Mummy Where Are You? (Revised Edition, new) (29 page)

              The words pierced my anguish as the presenter said, “A woman has been sentenced to nine months for Child Abduction.” Was M hearing this?  Were people on the Island who knew me or my family speaking of the horror or delighting in my plight?  Were the mothers who had once supported me from M’s school judging me and patting themselves on the back that it was not their fate?  I had no way of knowing what anyone thought, nor was it of any consequence, it mattered only what M was feeling and I could only hope that he'd been told with sensitivity and understanding.  He was only eight years old and his mummy had been sent to jail.  How might that impact on his little mind at such a tender age?

              At the time that Phillip had warned me of this possible outcome, it had seemed unreal.   No matter how many times he had said the words, they were so alien to my reality sitting over lunch with him in a bistro in the South of the Island, drinking dry white wine and eating tapas.  At that time I had been unable to accept the outcome as a real possibility.  I'd  believed in my naivety that the trial would at last bring us a voice and a hope of justice and truth that would overcome all the lies, the wickedness and the insidious evil that had invaded our simple world.  I'd refused to believe then that corruption on such a grand scale could not be defeated before members of an impartial jury and I wondered now, just how impartial the jury had really been.

              It had been noted by my legal team that when we had come back into the courtroom to await the verdict, the Prosecutor had already been present, despite the Court being locked from the outside.  Had he had a quiet word with the jury members as they took their three hours to decide my fate?  Had he warned them of a similar fate for them, should they not return a guilty verdict?  Anything now seemed possible, however far-fetched.  Had he somehow influenced the thoughts of these men and women? Were these people corruptible or just decent people who had not understood the situation?  Or were they simply unable to see the love in my heart for M, or myself as a lioness trying to protect her young as she fled to safety in a foreign land to try to save him.  What would they have done in my position?  Would they have handed over their children or grandchildren to someone they believed would abuse them?  How many of them in the same situation would not have done as I had and risked all to try and protect their young?  I would never know the answers to any of these questions.  Maybe it was better not to know.

              It seemed incredulous to me that not one of those seven jurors  had seen the deep, deep love I had for my son who had suffered such injustice, cruelty and pain at the hands of a malicious and abusive man and the skewed system of Justice and supposed “Care” that had seen fit to take him from his safe, secure and well-rounded orbit of a world and spin it one hundred and ninety degrees in the wrong direction.

              Again I thought of Phillip’s words when I had faced my crossroads and had to make a choice.  “So what do you want to do?  I’ll support you either way, but my advice has to be to take the plea bargain."  I knew he'd had a duty to tell me the worst case scenario but at that point, it had seemed so far removed from the place I was about to be incarcerated in, it had seemed ridiculous.

              To put a loving mother in jail for having fled from her home in desperation when no one was listening to her child’s cries to “make it all stop, please make it stop,” was inconceivable. 

              As I bumped along, thrown this way and that, I thought of the deafness and blindness of the Court appointed psychologist, already known to the father, the Guardian Ad Litem who'd  acted for the father and not the child at every turn, both purported to represent the child’s voice –but each coming from their own agenda it seemed.  To each of these my son had turned and begged, “please make it stop.”  His pleas to all to make the sexual abuse stop and finally to the Police.  Yet no one listened and no one stopped forcing him to go on seeing his abuser.  Instead they'd deemed him a liar, along with his mother and grandfather saying we'd coached him - all of us law abiding people until now. 

              My father, a respected pillar of the community, had contributed so much to the Island of his time, his money and his great love for his homeland - a love that had been shattered along with his belief of how the system worked.  Instead of protecting the child, they had chosen to protect each other.  He would go home that night and take down the Island's flag from its place on his terrace, never to raise it again.

              I now questioned myself as to what had made me go through the trial, instead of taking the plea? But at that moment as I was thrown against the walls of my box in the prison van, I could barely remember.  Deep down I knew it was my belief – my intrinsic and completely firm belief that one has to stand up against injustice and evil. 

              In my bag, I'd packed Marianne Williamson's famous quote, from "A Return to Love."  I would later put this on my notice board in my cell.  I still believed in these words, although at that moment in the box heading to prison, I allowed my fear and not my light to overwhelm me.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us,

We ask ourselves,

Who Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,

am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world,

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that

Other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously

Give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.

