Читать книгу I Know What You Are: Part 2 of 3: The true story of a lonely little girl abused by those she trusted most - Jane Smith, Taylor Edison - Страница 5

Rajan was Kurdish. He had only been in England for about six months and although he didn’t speak much English, we managed to communicate quite well. I still felt as though I was going through the break-up of my relationship with Tom, and when Rajan tried to kiss me in the park one day, I felt really uncomfortable. I was shocked too, not because I realised that there was anything wrong with a 27-year-old man trying to kiss a 12-year-old girl, but because it didn’t seem right for him to be doing it in front of little Zoe. Despite having only a very hazy idea of what was okay and what wasn’t in terms of my relationships with other people, I was adamant that I didn’t want to play around while she was with me. In fact, although it was nice to have someone to talk to, I went to the park to play with Zoe and that was all I really wanted to do while I was there.

After that first attempt to kiss me, Rajan kept asking me to go to the park on my own, and when I eventually agreed and went there alone one afternoon, he kissed me and touched me. I didn’t like what he was doing. It made me feel embarrassed and uneasy. Although I didn’t really know anything about Rajan, and I didn’t usually pick up on things that lay below the surface with people, I had a sense that he was like a tightly wound coil and might explode into anger if I said the wrong thing. I don’t suppose I would have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was a bit like my mum in that respect. He had the same sort of tension inside him and his eyes didn’t always smile when his mouth did. But my experiences at primary school had taught me to be wary of upsetting people in case they shouted at me and I was quite scared of him, which is why I didn’t have the courage to tell him to stop.

In fact, I didn’t really like Rajan. I certainly didn’t feel the same way about him as I had done about Tom. I know it sounds odd to say this, considering the circumstances of my relationship with Tom, but I always felt safe when I was with him. Whereas Rajan had a slightly predatory, boy-approaching-girl attitude towards me that I didn’t like at all.

I looked as young as I was, or even younger, but when I told him, the first time we met, that I was 12 years old he said that was a good thing, because it meant that I was a virgin. I didn’t really know why that would matter to him, until I eventually gave in to his constant pressure and thinly-veiled bullying and went back to his flat one day. I had only ever had anal sex with Tom, so it really was the first time for me. But, for some reason, I didn’t bleed.

Rajan was angry with me afterwards, shouting at me and calling me dirty. Suddenly, he didn’t look handsome at all, with his lips pulled into a thin line of disgust, and he yelled at me, ‘You are not a virgin! Why do you lie to me? How many men did you sleep with?’

I was frightened by his reaction and by his obvious revulsion. He was the second man I had been intimate with and the second man who had been angry with me afterwards. Once again, I thought I had done something wrong and felt as ashamed as if I really had had sex with countless other men, as Rajan seemed to be so convinced I had.

Unfortunately, I was very unworldly – even for a 12-year-old – and easily intimidated, so I didn’t have the confidence to walk away. Instead, I went back to his flat the next time he asked me – which he did a couple of days later, despite his apparent disgust – and on many occasions after that. I didn’t agree to go because having sex with Rajan was a pleasant experience. It never was. In fact, I didn’t ever feel anything, except for a strange sensation that I can only describe as like watching from outside my own body. Perhaps it was an early sign of the dissociation I began to experience much later as a reaction to extreme stress.

It’s an odd feeling being with someone who wants to have sex with you but doesn’t seem to like you. Obviously, I’ve only experienced life from my own perspective as someone with Asperger’s, so I don’t know how someone else would feel in that situation, or if anyone else would keep going back the way I did. Because Rajan wasn’t kind to me in any way. He always insisted that I had to have a shower at his flat before we had sex. And as the water was always cold and he wouldn’t allow me to touch his towels, I had to stand, naked and shivering, afterwards until my body had dripped dry. I wasn’t permitted to eat in his flat either, I assumed for the same reason – because he thought I was dirty and didn’t want me soiling his plates and cutlery. Looking back on it now, I think it wasn’t only me that disgusted him. I think he was disgusted by himself too. That would explain why he was always angry with me after we had had sex, and why he sometimes pushed me around aggressively and said nasty, hurtful things.

