Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (3 page)

Eventually, I decided to tell my Mammy about what my Uncle was doing. I stood in our small, dirty kitchen with my eyes focused totally on the wallpaper with its pictures of onions and carrots. I felt dirty and bad as I explained to Mammy that my Uncle was ‘tickling’ me in a place I did not like. I can still see her watching me with eyes I had never seen before. This was the woman who had carried me inside herself for almost nine months, the woman who had held me as I was vomiting the week before with a stomach ache. My Mammy stood still, put both her hands firmly on my shoulders and looked me directly in my eyes as she hissed:

‘If you ever tell this to your Dad, he will kill my brother and then he will go to jail
and you will have no daddy
! Is
that
what you want, Janey? Are you sure you know what you are saying? Don’t you
ever
talk to me like that again!’

I stood completely still and held my breath.

The emotions I had been feeling before I told her were totally re-confirmed. It was entirely my fault – just mine – and that’s the way it would always be. I knew then that I had to live with the shame and shoulder the blame: a big responsibility for a child who could only draw well, play football and run fast but never fast enough.

I had already begun to cut myself and pull chunks out of my hair. At first I would just scratch my arm with a piece of broken glass then, after doing that for a while, I would sometimes gouge a little deeper. My Mammy and Dad told me off when they found big scratches on my arms and tufts of hair under my bed; but I would always have some excuse to cover the truth.

Soon, my Uncle David Percy took the abuse further by penetrating me. I was being raped regularly. There are no words or sentences or paragraphs which can describe the pain and feeling of suffocation. I would lie there stiff as a board and clench both my fists. I would push my fingernails into the palms of my hands, hear the blood rushing through my ears and feel my heart pounding with fear. His hands always smelled of tobacco smoke and, with his rough fingers, he would rapidly pull off my panties. I would turn my face to the side and focus on the multi-coloured swirly wallpaper. As he pushed himself into my body I would imagine I was melting into that patterned wall. The pain would become intense but the worst feeling was the suffocation as he lay completely on top of me, sometimes covering my face. I had started to try to look him in the eyes, as I knew he hated this, but sometimes he would put a pillow on my face as he raped me. I can clearly remember contemplating suicide at this age. I was six. I decided the best way to do it was to throw myself on the main road and get hit by a car.

* * *

I had short brown curly hair and everyone confused me with a boy. I did not want to be a girl. Girls had something men liked so men touched them there. I did not want to be a girl. I denied any of my gender traits for fear it would attract more abusers. I didn’t care what happened to me. I would be the one who would climb onto fast-moving lorries that left my street every day from the local creamery and trundled down the main road with me hanging on precariously. I would climb the creamery wall to find a metal bar or girder to tie a rope for a swing and leap down off a high wall. Nothing scared me except being with my Uncle. I was always nervous, constantly shaking, biting my nails, forever clinging to my Mammy, trying hard to follow her wherever she went. But, when I was among other kids, I was fearless.

One hot summer day – so hot the black tarmac on the road was actually starting to melt – we were playing rounders. I stood with a baseball bat in my hand ready to whack the ball. Out of the corner of my eye I suddenly spotted a wee black mongrel dog that belonged to our neighbour Mr McGregor racing through the kids. I knew this dog was a tad loony. It was usually kept on a leash. But today it dodged and weaved through all the kids until it stopped stock-still and faced me. It snarled and barked and snarled, then took one giant leap forward and bit into my hands as I held the bat. I thought
It’s got rabies!
coz I had recently seen a rabid dog on TV. It was all blood and pain and saliva and bubbles and teeth and I dropped the bat and started screaming in terror as the blood pumped furiously out of my right hand which the dog was still biting into. The pain from his pointed teeth digging into the back and palm of my hand was unbelievable. I picked up the bat in my left hand and battered the dog on the head to force it to release its grip. The other kids were all shouting out:

‘Mr Currie! Mr Currie!’

My Dad was on a night-shift that day, so he was lying in his bed with the window open because it was so hot and he heard and recognised my screams amid all the other kids who were shouting. He ran barefoot down the hot sticky-tar street, swept me up and carried me running back to our house as Mr McGregor arrived and leashed the dog. My Dad ran down to the Waverley pub where my Mammy’s younger brother was drinking and Uncle James took me to hospital in his lorry to have the wounds all over my hand stitched. I still have the scars.

