Читать книгу Because God Was There - Belma Diana Vardy - Страница 17

Chapter 4

In the Clutches of a Monster

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

your rod and your staff ,

they comfort me.

PSALM 23:4, NIV

When I was seven and a half, a letter came from my mother. I remember Oma’s countenance changing as she read it. Fear filled her eyes; she panted, caught her breath and covered her mouth with her hand. Something terrible had happened! “What’s wrong, Oma? What’s wrong?” I cried in alarm.

We were standing in the kitchen at the back of the store. Still grasping the letter with trembling fingers, she spoke in measured words, her eyes brimming with tears and lips set to keep them from quivering: “Your mother has just written to say she wants you to go live in Canada.” The impact of Oma’s words now registered on me, and we looked into each other’s eyes in desperation. Our world was about to fall apart.

Oma was heartbroken. Her pain washed over me. I ran to her, buried my face in her apron and burst into tears. How could I leave my beloved Oma? This was my home.

Ingeborg had remarried. She was under pressure from her new husband, Helmut, to retrieve me from my grandparents and have me live with them in Canada. In his opinion, if my mother had a daughter, she should be with her.

In addition to the pressure from Helmut, I now think my mother may not have wanted me to remain bonded with my grandparents and have a wonderful life. She had been jealous of my relationship with my father, and judging from the way she eventually treated me, she was likely jealous of my relationship with Oma and Opa.

A BAD YEAR

It was 1963—a bad year. President Kennedy was shot, the Profumo scandal rocked European politics, a tsunami killed 22,000 people in Pakistan, the Great Train Robbery shocked England, and my grandparents took me across the ocean to live with my mother in Toronto.

I had to leave everything. When the last day of my life with my family in Germany ended, I said goodbye to my friends, teachers, great-grandparents—everyone in the community. Ingeborg told my grandmother I would have all new things when I got to Canada. At my mother’s demand, I was to leave all my belongings. The only things I took were my dolls.

As hard as it was for me, it was devastating for Oma and Opa. Oma had missed my mother’s youth during the war, and she was deeply grateful to God for giving her a second chance to enjoy childhood with me, another “daughter.”

But those sweet days came to an abrupt end. Oma, Opa and I travelled from Germany to Canada on an ocean liner—a terrible 21-day journey. The worst trip of my life! I was so nervous I could hardly talk. I knew I was going to live with strangers who didn’t even want me, let alone love me. The thought of having to leave the love and safety of my grandparents made me physically ill.

We landed in New York harbour on October 26, 1963.

AMERICA! LAND OF THE FREE

Everything was strange and unfamiliar. I couldn’t understand the language. For a little country girl from Germany the strange voices, smells of the city and huge buildings were overpowering. I clutched my container of dolls. The customs officer, who looked like a Russian soldier to me, yanked it out of my hand and flung my dolls mercilessly onto the dock, where they landed with sickening thuds and lay as though dead. I reacted in horror and panic, like any mother would. My dolls! My precious “children”! I screamed in hysteria that my beloved ones were being so mindlessly brutalized. The officer laughed at me. With neither sympathy nor remorse, he took my response as proof we must be hiding things, and he badgered my grandparents with question after question. He thought we might have hidden something we shouldn’t be bringing into the country in the dolls.

BULLIED

In those days the stench of Hitler’s regime still clung to every German citizen, and this officer made it clear we weren’t welcome. He treated us as if he believed we deserved punishment for Hitler’s brutality and wanted us to know he disdained us.

As the interrogation intensified, my grandparents became increasingly flustered, confused and disoriented because they didn’t understand English. I saw it as an attack by authority figures that represented danger, and I was terrified.

When things finally calmed down, I was allowed to retrieve my dolls. We gathered our possessions and boarded a train from New York to Toronto.

Exhausted from the ordeal, we settled into our overnight berths relieved to rest, but it wasn’t over.

In the middle of the night another set of customs officers strode through the train car, banged on our door and barged into our room. Again they demanded our passports, interrogated my grandparents and searched our belongings. Their authoritarian presence and threatening demeanour filled the room. Despite my tiredness, they demanded I get up and take off my clothes so they could check for contraband.

Again my poor Oma and Opa were at the mercy of bullies because they couldn’t understand English. Despite the language barrier, Oma caught enough to realize they were discussing taking me away from them. That was beyond terrifying for all of us.

Oma became a mad woman! She screamed in a way I had never heard before and with an authority no one dared question. After some minutes they backed down, turned and walked away, leaving us trembling. None of us slept after that.