It’s unnerving not being able to understand other people’s reactions. There are lots of things very young children can’t make any sense of. But because they don’t yet have any conscious concept of cause and effect or of being able to work things out for themselves, they don’t even try. For someone with autism, however, knowing that you need to be able to read and interpret people’s reactions but not being able to do so is frustrating, and often very disheartening. So I was confused by the contradictory way Rajan treated me: on the one hand, he often said unkind things to me; on the other, I knew that he must care about me, otherwise he wouldn’t want to have sex with me. Ultimately though, because I believed he was my boyfriend, I simply accepted it all and told myself it was stupid to allow any of it to upset me. But even if you manage not to be actively upset by something like that, you can’t do anything about the fact that it creates a little empty hole in your soul.

It was because I believed Rajan and I were in a relationship that I pushed Tom away when he came round to our house one day and tried to kiss me. ‘It wouldn’t be right,’ I told him, probably echoing something I had heard someone say on the TV. ‘I’m going out with someone else now.’ That’s how grown-up I thought I was. I had learned what I knew about ‘love and relationships’ from the TV and magazines and, at the age of 12, I was worried about cheating on one abuser by kissing another.

I don’t know how Rajan justified our relationship to himself. Perhaps he didn’t even bother trying. I do know that his friends objected to it. Although they always spoke their own language in front of me, they gesticulated a lot when they were talking and I could tell the first time they met me that they disapproved and were arguing with him. But Rajan just shrugged his shoulders and said something that made some of them laugh.

I often caught his friends looking at me after that, usually with expressions of contempt, and they used to send him texts telling him to meet them in the park, but always on his own. I know they wanted him to stop seeing me and I resented them and felt hurt at the time. Looking back on it now though, I realise that his friends had a morality Rajan didn’t share.

One day, he told me that he was going to take me to a nightclub. I was incredibly excited. Somehow, I managed to persuade Mum that I needed some new clothes, and her friend Sid offered to take me shopping in town. Sid was quite a bit older than Mum and a genuinely nice man who was always very good to me. I think I told him I had been invited to a party with some friends who were a couple of years older and that I wanted to impress them. He was obviously a bit worried about it and when he quizzed me, quite gently, I admitted that they could be as old as 15 or even 16, which didn’t sound great when I was just 12, but was considerably better than the truth. I don’t think Sid approved, but he still took me shopping.

I really enjoyed spending that day with him. It was just the two of us, and after he had bought me some cropped cargo pants and make-up, he took me out for lunch. We didn’t ever do it again though, because when we got home Mum accused Sid of ‘sniffing around’ me and they had a huge row. ‘Why on earth is he spending money on you? What does he really want from you?’ she shouted at me afterwards, as if it had all been my idea for Sid to take me shopping, when in fact she was the one who had set it up so that she didn’t have to be bothered with it herself. Her reaction was ironic too, when you think that she didn’t ever ask me where I had been or who I had been with when I was having sex with Rajan at his flat.

Mum’s anger ruined what had otherwise been a really nice day for me. And although Sid was very offended by what she was implying, it did make him think about how it might appear to other people. And I suppose it was because he was wary of being labelled a nonce that he never took me out alone again. It was a shame, for both of us – for Sid because he wasn’t able to have children of his own and had obviously enjoyed playing the role of someone’s dad, and for me because I didn’t have a dad and had enjoyed being treated like a daughter.

The other bad thing about that whole incident was that Rajan didn’t take me to a nightclub after all. I don’t know what made me think he would. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been allowed in anyway, being a 12-year-old who looked even younger, even when I was all dressed up in my new clothes and make-up. But I didn’t realise that at the time, and I was very disappointed.