             
The words of the Social Worker who I had innocently gone to see for help when my son disclosed to me, rang loud in my ears, “ninety-nine per cent of women who report abuse do so to be vindictive to their ex-partners."  Again I wondered what they possibly could have thought would have been my motive, when M's father had provided well for his son and whose involvement in our lives amounted to two days a month at most- what possible threat to our lives could he be, if what M alleged he had done had not been true? 

              What alternative did I have when my son disclosed to me the terrible things he was enduring, but to seek help from those whose role was to protect children? 

              No matter how hard I tried resolve the situation in my mind, to understand how our lives had been so badly destroyed, I couldn't  find one shred of common sense in this anywhere.  I couldn't make peace with any of it and in looking for the answers, I only found more questions.  A resounding “Why?” with no answer. 

              M's father had promised to hurt him and hurt me if ever he told.  Well, he had told and the result was, as he had threatened - we had both been hurt beyond measure and it seemed the hurt would never end.

              The system that is supposed to care – the Island's superficial invitation to live free and thrive, offering its inhabitants only a fascist regime, a punishing cruel crushing system that lays waste to loving families and powerless innocent little souls.  The Department of Social Care perpetrated instead Socialist Control fuelled with  resentment and jealousy for what they deemed to be middle class privilege.  It seemed I'd been made an example of, for trying to protect my son against harm and daring to stand up and voice the corruption and wrong.  I'd dared to defend the rights of my child and every child on the Island to live free from fear and to be safe and loved and in doing so I had lost everything – liberty, fraternity and equality. 

              The Judge himself had been so hostile.  His voice and demeanour were fresh in my mind.  His nervous habit of pulling his wig backwards and forwards over his brow as it  irritated his hairless scalp.  In any other context, he would have been a cartoon character, a figure of ridicule, but in this context his irritation, his contempt, his allegiance to the Judiciary on the Island who would not tolerate anyone who dared to insist on their freedom to grow and prosper, had led me here on the road to hell.  Silence at all costs was the agenda.  Woman must be silent or be deemed bad or mad, a threat to the order that was Patriarchy.  Again I thought of my studies and a poem I'd written years earlier.

I am woman, I am silence

You are man, you speak

I am woman, I am silence

You are man, you lead

I am woman, I am silence

You are man, you fight

I am woman, I am silence

You are man, win

I am woman, I am silence

Beware my silence speaks.

              As  the Judge, high in that courtroom had so absentmindedly pushed the yellowing curls of his well-used mantle backwards and forwards – had he been thinking right from the start of the trial of how best to deal with me? Had he been pondering my fate or been lost in thoughts of his impending holiday?  The hearing had been brought forward by a week to accommodate his travel arrangements, his flight to the sun, to enjoy the fruits of his labour whilst accommodating me somewhere I couldn't have imagined in my worst Kafkaesque nightmares.  My destination as I headed along this road less travelled, was Cell Block D – D for Despair, Denial of Justice, Denial of compassion, Denial of Freedom – Silence at all costs.

              The van jolted and bumped and threw me against its cold metal walls at every corner.  There was nothing to hold onto and no air to breathe.  The men’s voices in the cage outside my iron cubicle chatted noisily on – each sentence punctuated by expletives, comrades in crime – fearless at what lay ahead – I tried to seek comfort from this- for if they saw nothing to fear, perhaps there
was
nothing to fear – nothing to fear but fear itself.

              Memories of the life we'd shared filled my mind – our own little idyllic world, our simple life – walking on the beach, paddling in the sea, playing with friends, having picnics – holidays in the sun with family, a holiday in the snow to see Santa in Lapland – Disneyland – normal childish days of love and happiness – Paradise gained and now Paradise Lost.              M and I had been a little team, best friends as well as mother and son, until our lives turned upside down in a moment.  For him, like me, this nightmare was now without end. 

              I still cannot bear to think about what he suffered or for how long.  I will probably never know the answer to that -  but it's so unthinkable that I have had to bury it deep in my mind – a place that cannot be visited, contained, locked in a box so firmly secured that it cannot be opened – for opening that box would unleash a despair that would make living impossible and in that moment, I had to try to go on breathing and existing for M. No matter how hard. I had to stay strong for my little boy.