I was heartbroken when I heard the wee dog had had to be destroyed by the vet, but my Dad had caused such a scene with poor Mr McGregor who had been tending his garden when the dog ran out into the street. Mr McGregor apologised profusely but Dad was ready to kill the dog himself. It all seemed a bit strange and unexpected to me because our dog Major – always hungry and angry – had bitten at least four people in Kenmore Street and nothing had been done about it. I never wanted that wee black mongrel to be killed on my account and I felt guilty every time I saw old McGregor in the street after that.
I was responsible for getting his wee pet killed
. But the good thing was that he was so embarrassed he let me help him in his beautiful, well-tended garden and even allowed me to play in his back court – something that was normally sacrilege, as he hated kids in his back court.

Each of the blockhouses in the street had a back courtyard area. During the summer months, all the mothers would come round the back courts puffing on their cigarettes and the kids would put on a show for them, using washing lines draped with sheets as stage curtains. I could not really sing so I would impersonate some of the local women, dressing up in my Mammy’s clothes and talking like a wee Glasgow housewife, a floral headscarf tied tight with a big bow under my chin and a big brown handbag with one strap swinging on my arm. I would sing drunken songs and swagger about knocking kids over as I shouted out husbands’ names. I remembered all the recent titbits of gossip and would blurt them all out and my Mammy would gasp and hold her face in shame. But I loved to shock. I could tell my words had hit home when some of the women burst into fits of laughter and others just silently smiled. My performances would infuriate the mothers whom I chose to ape, but would get claps of delight from the mothers I had left out of my comedy sketches. I loved those days of complete innocence, playing outside in the streets or working at school, especially when I could draw or paint.

At that time, the
Sunday Post
newspaper ran a weekly competition: every week, a child would have a drawing published and their school would be awarded an encyclopaedia. My new teacher Miss Miller had encouraged me to draw a picture of the dark winter mornings in which Scottish children had to walk to school – some kids had recently been knocked down by cars in the gloom. I drew a
good
picture with my right hand and Miss Miller was so pleased she sent it off to the
Sunday Post
. It won the competition and our headmaster invited me into his office. I was so excited at the prospect of bringing something good to the school and, when I was led into the headmaster’s office by slightly built Miss Miller with her round-rimmed glasses, I was deeply impressed. The room was very imposing; very official-looking and the walls were covered in big bookshelves. The headmaster Mr Maitland stood by his desk and welcomed me in. He looked down at me with an air of grave authority and explained that the prize encyclopaedia was to be presented to the school at a special end-of-term ceremony but, as I did not have a proper uniform, the head boy would present the prize to the school instead of me.

I stood and looked down, ashamed at my dress, humiliated, yet I felt no real disappointment: I was used to that feeling of worthlessness. Miss Miller tried to protest, but was quickly put down. She took me out of the office trying to mask her anger, but I could tell she was annoyed. She bent down, held me close and told me:

‘Forget about the school, Janey. One day, you will be on stage and everyone will see you and clap.’

I felt better as Miss Miller walked me all the way back to class holding my hand tightly, like she was willing me to stay afloat in this shit world she was forced to have a part in. At the special end-of-term ceremony, I watched our shiny, well-dressed head boy in his smart blazer hand over my prize to a smiling headmaster as the school cheered on. I did not feel too bad after the event. I already had no self-esteem.
Why should they let a girl like me be up there?
I sometimes imagined other people could see the bad girl inside me. Those were the words that my Uncle spat out as he raped me.

‘You’re a
bad
girl! You’re a
bad
girl!’

I knew I was the girl who came to school with sperm on her jumper.

I walked out of the school hall that day with my hand-made Christmas calendar in my hand, all glitter and cotton wool. I felt something sad inside me but was not quite sure what it was. Christmas passed and I told no one at home about the prize-giving. I felt it was not really worth discussing. I knew it would upset my Mammy if I told her. She and my Dad were the reason I was so shabbily dressed; I did not want them to feel this strange, cold sadness I had inside of me.