As light dawned the metal wheels screamed to a halt at Union Station in Toronto.

That same day, October 30, unbeknownst to us, my dad flew from Toronto to Turkey to visit his family. There he met Ayla, his current wife, and remarried. At the same time, he changed his last name, Ejubowic, back to the Yugoslavian Basar. After their six-month honeymoon he and Ayla settled in Toronto. How ironic that I arrived under his shadow! We had been that close!

THE HEART OF DARKNESS

As we disembarked, Oma caught sight of my mother. “Look,” she said bending toward me, “there’s your mother. Go hug her. That’s the proper thing to do.”

My first thought was, That’s my mother! She’s just like her pictures!

I hesitated at the sight of the strange woman. I saw the man standing beside her and didn’t want to leave the safety of Oma’s loving embrace. Oma gave me a little push. I wanted to please her, so I ran toward this living photograph and threw my arms around her, exclaiming, “Mommy, Mommy!”

It was like embracing a steel statue. Instead of hugging me back, she pushed me away. Her eyes met mine for a millisecond—black, piercing, empty. My head and heart froze. Everything seemed to stop. It was the first time I experienced rejection, and it felt like I had been slapped in the face.

I glanced furtively at the man beside my mother, my new stepfather, Helmut. His face registered no emotion. No connection. Empty.

I didn’t want Oma to know I was distressed, so I said nothing. Strangely, as close as I was to my grandparents, in my mother’s presence an impenetrable invisible curtain fell between them and me. It stole freedom and intimacy from our relationship and locked me in a prison of solitary confinement. Suddenly I was unable to share my heart with them.

No one spoke during the drive from Union Station to my mother’s house. I was still in shock from the cold rejection, and I’m sure my grandparents must have been dying inside. Their precious granddaughter was trapped in circumstances no one could change.

When we walked through the front door of my mother’s three-storey townhouse, I saw walls without warmth. This isn’t a home, I thought. It’s just a house! The interior was stark and harsh—foreign to me and bland, as if it were abandoned. I shivered.

They introduced me to Helmut’s teenage daughter, who was totally disinterested, and then showed me my room. Walls. A thin cot for a bed. One dresser. That was it. Cold and desolate! Panic rose in me, but words wouldn’t come.

Later I learned that Helmut’s first wife had died shortly before he met my mother. His 14-year-old daughter had to live with her dad. My mother had been charming to the poor girl before the wedding, but when the honeymoon was over, she became the wicked stepmother who made the girl’s life as miserable as possible. To have a little sister who couldn’t speak English thrown into the mix was too much for her, so she ignored me.

Like Cinderella, I slept in the cold, stark room that night, fearful of what was to come.

The next day was Halloween. We didn’t have Halloween in Germany, and I had no idea what it was. Ingeborg took an old bedsheet, cut two holes in it for eyes, tossed it over my head, gave me a bag and said, “There. Go knock on doors. They’ll give you candy.”

I was afraid, but I didn’t dare protest. Thankfully Helmut’s daughter went with me, but her unfriendly presence added to my discomfort. Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to last through the ordeal. I felt alone and disoriented, anxious and depressed. To not understand the language and go door to door under a white bedsheet with a surly, distant girl was a nightmare.

SHREDDED

During the three weeks my grandparents were there, Ingeborg did everything she could to keep us separated. It was heartrending for me and for them. We had planned that I would go with them to the airport when they left, but that day, as I came down the stairs ready to go, my mother held out her hand and said, “Halt! You’re not going. You’re staying here.” My grandparents were already out the door, so I couldn’t even say goodbye.

Apparently they asked where I was. When they realized what my mother had done, they rushed back in to look for me. Still in shock and sobbing at the top of the stairs, I ran down into Opa’s arms. He was beside himself, bewildered, frantic—hardly able to breathe. Oma choked back tears and couldn’t speak. Her look betrayed her understanding that they had released me into the clutches of a monster. At that moment we were ripped apart in flesh and spirit. Our family unit was rent.

I thought many times about my grandparents on their three-week journey back to Germany with a huge void in their hearts where a kiss should have been. Later I found out that Oma cried the whole trip. When she got home, she sent me a letter, but I didn’t receive it. Except for the odd one right at the beginning, my mother intercepted all my grandparents’ letters. I assume she cut off communication between us because she couldn’t tolerate the intimacy we shared. Jealousy had hardened her heart.