              I was so beaten now, I was beyond beaten.   Whilst I had been vilified for seeking help, the father had walked free, supported by all and treated like a hero.  What horrors lay beneath the surface of this sceptred Isle?  What lay buried so deep at its heart that they dare not risk exposure?  Was it a Paedophile ring as my lawyers had suggested?  Was money behind this somewhere?  Was it Freemasonry known to be rife on the Island that lay at the heart of this corruption, an evil so intractable that seemed to feed on itself.  What created it, what was at the root, the core of it – again the eternal “Why?”

              “Alright in there?”  The
G4
guard yelled outside the door.  “Yes thanks,” a voice I didn’t recognise as my own reassured her of my safety - the stifled, crushed, muffled voice of a person in a box bringing poignancy to the words I had scribbled in the back of lecture hall long ago.

I crawl into my box

To avoid the teeth of the fox

I close tightly the lid

And I know I have hid

My face from decision

With careful precision

In my box I’m protected

I know I’ve defected

From Life and the choice

But I still hear the voice

That shouts in my mind

There is something to find

Outside the fox prowls

Fight me, he howls

So I lift off the lid

And I make a last bid

For a life that is me

Will the fox let me be?

Chapter 13

              And so we arrived at last at the prison.  A place I had never even seen before from the outside.  Despite growing up on the Island I had rarely gone to the North of the Island, other than to the swimming pool or beach in summer, as a child - occasionally to the small shopping centre.  I had once, in my teens had a boyfriend who lived there and had a vague memory of going to a disco with him and sailing in the bay on his little dinghy.  These were happy memories of youth and innocence and laughter. I had crewed for him in a regatta and inexperienced as I was, my own interests so far removed, my ponies, gymkhanas, Pony Club and show jumping – I had done so, only because that was what girlfriends did.

              It had been fun, but disastrous, as I'd first knocked the jib-stick over board in my zeal to take it out when instructed and then had jumped over, as he requested, to bring the boat in and disappeared under water.  I'd misjudged the depth of the bay which shelved more steeply than we'd realised.  The final catastrophe was when I had got stuck in my mother’s wetsuit and his father had had to help me to get it unzipped.  In those innocent days of early teens the humiliation had felt crushing and increased feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment, so often experienced in adolescence when one is still finding their way through the minefield of early dating.  Back then it had felt so confidence-shattering and important, but nothing could have prepared me for the humiliation that I now faced as the van pulled up outside the prison walls and the guards waited to be allowed to enter. 

              The door to the box was eventually unlocked and I stepped out, my legs threatening to go from beneath me, my hands ice-cold and my heart beating fiercely in my chest – so loud it echoed in my head. 

              I was brought into the reception area where my suitcase was deposited and then I was put in a holding cell – a bare room with just a bench to sit on and a toilet in one corner.  On the bench lay magazines and I bent to pick one up to try to distract myself from my feelings of overwhelming panic and fear – I threw it back down hurriedly, it was a porn magazine.  Was this the sign of things to come?  What was this alien world I'd entered and who would be my companions in hell?

              A stern-faced warden appeared and brought a stale egg sandwich and a carton of juice.  I told him I was wheat allergic and couldn't eat bread, he said “that’s all there is.”  I nodded and put it down next to me.  I prayed that I would soon be out of the cell and onto the wing.  The minutes ticked by, and nothing seemed to happen.  I had no idea what time it was as they'd removed my watch and jewellery.  I didn't wear much, other than the chain  round my neck on which  hung the beautiful heart shaped silver and amethyst pendant M had bought me on our last holiday together and on the same chain, a locket I'd bought in America  which held a tiny picture of M on one side and me on the other.  When they'd forced me to remove them, I was heartbroken. 

              I had no strength to demand or fight anything.  I was crushed and terrified and complied fully with what was asked of me.  I didn't know what my rights were or even if I had any.  I tried to separate my thoughts from my reality and pretend that none of this was happening, elevating my mind to somewhere outside in the freedom and light.

