Читать книгу Running From The Devil - How I Survived a Stolen Childhood - Sara Davies - Страница 11

On my fifth birthday, my father forced me to take the day off school, as he did most days. He waited until my mother had left for work, put me into a pretty little red dress and told me that he was taking me out for the day. The entire time he kept on assuring me that he had a very big surprise for me. On the way, he explained to me that I’d have to stay with his girlfriend Emma for a while, as he needed to run some errands. It was nothing unusual, as he often left me with her for short periods of time while Mum was at work. Emma seemed to be a nice enough woman, but what I didn’t realise at the time was that she was a hooker.

I was very excited, not knowing what we were about to do. I’m going to get a big birthday treat, I was thinking. But, as the minutes went by, I soon realised that what I was about to experience was quite the opposite. Emma took me with her to see one of her clients. At first, I was curious as to why she’d taken me to a tool shop for my birthday surprise and I was even more baffled when the man there handed her a large sum of money. It quickly became obvious what was going to happen when she took me behind the shop and forced me down on to a workbench. After tying me to this, they shoved a dirty cloth in my mouth. The man paced about the room, then took out some tools from his kit, as I kicked and struggled as much as I could. At the time, I knew that it was wrong, if only because my dad had said that he was the only person on earth allowed to touch me in those places. I was filled with fear and physical pain, not knowing what else he might do to me or if I’d be leaving that place alive.

What I did know is that I needed to get out of there, so I persevered with my battle and eventually Emma gave in, untying me while he was in the toilet. I ran as fast as I could towards the door, but it seemed to be so far away. Running past electrical tools really put the fear of God in me – they always seemed so loud and dangerous. Yet they were not as threatening to me as he was. He was behind me now, so close that I could feel and smell his tobacco-reeking breath on the back of my neck. I was running to that door with all the speed that my tiny legs could summon. I put everything I had into getting out of that shop and away from them. It seemed to take for ever, because with every step that I took he was right there behind me, breathing down my neck, getting closer to me and shouting, ‘Stop right now, you little bitch! Stop, you filthy little whore!’

It was a dingy electrical tools store, so cold, dark and grubby, in the middle of a busy high street. No wonder the shop was closed in the middle of the day – he probably never had any customers. He was a scruffy, dirty old man with crooked teeth and ripped trousers without a zip. I’ll never forget his face; I’ve never seen a man so ugly. I could just about see the door now but he was so near I had no choice but to bite him. I can still remember his scream and, when I think about it now, he even sounded like a pervert. I must have torn his skin, because as many times as I tried to brush away the taste I could still taste the dirt from his hands in my mouth days later. As he whimpered in pain, I crawled between his legs and scrambled outside. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw my mum. I blinked, rubbed my eyes and smiled with joy and such relief when I spotted her standing on the other side of the road. There she was, taking her lunch break from work, and saving my life.

In a great panic, I ran to her, totally oblivious to the cars that were coming towards me. Mum screamed at the drivers to stop and I reached her safely. I went straight into great detail about what had just happened to me, wailing and collapsing into her arms. She took me to the local GP, who, after examining me, told her to tell my dad to keep me away from strange men, and sent me home with some antibiotics. Wow, although it seems like yesterday to me, I can see just how different things were back then. That wouldn’t happen nowadays; instead, the doctor would call social services straight away.

How I hated taking those antibiotics, but I used to be on them all the time. I know why now, but back then I used to think there was something seriously wrong with me physically. I never thought that it was being caused by my father. No wonder I was a hypochondriac! I always had something wrong with me, even when I was healthy, and even at that age I was always in pain somewhere. I suppose all those vaginal infections didn’t help. Mum used to go mad at me for not wiping myself properly when I went to the toilet. ‘I’m fed up with taking you to the doctor’s, Sara,’ she’d say.

That was a line I would hear from her regularly. But, while she was dragging me off to the toilet and showing me how to wipe myself, little did she know that it had nothing at all to do with my personal hygiene. I knew exactly how to use the toilet; if only she could have guessed that it was all down to being left alone with my father and what he was doing to me while she was gone.