MISFIT

I can’t remember much about the first days in my new school, and I would be happy to forget them altogether. The German education system was far more advanced than the Canadian one, but I couldn’t excel in my schoolwork because I couldn’t speak English.

Kids laughed at my strange clothes and inability to speak their language. The teacher was even less understanding. She made me read out loud in class. I tried to read phonetically but pronounced everything the German way. For instance, the I pronounced tay. There is no “th” sound in German.

I had to protect myself at recess. The kids chased me around the schoolyard shouting, “Hitler! Hitler! She’s Hitler!” When they caught me, they hit me.

At lunchtime, I was horrified at the waste. If kids didn’t like the food in their lunch boxes or didn’t want to eat it, they threw it away. I couldn’t understand how anyone could throw away good food.

My one bright spot at school was an overweight girl by the name of Izzy Turner. No one included her in activities, but she was very kind to me. My self-appointed bodyguard, she was my place of refuge because she protected me. No one dared challenge her.

INCIDENTS WITH INGEBORG

The next seven years with my mother were a nightmare of abuse. I desperately wanted to talk to my dear grandparents, but they were out of reach. Had I not experienced a normal, stable environment of love with them, I don’t think I would have survived. Throughout all those years I held on to the good times—happy memories that breathed hope in me for my tomorrows. I learned that if you know that someone loves you, you can get through the toughest times.

Many times I longed for Oma’s love to lift me out of pain and suffering. One day I fell outside and scraped my knee badly. I could see pebbles in it, and it hurt. I ran into the kitchen and showed my mother. She glanced at it, turned the other way and said nothing. She was angry that I had bothered her. I was on my own. What to do? I tried to think what Oma might have done and used a facecloth to clean my knee as best I could.

Painful incidents with Ingeborg are still vivid in my mind. Happier days came eventually, and so did complete release from every hurtful memory. I can describe these incidents now without emotional pain. I am sad to say that many who have suffered the way I did do not recover, but there is a way. Let me share some episodes with Ingeborg first.

Ingeborg really was like a wicked stepmother. She had written to Oma saying she would provide me with everything new when I came to Canada, but that didn’t happen. Only once did she buy me something new—a pair of ugly shoes several sizes too big. Whatever belonged to me, she took away. She even took away my dolls.

I arrived in Canada wearing a little pale-blue cotton dress Oma had bought me, and that’s what I wore every day for four years. As I grew, the dress got shorter and shorter. It was very embarrassing. Oma had taught me modesty and instilled in me a consciousness to cover my body properly. When the dress became way too short, every day on my way to school I hid in an alley behind some garbage cans, took it off, and made it into a skirt. It helped cover my bare legs. With my sweater buttoned overtop, it looked like a long skirt. On the way home I went back into the alley and changed it back into a short little dress in a vain attempt to allay my mother’s beatings.

I didn’t really care that I didn’t have nice clothes. For some reason, the kids didn’t seem to notice that I wore the same thing all the time. Occasionally one asked, “Why are you wearing that again?” and I’d say, “That’s all I have.”

All I cared about was to be covered up. I wanted something that would fit and keep me warm. I had a hat, mitts, boots and a sweater-coat from Germany. It too was soon too short, and my legs were exposed in sub-zero weather. I was very cold walking to school, especially at -20° Celsius. When I was about 12, Ingeborg gave me back some dresses I had brought from Germany, and I used them to make a skirt.

I often wondered at Ingeborg’s beautiful clothes. Her nails were perfectly manicured, and she looked impeccable. She spent a lot of time and money beautifying herself. She not only neglected me, but she purposely harmed me.

Ingeborg worked as a cashier at a grocery store, and when she went to work, she left me lists of things to do. One day she wanted me to do the dusting. I was still dusting when she came home, but she looked around and said, “You didn’t dust.”

I said, “I dusted.”

“You are lying! You did not dust!”

My heart sped up. I felt frightened and vulnerable. “I’m not lying! I really did dust.”

She lunged at me. “You are lying!” she screamed. A hard slap landed on my face. I raised my arms and ducked, but she pummelled me like a punching bag. Her hands grabbed me. I jerked like a ragdoll as she heaved me against the wall. She kept slapping, pushing, even kicking me and screaming all the while that I had lied and hadn’t done what she told me to do. I lay curled against the wall, crying, wailing, begging for mercy, with my arms wrapped around my head for meagre protection. Suddenly a huge blow landed across my back and sent crushing pain through me. I could hardly breathe. I realized she had grabbed the broom and was bringing it down with all her force on me, again and again, until the handle snapped.