              At last someone came and let me out to be taken to the wing.  My clothes had been stripped down to ten items and I was allowed no toiletries at all.   They checked my belongings onto a form and I signed for each item that was permitted.  These were then put into a plastic sack for me to carry to the wing and I followed the warden through the echoing passages, our every step resounding as we headed towards D Wing. 

              En route I had to walk through a security gate, much like those one goes through at the airport before boarding a plane.  It bipped as I passed through it and I was alarmed, but the warden indicated this was normal and  we headed onwards to the women’s wing.

              Each wing was off a central hub and was labelled and painted a different colour.  A and B wing were for men and C was for vulnerable prisoners –  Paedophiles and rapists in the main who may be attacked by other prisoners.  E wing was for young offenders.  As my steps echoed on the concrete floor, I knew that each one was taking me further from M and that they would push forward even harder with their plan to place my son with his father and cut me out of his life. 

              We entered the wing and two female wardens took over.  I was taken into Cell 1, the induction cell and which was larger than the others.  It was near the desk so that new inmates could be supervised. There was a narrow bench to sleep on with a thin mattress and some sheets and meagre duvet, all in a maroon colour – the colour of the wing.  I was told to make the bed up and after putting my clothes in the unit that also served as a desk of sorts – I folded my clothes neatly onto it and put my photographs of M on the surface.  They had removed the frames so I could only lay them flat.  There was a notice board but nothing to pin things up with – I later learned that the inmates used toothpaste to stick things to the board.

              Other than a toilet and basin, a small television and a tiny kettle, this was the extent of the facilities and comfort.  It may sound somewhat extravagant that we had the comforts of television and something to boil water, but lock-ups could be for as long as fifteen hours at a time and there was no sitting room on the wing - just one television room with plastic chairs and tables that was rarely unlocked.   The few channels we had, became my constant companion through lonely hours and sleepless nights.

              As I looked around the bleak, cold, cell that was to be my home for the next four and half months – reality finally hit - I was now officially, a criminal.

              I sat down on the narrow bed feeling trapped, frightened in an alien land, as if I'd entered some kind of parallel universe where everything was a mirror image of life, reversed in its order.

              I fingered the photograph of M and I in Lapland  – I ached to hold him, talk to him, comfort him, but instead I was now a bird in a cage with no door. I had been officially gagged and put out of sight.  In this Draconian other world,  Victoriana lived with its suppression, oppression and submission.  I must now try to  blend in with this colourless background of empty faces and beaten life. 

              I couldn’t relate to the people around me. It wasn't that I felt judgemental or even different – I knew these women had back-stories that had led to where they were now and that nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears.  There is no black and white in life and here the shades of grey were stronger than anywhere.  If I was going to survive though,  I had to learn their language, their survival strategies - their codes; But how?  I didn’t speak the lingo.

              Grey was the only colour you could be here.  If you wanted to be anything other, you had to earn the right to stand out from the bleak, sameness, in the endless sterile and far-stretching days of nothing.  I made the fatal mistake of trying to bring light into darkness by trying to win friends.  I made the terrible error of trying to be myself in a place where my-self, would not be acceptable.  For they saw me as a strange and alien being from a planet that was outside their domain, their knowledge and understanding, a threat- for the way I spoke, my education, my very demeanour and they hated me even more for trying to cross that line.  I, being as unknown to them as they were to me.

              The Prison Governor came to see me, by way of welcoming me to the Jail.  It felt like being admitted to a very strict boarding school.  When she asked if there was anything I needed, it seemed faintly ironic and absurd because all the things I needed were outside of this world.  What I needed most was my son and an end to this madness. 

              “I need to see my little boy.”

              “We’re working on that.”  She replied.

              “When can I see him?”  I begged to know.

              “Like I said, we’re working on that.”  She delivered the message with feigned concern, but her eyes betrayed an indifference that saw neither my pain, nor my longing, but only the clock on the wing wall that ticked away our time like a metronome.

              “My laptop. Can I have my laptop?”  I said.  “I’m working on a novel and I want to pass my time usefully, writing.” 

              “I’ll see what I can do.”  She smiled.  I never heard another thing about it.  I had known, as she had known, that it was impossible.  We were merely playing out a scenario of pretending to be where we were not, feigning civilisation where there was none. 

