Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I (7 page)

“What’s rape?”

He rolled his eyes.  “Tell
her that Roxy’s whole family was out riding their horses and while you were
alone at the house these two black boys pulled you into the garage….”

He proceeded to describe a
scenario that made me feel ill.  “Tell Joanne you screamed but no-one heard you
and that when they finished they ran away. Say you didn’t tell anyone because
you were too afraid. Tell her they said they’d come back and kill you if you
told. And you can say you can’t remember their faces now if anyone asks. Say it
was too dark in there.”

I began to choke violently
on my chocolate milkshake. The last patron stared hard at me then left the
café. Eventually I gasped out, “But that’s not true! I don’t know any black
boys and it never happened. That’s just sick. Why would I want to tell Joanne
such a disgusting lie?”

“Jane, you
have
to
say what I have told you. You have to promise me you will tell her that.”

“No! I am not going to!”

“Jane, I am your Dad and I
know best. You
have
got to tell her what I’ve just told you.” His voice
was menacing and low. “If you don’t, Jane, you will be very, very sorry. You
don’t like it when I get angry and I’ll get extremely angry if you don’t obey
me on this. Do I make myself clear?  You love me so you
will
do this for
me. You
will
tell her you were raped.…”

“But I
wasn’t
…”

A sharp blow caught my
cheek as his hand flew across the table and the last of the milkshake landed on
the floor, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

“Sorry about the mess, my
daughter dropped her glass,” he said to the server behind the till. Then he
steered me back to the car. I nursed my aching face as I fearfully did up my
seat belt. My stomach tightened and I wanted to vomit. A moment ago, I thought
life was getting better but how wrong could I have been?

I burst into tears. What
had I done to deserve this? It was bad enough having my father do all these
things to me in secret but to tell Joanne, of all people, that such  things had
happened to me was more than I could bear. She needed no more ammunition to
despise me.

Before Dad had even pulled
out of the car park I began to heave. He stopped the car with a screech:
“Whatever you do, don’t throw up in my car!” he yelled and I stumbled onto the
verge where I deposited my guts in further humiliation.

 “Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked;

protect me from men of violence,

who plan to trip my feet.”

Psalm 140:4

That night I raged at God
in desperation and anger, asking why the whole world seemed so set against me. 

Sometime after midnight I
was woken by my father’s hands which were under the duvet and fondling me
inside my pyjamas.

“Jane,” he whispered.
“Jane, don’t forget what I told you to tell Joanne. You tell her first thing
this morning when you get up. About the rape.”

In the morning I woke,
tired and fuzzy headed. Had he really been in my bed again last night? Over the
years, I’d become really efficient at separating my life into compartments.
This dissociative behaviour protected me. It was easier to tolerate my father’s
physical demands because I could still own at least a part of my mind.

When he was using me I
could make my mind leave my body and deliberately blank out the details of most
of the encounters. It was my survival net. One encounter ran into the next, in
a blur of unhappy memories. They became like a collection of disagreeable
paintings on a wall. You know they are there and you hate them, but if you walk
on by without looking up at the offending eyesores, they affront you less.

In those tormented years I
had learnt to be two people. At school I was a struggler; battling to keep my
mind on my school work long enough to pass a test; always afraid or anxious and
of course I had to live with the reputation of being a notorious cry-baby and
attention-seeker.

At home I had to assume
the role of a subjugated, oppressed, child-woman, forced into guilty, silent
duty with my father and loathed by his wife. Often I hated both of my personas
equally.

While making myself a cup
of tea and agonizing over the events of the past twenty four hours, my father
walked into the kitchen. My heart jumped into my mouth.

“Have you told her yet?”
he asked. He was matter-of fact; distant and clearly preoccupied.

“No.” I was feeling
belligerent.

“Go and tell her now. She’s
changing the baby.”

“But Dad I don’t want to …
it’s a lie … I want to ride bikes with Anthony!”

He grabbed my shoulders
and stared menacingly into my face. “No bikes!  You go tell her now!” 

“But Dad…” My lip was
quivering and he was right in my head space. “You do it!” His nails dug my
flesh and he  squeezed my lip with his free hand. “You
will
do it … You
will tell her everything we practised.” His voice took on an even lower, steely
tone. “Go
now
… or else!”

I admit I was a coward. I
didn’t want to find out how severe ‘or else’ would be. I was pretty sure it
would begin with his leather belt…but where would it end?

