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 6

Naseer hated me showing my teeth when I laughed. The first time he noticed me doing it, his eyes narrowed and seemed to darken until they were almost black. Then he grabbed hold of me with one hand and shoved the fingers of his other hand into my mouth. He did it with so much aggressive force that he scratched the back of my throat and made me gag. He smiled and made a joke out of it afterwards, and although he had really hurt me, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make a fuss in front of his friends. I knew he was really angry and I was confused about what I had done wrong. After the same thing had happened a few more times, I learned to cover my mouth with my hand whenever I laughed.

Another thing that made Naseer angry was if I used my left hand when I was eating. Muslims use the left hand for doing things like cooking, cleaning and washing themselves after they’ve been to the loo. Whereas the right hand is reserved for ‘clean’ activities, like shaking hands and eating. It was a rule I often forgot, and whenever I picked up food with my left hand, he would snatch it and then smack me, hard.

Once, when we were going up in the lift to his flat, I said something that offended him and he banged my head against the metal wall. I hadn’t been intentionally rude. I think we had been joking around and I had failed to notice the line that was often invisible to me but always drawn somewhere in the sand that divided joke from insult. His sudden attack took me completely by surprise and I didn’t even have time to raise my hands to try to protect my head. Which was probably just as well, because he smashed my head so hard against the wall of the lift that my fingers might have been crushed if they had been in the way. He still slept with me though, when we got inside his flat – on the filthy sheet that always covered his bed and without using a condom. And I still did what he wanted me to do, even though my head was throbbing painfully, because the idea of doing anything else never crossed my mind.

Although Naseer’s friends didn’t speak much English, I knew when they were making jokes at my expense. They often laughed in my face and called me a retard, which was a word they had learned from the girls who hung out with them. It was a label I accepted, to some extent, because there was no denying in my mind that I was a bit fat and a bit slow. What they didn’t realise, however, was that I wasn’t slow because I was stupid. It was just that I was afraid of saying anything in case I had misjudged their mood and said something they didn’t like. So every time I opened my mouth to speak, I second-guessed myself, thinking, ‘I had better not say that. It might be the wrong thing.’ Then I would sit there with my mouth open while I ran through in my head all the possible negative consequences of whatever I had been about to say and end up, almost invariably, not saying nothing at all. But because they were the only people in my world, I took it for granted that they were right and that I was, if not completely stupid, certainly a bit intellectually inadequate.

They were always doing things to humiliate me and make me look and feel even more dim-witted. And I was always falling into the traps they set for me, like an unwitting participant in some sort of Groundhog Day. For example, they would offer me a can of beer, as if they were being casually friendly, and when I drank from it I would get a mouthful of cigarette ends. Or they would hide my shoes, then laugh at me when I searched for them and ask me if I had forgotten where I put them. Or they would open the bathroom when I was on the loo – the lock had been broken during a drunken party at the flat – so that everyone could see me sitting there with my knickers around my ankles.

Naseer often laughed at me too, and sometimes he was quite cruel. Although he had hurt me physically on several occasions, he hadn’t ever given me a proper beating. But I knew he was capable of doing it, and I soon learned to switch off my emotions and do whatever he told me to do. So, one day, when he told me to give him a blowjob in the front seat of his car in broad daylight, I slipped automatically into robot mode and didn’t even bother to object or try to argue with him. What he knew but I hadn’t noticed, however, was that his car was parked right next to a bus full of passengers. Naseer was off his head on speed or coke at the time and he thought it was hilarious when I looked up and saw the expression on the faces of the people sitting on the bus just a few feet away. But I was mortified, and very hurt that he thought it was funny to humiliate me like that.

Mum hadn’t ever done anything to build up my confidence, and after spending time with Naseer and his friends, I started to hate myself even more than I had done before. I would sometimes watch the other girls and wonder why they didn’t feel intimidated like I did. It was only later that I realised they were probably just better at hiding it. They were certainly better at learning the unspoken rules. Somehow, they were able to back-chat and flirt but always stopped before they got a punch in the mouth. They could obviously read the boys really well, which was something I was totally unable to do, however hard I tried.

Everyone was always laughing and joking around. But if I told a joke, the others would either not react at all because they didn’t understand it – sometimes because of the language barrier – or they would take it the wrong way and be angry. On one occasion, the other girls were messing about, calling one of the boys a ‘wanker’ and accusing another of ‘fucking his brother’, and everyone was laughing. Then I joined in and called one of them a ‘bastard’, which, to me, seemed far less insulting than what had already been said. What I didn’t know, however, was that the word had a cultural significance to the boys. For a split-second, it seemed as though everyone was holding their breath. Then the boys turned on me, shouting and threatening to kick me out and never speak to me again. It was that sort of thing – which occurred often in one form or another – that made me feel like I was always walking on eggshells with Naseer and with his friends.

Eventually, I learned that it really was better to say nothing at all. As I became used to feeling like the invisible member of their group, I actually turned my head if someone did talk to me, to look over my shoulder at the person I expected to see standing behind me who they were actually addressing. I wanted to be with them because I wanted to be with someone. But because they didn’t seem to see me as another human being like them, I began to feel as though I really wasn’t a real person anymore.

I slept at home every night and would get up at about 10 or 11 every morning to go to the park, where I would read my book while I waited for Naseer to wake up and text me to tell me what time to meet him. His flat was in a tower block on a council estate that must have been grim even 50 years ago when it was built. I usually got there at about 5 p.m., so that we could have sex before he went to work. Afterwards, he would turn away from me on to his side and fall instantly asleep. Then I would lie on my