Mum didn’t have real boyfriends, as far as I’m aware. So she and Sid were only ever friends. At least, that’s what she always swore was the case, with Sid and with all the other men who drifted in and out of her life. Most of them didn’t stick around for very long. Mum does a lot of banter with men and insults them in a way I think they find amusing at first, but that eventually starts to get under their skin, so they stop seeing her. But Sid was different from most of the others. He had a sarcastic sense of humour and could easily hold his own with Mum. In fact, some of the things he said could be quite harsh and he made me cry on at least a couple of occasions – once, by calling me fat. It wasn’t malicious at all. He was a middle-aged man without a wife or daughters and he didn’t realise how sensitive girls of my age are about things like that. I know he was devastated when I burst into tears. In fact, he was so upset that he went out and bought me some chocolates to try to make amends – which was a very kind gesture, although perhaps not the best choice of present for someone you’ve just called fat!

Mum had another long-term friendship, with a guy called Derek who ran a charity shop. In fact, it was Derek who provided me with most of my clothes when I was a child, except for the ones Mum bought for me on the rare occasions when she took me shopping in town. Mum spent a lot of time at Derek’s shop and when I went down there with her, he would let me rummage through the bags of clothes that had just come in and pick out any odds and ends I wanted. Most of the clothes I chose were too big for me, so made me feel less self-conscious about my body. Because I thought I had boobs – although it was actually just puppy fat – I wore push-up bras and low-cut tops, either with cargo pants or maxi skirts, to cover up my legs, which I was really self-conscious about.

I had only been seeing Rajan for a few weeks when social services began to take an interest in me. I think Mum got a letter asking why I wasn’t attending school. There were periods during my childhood when I don’t remember Mum being there at all. It’s possible that she was there, physically if not emotionally, and I just don’t remember the things that she said and did. But I do know that I rarely saw her at that particular time. I used to go out – to the park or to Rajan’s flat – as soon as I woke up in the mornings and come home on the last bus at night. So I don’t know if she actually had a visit from social services. All I do know is that she told me one day that a taxi would be coming to the house the following morning to pick me up and take me to school. I can’t remember whether she actually threatened me with the care home on that occasion – as she still often did when I refused to do something she had told me to do. But I do remember realising that it wasn’t something that was open for discussion, and that, this time, I didn’t have any choice.

I hated that school. It was a special school for children with a whole range of learning difficulties and physical disabilities. Asperger syndrome is at the lower end of the autism spectrum, and although people with it can have specific difficulties such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or attention deficit disorder, they tend not to have the same kind of learning disabilities that accompany many other types of autism. But, despite the fact that I didn’t have any problems with learning, I was put in a class for severely autistic children. I suppose no one knew what else to do with me. The schools for ‘naughty’ kids won’t take anyone who hasn’t been in the care system or in trouble with the police. And as I didn’t have any track record in that respect, having simply slipped through the net before then, I think they just dumped me at that school to get me off the truancy register at the secondary school I should have gone to.

I was very sexually aware by that time and I would sometimes go behind the bike sheds with the boys. Apparently it’s not uncommon for children with autism to be sexually precocious, not least because they don’t understand that certain types of behaviour are inappropriate in a normal social setting. And as they were boys of my age, it was only really what I suppose you would call ‘normal’ sexual exploration. So although I did get into trouble for it with the teachers, they didn’t seem to be too bothered about it. Which was unfortunate, in a way, because it meant that my behaviour didn’t raise any particular red flags that might have led to a discussion about why I was acting the way I was. Even so, I’m sure everyone heaved a huge collective sigh of relief when I decided, after a couple of months, that even being sent to the sort of care home described by Mum would be better than being at that school, and I simply stopped going.

Outside of school, I was continuing my ‘adult’ relationship with Rajan. I was still living at home, but I was independent in many ways by that time and was coming and going more or less as I wanted. I always borrowed Mum’s phone whenever I was going into town on my own, and with a phone in my backpack, a boyfriend who was more than twice my age, and a mum who didn’t set any boundaries for me, I thought I was all grown-up. I think that was another reason why I couldn’t get my head around going to school, particularly a school for children with problems!

Mum met Rajan quite early on in our ‘relationship’. Her only comment after I had introduced her to the 27-year-old man I was spending all my time with was, ‘Aahh. I’m really glad you’ve got a friend.’ She needed her own space, I suppose. And, to be fair, Mum had problems of her own.