When Dad came home, in the middle of the night, Mum told him what had happened with Emma earlier that day and he got very angry. He beat her up severely, hitting her time after time, slapping, kicking and punching her and accusing her, ‘Yuh just jealous of Emma. Yuh have to make tings up feh mess up my shit, yuh jealous bitch.’

I now know that he knew the truth about what they were going to do to me. He must have, because if my kid had run away like I had I would have gone home straight away to check if she was there, but he waited until the middle of the night to come back. He was beating my mother out of guilt, covering his tracks again, trying to protect himself against getting into any trouble, and she paid the price for trying to look after me. How could he? He really scared me. Sometimes I would look at him and wonder if he was the Devil.

He left the house after beating Mum, and she went straight to bed. Carl and I tried to comfort her but we knew that she was in awful pain and all she wanted was to be left alone. Her eyes were bruised, her ribs were badly bruised and she could hardly breathe in. He had really hurt her this time, and we were worried for her health. We all hoped that he would be spending the night at his girlfriend’s house but we weren’t so lucky. He came home an hour later, very drunk, and my heart sank because I knew what was coming next.

I heard his footsteps on the landing. He was heading for my room and there was nothing that I, or anyone else, could do about it. He dragged me out of the bed by my nightdress, took me downstairs and beat me with the wire from his precious speakers! The only time he would touch them was when he wanted to beat us, but if we touched them we got a beating. He was whipping me because of his love of women and money, just as he had done so many times in the past. He had hit my brother and me quite often for telling Mum about his other women. I always thought that I was doing the right thing by telling her about Dad sleeping with other women. He used to take us to many places and make us sit at the end of the bed while he went to sleep with his girlfriends. That’s what he used to call it, but even at our age we knew that he was doing more than sleeping.

Only a few weeks before, he had taken the two of us to Emma’s flat, where we had to sit on a deckchair at the end of the bed while it was bouncing up and down and making loads of noise. Then some mice came out of the floorboards and, of course, Carl and I started screaming. Dad jumped out of bed naked and kicked us both in the face. We were silenced straight away, so scared that we cuddled each other and went to sleep. It was the only way we could make the wretched feeling go away: a definite case of mind over matter.

We told Mum what had happened that night and she went crazy at Dad, which resulted in him being very annoyed with us. When she’d gone to work, he made us both stay off school that day. He told us to strip off every single item of clothing and scrub the kitchen floor with a scouring pad and bleach. My knees were sore from the bleach for days afterwards, which is why I wouldn’t have told my mother about what had happened with Emma and her client. And, if she hadn’t been on the other side of the road on her lunch break at that precise moment, she would never have known what happened. I had certainly learned my lesson! But she was there and she saw me running out of the shop, so I had no choice but to tell her.

She tried to stop my father from beating me for telling her about Emma and that creep, but she got punched in her face and fell to the floor. She quickly gave in as she was in enough pain from the beatings she had received earlier on that day and probably couldn’t have taken much more. Mum was very petite, a stunning tiny blonde with beautiful sapphire-blue eyes that were always surrounded by blue and purple eye shadow to cover up her bruises from my father’s beatings. Dad was a very large black man who was very intimidating. His eyes were dark and what should have been their whites were yellow, so he looked very evil and very scary.

After he had finished whipping me with the speaker wire, he sent me back to bed. I ran as fast as I could. I knew that, if I hesitated, or cried too loud, he would call me back and hit me again, so I raced to my room and went straight to sleep, hoping and praying that he would leave me alone for the rest of the night. That time he did and at last I got to sleep, tucked up in my duvet.

When I woke up the following morning, Dad told me that I wasn’t going to school. Mum kissed me goodbye and went off to work. It was strange: they were both acting as though nothing had happened and the fact that my birthday had been ruined didn’t seem to bother them at all. I was surprised at my mother’s strength. She’d received a very severe beating the day before but somehow she had managed to use her make-up to hide the results. The previous day, she had looked as if she had been run over by a truck, but now she’d managed to pull it off once more and make herself look beautiful again. That morning, she was gliding around as though she wasn’t in any pain, but she must have been. She was obviously doing it for his benefit, to make him feel normal and less guilty.