 With heart pounding, I
knocked feebly on the door of the baby’s room, nausea sitting just below my
chest; this was Joanne’s private preserve where Dad’s ‘other’ children were not
permitted to enter. I didn’t want to go in. I hated lying. It always made me
feel guilty and afraid.  What if God punished me for lying?

I think I coped by telling
myself that pretence was different from lying.  I survived by pretending everything
was okay and normal; I had to because Dad said it was our secret and I’d be
punished if I told…but going and deliberately telling all these lies to
Joanne…what was in Dad’s head, or his heart for that matter?

“Please God help me. What
do I do?”

‘An honest speaker comes
out with the truth.’  
Those were words I must have heard at church, but why did I
recall them now?

    “I can’t tell the
truth to her! If I do my Dad will kill me. Why don’t you ever help me when I’m
in trouble, God? I pray all the time.”

I looked back down the
passage for an exit route but Dad was glaring at me from the kitchen doorway. With
legs shaking, I knocked again and opened the door slightly.

“Oh it’s you, what do you
want?” Joanne’s tone changed instantly from warm baby chatter to irritation.

 I took a deep breath. “I
have to talk to you,” I said, but with that I began to cry.

“Oh, come in. If you have
to,” she responded. Through my tears the baby’s room seemed to be a blur of
blues and whites and smelt of sweet baby powder. I would have loved it in there
if Joanne had been kinder. “Sit down and tell me what’s wrong with you
now
.”
Her eyes rolled to the ceiling.

I began to stammer my way
through the story Dad had forced me to learn.  “In the last week of the
holidays I was…” I paused, heat pouring into my face, “I was …” Joanne was
looking at me with ice in her eyes. She did not try to help. I died inside once
more.

“I can’t say it,” I
whispered  to myself.

‘Do it or else … you know
he means it!’
Fear spoke darkly, loudly, into my heart.

“I was … I was … raped.” I
whispered the last word. 

Joanne put down the
diapers she had been folding. “What the hell are you saying?” Her tone was
harsh and accusatory.

“I said I was … raped ….”
I whispered it again.

“Where?” Joanne’s voice
was loud and abrasive “Where could you have possibly been raped?  How come you
never said anything earlier? You’re talking trash.…” She turned back to the
diapers.

I began to sob in utter
humiliation. “It was when I was at Roxy’s house. They all went horse-riding and
two black boys came to the house and did it to me in the garage.”

“Oh rubbish! Who were
they? What did they look like? What do you mean by ‘it”? What did they
do
to you? Describe
it
in detail. Describe everything.” She was furious.

I tried to remember
exactly what my father had told me to say but it’s always easier to remember
the truth than a lie. I had to do it right or there’d be worse trouble so,
through tears, I stared at the carpet and described a scenario that sounded
remarkably like some of the things my own dad had done to me and that
realization made me feel even worse. However, it was when I said I’d missed my
periods for two months that Joanne really hit the roof. She swore a string of
unrepeatable words and yelled for my father. 

 Of course he walked down
the passage exactly on cue and asked nonchalantly: “What’s the matter? You
sound upset!”

 He was such a good actor.

 “Listen to this story!”
Joanne snarled. “As if we don’t have enough to complicate our lives already!
Now a bloody pregnant teenager is all we need…” and she swore some more. “Tell
your father what you just told me.”

Intensely humiliated, I
cried out angrily, “I’m not pregnant! I’m not a pregnant teenager!”

Dad appeared full of
concern as he listened intently to me retelling his own shocking lie to his
face. He actually managed to turn white and he began to cry. He grasped me in
his arms and rocked me, saying, “My baby. My poor baby. How could this have
happened to you?”

 I think that his calculated
performance that day disgusted me more than anything he’d ever done to me
before that. Just how could anybody be such a heartless fraud and liar?

Joanne continued to be
angry but looked a little more concerned. She kept asking questions and forcing
me to repeat the details. “When? Where …? Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Over and
over she asked and still she doubted. I always knew it would be hard to fool
Joanne.

Then they began to argue.

 “We never saw any bruises
and she came home happy enough from Roxy’s that weekend. I do
not
believe
this story, Dirk. This daughter of yours is an attention-seeking little drama
queen. She might well be pregnant but I don’t accept the rape story. I don’t
see it. Sorry, but she should be living with her mother!”

“No! I have custody. Her
mother’s incapable of raising her. You know that! And how can you say she’s
lying? She’s clearly devastated and she has missed her period. Obviously you’re
going to have to do something.” He was wiping his tears and mine. He made me
sick.