She didn’t really know how to look after me and, without any family members other than her cousin Cora to support her, she wasn’t coping very well. I used to think it was just me she couldn’t cope with – I’m sure it isn’t easy trying to look after a child with Asperger syndrome, particularly when you’re a single parent on your own. But I realised when I was older that there were many other aspects of life she struggled to deal with. So I can understand how she might have welcomed the opportunity to get a break from me. Perhaps, though, being relieved that her 12-year-old daughter had an adult boyfriend was a step too far, even if that daughter hadn’t had the communication and interaction disabilities that handicapped me.

I know Mum felt very guilty about it all. She has always been quick to criticise anyone with children who goes away even for a weekend without them. So she did try to be present in body, if not in spirit. I think she consoled herself, too, with the thought that although I was difficult to deal with, she was doing her job as a mother by not asking anyone else for help. In retrospect, it might have been better if she had.

Mum always told people – including me, on many occasions – that she really was doing her best for me and that I had always ‘sabotaged’ her relationships with my difficult behaviour. I think it was her use of the word sabotaged that particularly upset me, because of its implication of deliberate acts on my behalf. She was certainly very convincing though. I know Cora had looked up Asperger syndrome when I was first diagnosed with it and that she understood the effects it had on me. But even Cora believed that her first loyalty should be to Mum, and she did try to support her in any way she could, despite her own mental-health issues. The result of it all was that, by the time I was 12, I had accepted that I was a badly behaved, inconsiderate and very difficult child who fully deserved to be branded the black sheep of the family.

As I got older, I realised that Mum wasn’t really to blame for her rapid mood swings – which I found incredibly stressful – or for any of the other manifestations of the bad experiences she must have had when she was a child. When Mum was about the same age I was when I started seeing Rajan, she was taken into care when her mother got a new partner. She must have felt as though she had been abandoned by the one person in the world who should have put her needs above those of anyone else. It probably also explained what made her think she was doing her best for me, because whatever else Mum did or didn’t get right, she didn’t ever abandon me, which, in her eyes, was the single worst thing that could possibly happen to a child.

Obviously, because of what had been going on with Tom, I did need the intervention of social services, and Mum needed help too. But, to Mum, asking anyone for help would have meant she had failed. And she couldn’t have coped with that. So we stumbled on with our lives, making a terrible mess of it all in our own, individual ways.

Even after I stopped going to school, I wasn’t happy. I decided it must be because I was in the wrong relationship. So I decided to drop Rajan and go out with another guy, called Naseer. I think Rajan was relieved when I told him I didn’t want to be with him anymore. I had begun to sense that he was getting tired of me, which is what gave me the confidence to start chatting to Naseer and then to break things off with Rajan. I’m pretty sure he would have ditched me before too long. So I saved him the trouble and, coincidentally, made his disapproving friends happy too.

Naseer worked in a local kebab shop. He was a bit closer to my age, at 18, good-looking, much taller than most of the other Afghan boys, and quite fair-skinned. He had come to England, from a refugee camp in Afghanistan, as an unaccompanied 14-year-old asylum seeker, hidden in the back of a lorry on a long, arduous and very frightening journey through Iran and Turkey into Europe. When he finally reached the UK, he was looked after for the next four years by a foster family. As a result of coming over at such a relatively young age and going to school here, he spoke good English and had more of an English sense of humour than many of his friends. I was impressed by the stories he told me about his adventures, and by the fact that he had his own car.

We went for a drive on our first date. It was my time of the month and I was wearing a sanitary towel, so I refused to have sex with him in the car as he wanted me to do, although I didn’t tell him why. The embarrassment I had felt about having my periods at primary school had left its mark and I would have found it very uncomfortable trying to explain it to him. It didn’t require me to have fully functioning emotional radar to be able to pick up on the fact that he was annoyed about it. Afterwards, he told his friends and everyone at the park that I wasn’t a girl at all, and for a while they all called me ‘Boy’ and made fun of me.

