Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I (13 page)

“Vindicate me, O God,

And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;

Rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.

You are my God my stronghold.”

Psalm 43:1-2

Later that night, utterly
exhausted, each stair up to the dormitory demanded my leaden legs make an enormous
effort.

I lay in bed, afraid, confused
and lonely. Eventually I sank into the oblivion of sleep but all too soon,
morning invaded my peace.  Looking at my red swollen eyes in the mirror, I was
reminded that yesterday was no hallucination and today’s reality was only just
beginning.

 “You look a real mess
today,” remarked Tinkie truthfully. “Looks like you were crying
again
last night. Do you want some anti-wrinkle cream?”

“Leave me alone,” I responded
without much conviction.

“Leave me alone,” Tinkie
imitated.

 “Tinkie stop it,”
interrupted Megan, throwing a pillow at her. “You’re being a real cow. What’s
wrong Jane?”

Megan moved from her bed
to sit on the foot of mine. “You came to bed really late last night. I heard
you sneaking in. Where were you?”

What would be the use in
hiding it? I had no doubt all the teachers would be talking about me and as
soon as social workers and police arrived at school everyone would know
something had happened.

I took a deep breath and
decided to share my story with my room-mates. At least if I told them first
they’d get the truth.

“Alright, I’ll tell you.
But you have to promise not to think it’s a joke…”

My friends sat
open-mouthed and spell-bound at my sorry tale.

“I don’t believe you!” was
Tinkie’s first response. “You don’t know the first thing about sex. Look at the
questions you always ask us!”

“How come you were the one
always asking  us about  those things if you knew the answers…I mean if it was
already happening to you at home?” added Megan more gently.

Humiliated I said, “Well,
I was trying to find out if the things happening to me were…normal…like if you
also had them happening to you…”

“So that’s why you said
you hated going home…”

“How could a father do
that?”

“I’d kill my dad…”

“Was it terribly sore?”

“Weren’t you embarrassed?”

“Where was your stepmother…?”
and so the questions rolled.

Soon the whole dorm was in
my room. The girls were all so busy talking to me about my terrible life that
we were late for class. At last I was believed and all my miseries and tears
had been justified. I was important and at least for today, everyone was sorry
for being ugly to me. They were angry that I’d been abused by my Dad and
treated so vilely by my selfish stepmother. At least for today, they all cared.

 Today they
all felt important as they wrestled with the knowledge that an unmentionable
taboo had found a home right in their midst.

Around ten
that morning I was summoned to the office and taken back to the hostel by Mr
Emerson. Two women in suits waited for me in matron’s office. I walked in
fearfully and Matron told me they were
plain-clothes police officers who
needed to hear my story.

 Instead of devouring it
with outrage and hunger like my friends did, or with gentle compassion like
Matron Ruth, they were cold and guarded, warning me to tell only the truth and
making me repeat my story in what seemed like a hundred different ways. 

Why did I let my dad do
it? Did I enjoy it? When his fingers touched me did it feel pleasant? Did I
ever say no? Why didn’t I stop him? Why didn’t I tell my mom? What about my stepmother?
How could he always manage to corner me when Joanne was bathing the kids? Where
was my brother? How quick was he? How did it look? How did it feel? What else
did he make me do?

 They infuriated me. Why
did they need to ask over and over? Didn’t they have ears? It seemed like
everyone was intent on proving me a liar and eventually I even began to doubt
myself. Their voices stopped making sense and I felt they were all staring into
my naked soul. I began to cry. “I don’t know any more. I can’t think…”

Matron suggested a tea
break and she gave me a hug.

Their questions made me
feel ill. It was bad enough living through all of that but I could hide away in
that place outside myself while it was happening and wait till it was over
before I had to think again. Now they were making me come out of my little
place of protection. They were forcing me to look at that girl and that man together.
I didn’t want to see them together, to think or to remember.

My interrogation continued
after the break and they never smiled or made me feel anything except guilty
for finally telling the truth.

Eventually one of them
said, “We are going to have to send you to the State Hospital where the
district surgeon will examine you. He will decide if you are telling the
truth.”

I was appalled! All that
time! All that effort – and they still didn’t believe me!  

Friday 8 September 1989

I am so alone and afraid.
I wish I could just go inside a hole and die. Even God doesn’t seem to be
around anymore. A social worker is coming to school to see me tomorrow but I
don’t really know what she will do.

The following morning was
Saturday. I was one of only three girls left in the hostel and later that
morning the other two went home. I was called into Matron’s office. “Jane this
is Miriam. She is a social worker. She works for the Welfare Department. The
Welfare looks after people … children, whose parents don’t or can’t look after
them properly… ”

“Hi, Jane!” Miriam smiled.
She was young and pretty. She asked about my favourite movies and TV programmes
and my school sports. She chatted about school work and pets and asked if she
could come and visit me again on Monday.

Saturday 9 September 1989

Miriam, the social worker
asked me a few questions but she didn’t interrogate me like everyone else did.
I asked her why and she said her job is not to question me. It’s to make sure
I’m safe!  I think I like her.

She said she will take me
to a State Hospital on Monday where they will check my body and see what my dad
did to me. I asked what they could do about it since Dr Harris never did
anything. Miriam said maybe he just didn’t know what he should be looking for
or perhaps he didn’t want to ‘get involved’. I’m really worried.

Sunday 10 September 1989 

 Guess what? I was sitting
in my room feeling all alone when Miriam came to the hostel to chat and she had
lunch with Matron and me. She says the district surgeon is a lady and explained
what will happen tomorrow. Apparently the doctor will use some medical
instruments to examine me internally. Now I’m even more worried. Miriam kindly
offered to stay with me while the doctor examines me but I still feel pretty
angry with God for not stopping all this long ago.