* * *

My main ambition at the time was to own a bike on which I could ride outside and away from home. This was impossible with the family budget, but I was very determined and I did manage to gather together various bits and pieces of old bicycles and assemble them into a new bike; it must have been the weirdest-looking one in the city, all sizes of wheels and frame cobbled together. I cycled everywhere on my ‘new’ bike with Major, an apparently mad snarling dog, running, barking behind me. We travelled through the many green parks in Glasgow and along all the busiest main roads. I had no sense of left or right and would often ride on the wrong side of the road. I would pedal for hours and hours, wishing that I could cycle right out of the city and see the rest of the world with my own eyes and not just in books or on television. Sometimes I would cycle so far I would get lost and have to find my way home by following buses I knew went to Shettleston. I never asked anyone for help because I didn’t risk talking to strangers and, by this time, Major would be so tired, hungry and thirsty he would have bitten anyone who came close. So I would find and follow a 61 or 62 bus and arrive home late and hungry. My bike gave me freedom, but it also brought me heartache.

Pretty little blonde Sandra at the end of our street had particularly nasty
Children of the Damned
brothers. One of them used to punch me whenever he saw me and let the tyres down on my bike. I was scared when I met him because he kept doing it and kept doing it and kept doing it. He was younger than me, but he was bigger and a mindless bully.

‘He keeps letting doon the tyres of ma bike,’ I told my Dad, ‘and I have tae keep pumpin’ them up again coz he bullies me.’

‘Well,’ my Dad advised me calmly, ‘just fucking pick something up and hit him with it the next time he’s bent doon at yer tyres.’

And that’s exactly what I did. The next time he bent down to deflate my bike’s tyres, I hit him on the side of the head with a half brick.
Crack!
He started screaming, holding his head, his face and hands covered in blood – his blond hair matted with it. He fell down and lay on the pavement screaming in agony and I just ran away terrified and screaming because I thought I’d killed him. Later, his mammy brought him to our door. She’d cleaned him up a bit but there was still brown, dried blood on his face and in his hair and my Mammy yelled at me:

‘Whit the
fuck
did ye
dae
to him?’

‘He kept letting ma tyres doon,’ I explained, knowing it now sounded a really limp excuse.

* * *

By this time, my Uncle David Percy had started to use perverted games. He would declare a game of hide and seek. I would have to go hide somewhere and he would search for me in our flat of only two bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, bathroom and hallway. The game always ended with me being molested or raped. When my Uncle told me he wanted to play games, I would panic. On one occasion, I thought if I made myself small enough he could never find me. So I decided to hide in my bedroom’s old-fashioned clothes closet. Major followed me, so I had to squeeze him in too. I folded up my skinny legs on the ledge inside the closet and bent down my head and pulled in this big, grumpy, unbendable, slavering dog. We both sat there and breathed each other’s air. I stared into his eyes in the near-total darkness and wished I too were a dog, one who could run free across the grass in nearby Tollcross Park. Major’s body was uncomfortably contorted but he never moved, never whined and sat sharing my anger at the big people who made our lives hard. We both knew my Uncle was coming. We both heard his annoying child-like voice taunting me.

‘Ja-ney …Where are ye, Ja-ney? … C’mon, Sweet Pea … C’mon oot … Ja-ney … Ja-ney …’

He is outside the closet now, his footsteps have stopped and he is bearing down on us. Major’s ears have pricked up, his brown dog eyes flick at me; I notice at this moment how long his eyelashes are. The door is wrenched open. I sit motionless and keep my eyes fixed on Major. My Uncle puts in his hand to pull me out. Major unfolds his gracious limbs, leaps, snarls and bites all at the same time. His teeth make contact with flesh, he gurgles that dog noise that makes him remember he is an animal and not just a pet. We both jump from the wooden ledge and leave my Uncle screaming and bleeding behind us. Feet running on lino … dog nails skidding on floors … I make it to the door … pull
the
handle … we run down the concrete stairs screaming, barking, two fugitives, one noise! The last stairs are in front of us; we can hear him cursing, shouting and running behind us. We dive, jump out and land on the sunburnt grass, laughing and gasping. We have escaped for at least one more day.