Naseer’s friends often went with him in his car when he did deliveries for the kebab shop and, after a while, I started to go too. The first time I slid on to the front seat to sit beside him, one of the other men asked me coldly, ‘Who do you think you are? Where are you getting these ideas from? Move!’ Apparently, I had failed to pick up on the unspoken rule that only girls who were the established girlfriends of specific men were allowed to sit in the front of the car. The girls at the bottom of the pecking order – the younger ones, of 15 and 16, who were passed around amongst Naseer’s friends – always sat in the back. I was somewhere between the two, but still definitely a back-seat girl.

Most of the other girls who hung out with Naseer and his friends had grown up on council estates in the area, and although I had a regional accent that wasn’t very different from theirs, it was different enough for them to notice. Which meant that, as usual, I didn’t fit into any category: to the front-seat girls, I was beneath their contempt and they completely ignored me; to the back-seat girls, I was a snob. I was a bit more popular with the boys, however, I think because I was younger than all the others and they thought I was ‘cute’.

One evening, a couple of weeks after our first date, we were all crammed into Naseer’s car while he was making his deliveries when he suddenly called over his shoulder to me, ‘We’re going to stop off at my flat. I want to fuck you.’ I was very embarrassed because he had said it so openly, but I was used to being humiliated. So when he pulled up outside his flat, we left the others in the car, smoking weed and listening to music, while we went upstairs.

Naseer was quite gentle and didn’t hurt me when we had sex. As soon as he had zipped up his trousers, however, he became irritable and impatient. ‘I have deliveries to make,’ he snapped at me when I told him I was going to have a quick wash. ‘There isn’t time for you to wash. Or do that.’ He scowled at me as I sat on the edge of his bed trying to re-thread the shoelace that had come loose from one of the Doc Martens I always wore.

‘It’s okay,’ I told him quickly. ‘I’ll take them off. I’ll just walk down the stairs in my bare feet.’

‘No, keep them on.’ He sounded really angry. ‘There isn’t time for this.’

I am not the most co-ordinated of people at the best of times, and I’m even worse when I’m under pressure. So I stumbled as I followed him down the stairs, even though I was trying really hard not to trip over my shoelaces. When we got to the car, everyone laughed at me, because they knew what we had done and because one of them called me ‘a retard’ for not tying the laces on my shoes.

Rajan had sometimes pushed me around and often said unkind things to me, but he was never physically violent. Whereas Naseer was volatile and the first man I had been with who made me feel really nervous. He smoked a lot of weed, so his moods could change in the blink of an eye from cheerful to aggressive. It was a trait he shared with many of the other boys who had come to this country from refugee camps. I could always tell which of them had spent their childhood in the camps, because they were the ones who were quick-tempered and unpredictable.

It was often small things that gave it away. For example, if there was ever a sudden loud noise, there would be a split-second when you could see the paralysing fear in their eyes, and then they would go ballistic. They all had different triggers. For some, it was a door slamming or a pan being dropped on the floor. The earliest childhood memories for many of them were of the sound of bombs exploding and of waiting to see where the next one would fall. So it wasn’t surprising they reacted the way they did to anything unexpected. They might learn to live with the horrific memories of those childhood experiences, but they wouldn’t ever recover completely from the psychological damage that living in the refugee camps had caused.

Most of Naseer’s friends could be aggressive, and they were all paranoid about people making fun of them. Several of them were dealing in drugs – mostly weed and sometimes a bit of coke. So they were also paranoid about getting caught. So much so, in fact, that they seemed to believe there were coppers watching them on every street corner. I was with Naseer and his friends on more than one occasion when someone came to do a deal with them and they noticed a stranger glance in their direction as he walked past and beat the crap out of their would-be customer. It was because they thought he had brought someone with him, although I don’t know if they were more afraid of getting caught or of being stabbed in the back. So, despite the laughing and joking around, there was always an underlying tension and hostility, which smoking copious amounts of weed didn’t really help to control.

During the four years Naseer had lived in England, he had absorbed many aspects of the British way of life. But he still retained some of the more traditional ideas from his own culture that he had grown up with. And because he had very strict views about how women should behave, a lot of the things I did made him angry.