              Naturally my request for a computer was absurd. The only computers allowed were strictly for use in IT classes which I had no intention of attending.  My writing was private and personal whilst in its embryonic stage and nothing written on a computer in the prison would  or could remain so.  Instead I ordered writing pads from the canteen and until they arrived, I scrawled on the back of any piece of paper I could find, mostly gleaned from one of the kinder wardens. 

              Writing had always saved me through the worst times in my life and now, I tried to turn the hell into something else on paper.  I told myself that I had peace and quiet from the insanity for a while and an opportunity to gain perspective and try to make order from chaos.  I ignored the world around me as I entered the realms of my thoughts and imagination and allowed my pores to absorb the greyness and turn it back into the black and white of ink on paper; to separate the bleak, damp, coldness of it all and put the colours into their rightful spectrum, as a way of making sense of what was impossible to believe.

              I scrawled the date on a piece of paper and wrote down the dates of each day until my release. Written down, it seemed like forever and I was only on my first day. 

              It was time now to brave the wing and meet the other inmates.  It was to be my first meal inside and I went to line up at the servery with the other girls to see what fare would be dished out to us.  I picked up a pale blue plastic plate and picnic knife, fork and spoon with D Wing marked in black marker on each one.  The plate had the name of a past inmate on the back. Someone laying claim to an object as a means of trying to gain some measure or feeling of control over one’s fate, where any such thing was an illusion. 

              A couple of girls spoke to me – more I think out of curiosity – the novelty of someone else from the outside world – but most looked at me with fierce hostility as if I'd gate-crashed a private club and wasn’t on the list.                I accepted my food, dished out by a woman of similar age to me – badly- dyed blonde hair, a smile, a few broken teeth, but nonetheless affable.  I later discovered her name was Irene and she'd been jailed for throwing a fruit bowl at her boyfriend.  The case hadn’t yet come to trial and she was being held on remand.

              “Beans?” She inquired.

              “Yes please.”

              “Chips?” I looked at the greasy, soggy mass of chips and shook my head.

              “May I have one of those baked potatoes please?”  I pointed at two micro-waved, anaemic looking potatoes on a plate. 

              “Nah, they’re spoken for.  You have to order those in advance.” 

              “Burger?”  I nodded and took the solid brown circle that was dropped onto my plate and went to sit at a table.  One girl with a streak of purple in her hair, in her late twenties and very pale complexion, looked up as I sat down and said hello.   She half smiled and I smiled back, but when I tried to talk to her, she said she wasn't feeling well and headed to her cell.  I later learned she was awaiting an operation and had gall bladder trouble, but at that moment of deep insecurity, I had taken it as rejection.  I was the odd one out, the posh bitch that everyone hated on sight.

              I dreaded the lock up that night more than anything.  I knew it would not be long before the sound of a key would close me into my cell and would not be re-opened until 7.30 a.m. the next morning - nearly twelve hours of solitary confinement, and even longer at weekends.

              I stayed outside the cell as long as I could and joined a few of the girls who were assembled in the ironing room upstairs where they were playing CDs on a portable stereo and chatting.  Again I had the sense of being an unwanted gate crasher, but I persevered.  The thought of being alone and the lock-up to come was causing my heart to beat fast and furious in my chest and I had so many questions about the life I had been thrown into.  The girls were not welcoming.  They neither encouraged me to stay nor asked me to leave the room; they merely acted as if I were not there.

              I left the room and heard a titter of laughter as I headed back down to my cell on the ground floor. I was a figure of ridicule, a non-entity – the unpopular child at school who is bullied irrationally.  It took me back to my primary school days where I'd been bullied mercilessly for living in the big house on the hill, whilst my peers lived on council estates.  It was a local village school and I'd suffered in silence until I'd moved to private school where my classmates came from similar backgrounds. 

              The dreaded lock up came too quickly and I faced my night of solitude and fear.  I left the light on and turned on the television, trying to forget where I was.  It was a bitterly cold night and exhaustion and shock had rendered me even colder.  I put a jumper over my pyjamas and pulled the thin duvet over me as the wind blew an icy draft around my neck from a ventilation shaft that wouldn't properly close.