As soon as she left the house, Dad called out to me to come into the room and lie next to him on the sofa – the sofa he slept on all day every day between drinking his super-strength lagers and smoking his marijuana. My brother had gone to school and I was wishing that my father had let me go too, because he was acting stranger than ever. I thought I knew what to expect from him when he called me to the sofa. But this time it was different.

‘Sara, I’m going to show you what that man was going to do to you yesterday,’ he said. ‘I promise you it won’t hurt. Just take off your clothes and lie down.’

I knew that he was going to hurt me. Whether I resisted or not, either way he would hurt me. And whether it was to be a beating or whatever else, he would get his own way, as he had all the power. After all that time of touching me, he had decided that this was the day to cross the line; a time when the word ‘father’ would go out of the window and the word ‘lover’ would come into play.

That day was the first time he truly hurt me. Regardless of how many beatings I’d received from him before, he hurt me deeply, which is why I knew at the time that it was wrong. But I also knew that I couldn’t do a thing to stop him. I remember thinking, He does this to Mummy, I’ve seen him. I wonder if it hurts her too. He is scary. I think he wants to kill me. The pain is unbelievable! I held in my screams, fearful that he might kill me, and I almost chewed my lip off. Then I couldn’t hold it in any longer. ‘Aaah! Mummy, help me, it hurts.’

He looked at me with his evil, cold eyes. ‘Go and get dressed and go sit under the stairs.’With a big sigh of relief, I ran to the stairs. If he really believed that sitting there was punishment compared with what he was doing to me, he must have been crazier than I thought! I sat quietly and waited all day for my mother to come home from work. I was sick a few times, yet, showing no sympathy, all he gave me was a bowl to throw up in. I sat and played quietly with the phone, which wasn’t connected, but I could hear the radio on it playing. That phone gave me a little bit of comfort, but I still panicked that he might hear me playing with it and come and beat me.

It seemed like days rather than hours before Mum arrived home from work. I was so pleased to see her I could have cried, but I knew not to, as he would have got very angry with me for showing her any emotions. He hated to see us cry is what he used to say. I never understood that at all. I used to ask myself why he tried so hard to make us cry if he hated it so much. The way he put it, if you didn’t know him, you’d think that he meant it from a loving father’s point of view. But no, he didn’t like to see us cry because he knew he was causing the pain that we were suffering. In hindsight, I suppose it was the only time he showed any remorse for his actions.

As soon as my mother walked through the door, he started shouting, ‘That girl has been so naughty. Make her eat her dinner and put her straight to bed. I’m going out, I’ll see you all later.’

Mum never asked him what I’d done; she never did. She knew that I wasn’t a naughty child as a rule, but she would never question his authority. She says now that she was petrified of him. So she wouldn’t simply pretend that she’d sent me to bed, just in case he snuck back home to check on us. He’d done that many times before, which is why she knew not to pretend. She’d learned that lesson.

I bolted my dinner and ran off to bed, where I lay thinking about the events of that day, hoping and praying to God that he wouldn’t come home that night and do those things to me again. I believed that I would die from the pain if he did. I soon started to wish that I hadn’t rushed my dinner, as I couldn’t stop throwing up again. I know now it was definitely due to fear, but at the time I thought I had a tummy bug. My hypochondria again!

Mum kept popping in and out to change my bowl and clean me up, but it seemed so pointless because I was so ill that no sooner had she cleaned me up than I was making a mess of myself again. What made it worse was the fact that I felt so ill that I kept on thinking that, if he came home, Mum would tell him how ill I’d been and he would come up to my room to check on me. The fear that he would start touching me and doing again the things that he’d done earlier that day was so immense that, as much as I wanted to stop for that reason, I would throw up time after time.