out. ‘Same time next week?’
The slam of the door made my head bang and sharpened my numbed senses a little. Surely I wouldn’t have to go again?
I sat on the cold lino of the kitchen floor in silence for hours, feeling stunned and sickened. At last I summoned up the energy and courage to speak. There was no way I could face that ordeal again. I had to say something.
‘Mammy, I beg you,’ I sobbed. ‘Please don’t make me go back next week. I didn’t like it at all! Please don’t, Mammy.’
I got no response other than, ‘Didn’t I tell you to shut up complainin’? Why are you always so awkward?’
I was so afraid I even begged Daddy later, not knowing what sort of trouble that might cause. But to my dismay he didn’t seem bothered one bit. ‘As long as he doesn’t come in this house, I’m not interested!’ he bellowed.
So, the following Sunday, I was forced to go though the whole terrifying torture again, only it was worse this time because I knew what to expect, or at least I thought I did.
This time they played games with my mind as well as my body.
I asked for a piece of bread to help me swallow down the lumps of mutton, but Aunt Mag flew into a rage that seemed to come from nowhere. ‘You greedy cow - are you saying you’re not full?’ she yelled. Then she offered me more stew! Was I meant to refuse or accept it? I guessed I should refuse, because she wanted me to be full, but that wasn’t right either.
‘How dare you turn your nose up, you little bitch.’
After lunch, instead of taking me straight to the bedroom, they said they wanted to show me their collection of dolls. My eyes were watering just looking at them, they were so beautiful. I’d never seen so many in my life. For a few precious seconds, the fear I carried round with me most of the time subsided and I reached out my hand to pick one up.
‘Don’t you dare touch!’ Aunt Mag exclaimed.
Uncle Frank started laughing loudly now, delighting in my shocked expression. ‘Don’t even think about touching them, you little cow! Bedroom - now!’ he ordered.
I started to sob and wail uncontrollably. Through my tears, I could see pretty flowers on the wallpaper and shiny, polished furniture and mirrors lining the walls.
I wondered how anyone who had such a lovely, neat house could be so dirty and wicked. I shut my eyes so I couldn’t see their bodies and their creepy smiles, but try as I might I couldn’t shut off my other senses.
I didn’t want to hear their breathing and panting or their craven laughter. I didn’t want to feel their rough, doughy skin against mine. I didn’t want to smell Aunt Mag’s sickly-sweet perfume or Uncle Frank’s stale, sweaty armpits, and I didn’t want to taste their pungent breath in my mouth. But I didn’t have a choice. I was in bed with them again, and I was their slave.
When I got home that night I felt sick and bruised, and I moved around like a little robot, obeying Mammy’s commands and counting the minutes until I could fall asleep and shut down completely. I had hours to wait until Daddy got into bed and hurt me again, and only after that could I relax enough to fall into a fitful sleep.
The next day, after school, Mammy sent me to run up the road because Uncle Frank had something for her.
My heart was in my mouth when I saw him standing there. I had no idea what he might do to me, but to my surprise he smiled broadly and handed me a bottle of sherry and a big white tub for Mammy.
I grabbed them off him quickly, said a polite ‘Thank you, Uncle Frank,’ and ran home as fast as I could, the contents of the white tub rattling like Smarties in a tube.
I ran down the road past Granny’s front door and, to my horror, Aunt Ann was standing on the doorstep with a full mop bucket in her hand.
I was frightened of Aunt Ann. She was a spinster with a twisted face, and she always scowled at me. She shared Granny’s house and, when Granny was in, which was most of the time, she just ignored me, but if she saw me on my own she always had a go at me.
A few weeks earlier, she had thrown a bucket of dirty water over me on my way home from school for no reason at all.
If she ever walked past me in the street by chance, she called me a ‘little whore’ or a ‘little bitch’ and walloped me with her bag.
Daddy had had fights with Mammy about the way her sister treated me. I’d heard him warn Mammy to get the ‘old bitch’ to leave me alone. But Mammy always defended ‘poor Aunt Ann’ and told Daddy I had been cheeky and deserved what she gave me.
I froze when I saw the bucket, but Aunt Ann didn’t throw it. She said, ‘See you next week!’ in a threatening voice that made my spine tense. What was happening next week?
Mammy explained that Granny was going into hospital, and I was to stay with Aunt Ann to keep her company.
I didn’t know what to think. It meant I would be away from Daddy and I could go to sleep without worrying about what he might do to me in bed, and without listening to Mammy and Daddy fighting. I wouldn’t wake up itching with that rash on the back of my neck that Daddy seemed to give me. But how would Aunt Ann treat