“Why must
I
do
something?” Joanne was outraged. “She’s
your
daughter,
you
sort
out the problem!”

“No. It’s a woman thing.
You
are my wife and
you
must phone the doctor and see what can be done.
Obviously she’s pregnant and she needs an abortion. I’m not having my daughter
giving birth to some little half-cast brat. If they made her pregnant we’ve got
to help her and get rid of it.”

I looked from one to the
other, stunned. My mind raced and my head throbbed. Since when did this whole
thing become about pregnancy? “I’m not pregnant! How could I be pregnant! Don’t
keep saying that!” I yelled.  I was getting hysterical now. What were they on
about?  And why were they talking about abortion? I’d heard abortion whispered
about in the hostel. Someone knew someone whose aunt had one and died. It was dangerous
and a crime.

Joanne’s icy voice cut the
air again. “If it is rape, we need to call the police,” stated Joanne in a
studied voice. “They need to investigate and catch the child molesters. How can
you think otherwise? Plus, abortion is totally illegal in this country, unless
you can prove rape.”

“No, no police,” Dad
answered quickly.

Joanne looked at him long
and hard.

“Why not?”

“No. They … they treat the
victim too harshly. They don’t believe them and they make them go over it again
and again. She’s too young for that. No cops.”

“Fine. No police. But she’ll
have to go to the state doctor and have an examination and answer a lot of
probing questions. They’ll want to know a lot about her … like if she has
boyfriends and if she’s ever slept with them.”

“Impossible! You know
she’s never had a chance to be with boys!” shouted Dad.

“How could you possibly
know that? What about at boarding school? Or at Roxy’s house?” argued Joanne.
“Roxy has a brother. Maybe she slept with
him
and this whole rape story
is a cover up!”

“I haven’t, I didn’t!” I
wailed out vehemently, realizing that my father’s lies were about to trigger a
tidal wave of disastrous consequences.

 “Joanne, rather just take
her to Dr Harris. Please. Do it for me.” He was on his knees next to the bed
where she sat, pleading and hurting now. “I can’t face this at the moment. My
poor child. Just tell him what’s happened and say he must do something. But
don’t leave her alone with him. The child has been through enough. Tell him we
don’t want to press charges. They’ll never catch them and the courts will drag
her through hell. She’s already said she can’t identify them. And you know the
Matron at school phoned and said how miserable she’s been lately.”

I looked at my father, stunned.
He had an answer for everything!

“Come on Darling. I’ll
look after the little ones and you take her,” he coaxed.

 I was sent to dress in a
hurry while Joanne reluctantly made the phone call and found her car keys. Joanne
said they had managed to squeeze us in as an “emergency” appointment, but I
heard her threatening the receptionist over the phone.

All the way there, Joanne
interrogated me. She wanted all the details over and over and I was so afraid I’d
forget something.

We sat in the waiting room
in tense silence, pretending, like the other patients, to read the year old
magazines. Suddenly the awkward silence was broken by an ambulance siren
screaming out fairly close by. It was joined by another and a third. Fire
engine sirens joined the melee and soon the phone rang out.

We all heard the
receptionist say, in a loud, important voice, “Is it? Is it? Oh my! That bad.
Okay. He’ll be on his way now.” She buzzed through to Dr Harris and spoke in
hushed tones, then looked up over her bifocals.

“Sorry people!” She used
her condescending, practice-room smile now. “Doctor Harris has been called away
… to a
real
emergency.  Dr Palmer will see any extremely urgent cases …
in about an hour and a half. The rest of you …” she looked directly at Joanne,
“will have to please reschedule for Monday.”

Joanne frog-marched me out
to the car while cursing under her breath. “Get in the back, sit in the middle
again ....” she growled and the interrogation continued. “When, where, how,
what, how long, how many times, what did they look like, how did it feel…?”

At that moment I was the
criminal in a TV court case and of course, because I
was
telling her a
lie, I was sure Joanne would be able to prove it. It was really hard to lie to
Joanne and even though I didn’t like her, I hated doing this.

At last we arrived home
and I was sent to my room while the adults continued to discuss ‘my’ problem.
Eventually, Joanne must have decided to telephone the doctor and demand an
interview by phone.

I heard her speaking in
angry tones to the doctor and my dad. It was all beyond me now. I was going to
get into terrible trouble no matter what happened next, of that I was sure.