“ Hear, O LORD, my righteous plea;

listen to my cry...

May my vindication come from you...”

Psalm 17:1-2

The  trip to the hospital
on Monday took over an hour. Miriam tried to reassure me and asked me to tell
her some nice things about my childhood.

I told her about our
motor-bikes and the swimming pool at my father’s place. I noticed Miriam’s
pretty nails holding the steering wheel  and commented on how nice they looked.
She asked to look at my hands, which was embarrassing as my nails were bitten
and I still had thin scabs and scars on them from getting so angry.

“I used to bite mine,” she
said, “but eventually I stopped. It was a nervous habit.”

“Mine too,” I agreed. “But
it also annoys my dad because he likes me to paint my nails red on the weekends
and in the holidays.”

We chatted away about
little things and nice things like movies and music. She never asked about what
Dad did to me and I was so glad.

 The hospital was just another
government-grey building. The waiting room smelt of antiseptic and furniture
polish.

There were a few other
people in there also waiting to be seen. Most of them were women. I wondered if
any of them were there for the same reason I was.  When they finally called me,
the doctor asked if I wanted Miriam to come in too. I definitely did. Dr Mary
Chandler and Miriam seemed to know each other. The doctor read some details in
a file on her desk and then leaned forward to me. “Hello Jane. You can call me
Doctor Mary. Jane this is a very serious thing you’re saying about your father.
You realise that, I hope.”

There was no emotion in
her voice. It reminded me for a moment, of Joanne when she wasn’t angry. I panicked
and immediately started thinking, “She hates me. She won’t believe me. She already
thinks I’m going to lie. I should just leave.”

Dr Mary interrupted my
thoughts. “Jane, tell me about the things that you say have been happening at
home.”

I thought I could see doubt
on the doctor’s face as I told her a little of my story. She wrote impassively
on her paper, and I assumed she was bored.

Occasionally she
interrupted with a question or two. She asked me odd questions – about
boyfriends and the TV shows I watched.

“Stupid questions,” I
thought. She also doesn’t believe me.” Once again I was close to tears.  

“Please God if you are
really real and if you really love me, show her that I’m not lying. Show her
that my father
has
been doing these things to me. Please God if you’re
there, make her know the truth and I’ll stop being angry with you.”

The doctor led me to an
examining bed behind a screen and told me to take my clothes off and put on the
gown. Again I started to tremble and my tears overflowed. I asked for Miriam to
come in. She stayed close to me and held my hand. As I lay on the bed, I
watched Dr Mary lift the gown and press on my stomach with cold hands. She
touched my new scar.

 “You had your appendix
out recently.” It was a statement.

“Yes.”

She asked me to pull my
legs up and keep my feet flat on the bed. “Now this is going to be a bit
uncomfortable but you must try to relax and breathe out when I say so.”  Dr Mary
was gentle as she inserted the speculum but I was tense and it hurt. The doctor
adjusted her light, and I heard Miriam ask, “Are you looking at whether the
hymen has been damaged?”

“Mmm. Partly. But you
cannot really tell as much as people think by the presence or absence of the
hymen. It’s actually an incomplete area of tissue that can be very thin from
the start; it’s easily damaged by exercise and it can wear away over time. If
it was a complete sheet of tissue across the cervix, as so many people think,
virgin girls wouldn’t be able to pass menstrual blood.  So in normal
circumstances, it’s never totally intact. That’s why so many doctors miss the
signs of abuse. We have to also look for other signs.”  She was talking as much
to herself as to Miriam. “I’m going to have to send some slides to the lab. How
long did you say this has been going on?”

“Nearly three years,”
answered Miriam.

“Poor child,” said the
doctor in a softer voice as she covered me up.  “You’ve done well.” She smiled
at me.

She wrote a few notes then
came back to me. “I just want to check a few more things.” She began to look at
the faint scars, more recent cuts and fading bruises on my body and legs. She
asked about them as she gently took a syringe full of blood. The bruises were
mostly Dad. But I had to admit to doing the cuts and scratches to myself.

“When he was hurting me I
would get mad and sometimes hurt myself afterwards because somehow it made me
feel better,” I said. “But could you see what he’s been doing to me inside?” I
asked fearfully.

“Yes, Jane. You’re definitely
not a liar. But these marks on your body are also important. You have a right
to be very angry but you’ll need to talk to Miriam about this. Hurting yourself
isn’t going to help you.  I’ll get the slides and blood to the lab. When the
results come back I’ll know if you need any medicines. You can get dressed
now.”

The doctor returned to her
desk and wrote again. I was overwhelmed with relief. She seemed changed. Now
she was being kind; she even seemed sorry for not believing me. 

When I was dressed, Dr
Mary looked up from her writing and spoke to both of us.  “Jane you have some
internal bruising and there are some old scars that tell me you’ve suffered a
lot of internal damage in the past. However, the vaginal area actually heals
quite quickly, and many of the marks you may’ve had from the past would be
healed and gone already.

“Sometimes before the
onset of menses – that’s when your period starts, the vagina does swell but I
think that doctor who saw you soon after your dad first started hurting you
should have been able to tell the difference. There would’ve been obvious signs
of bruising and tearing at that stage.” She looked up something in a medical
book and then addressed me again. “Jane I wonder, have you ever missed your
periods over the past few years? I’m sorry to ask so many questions but we have
to be sure of a lot of facts because adult offenders will lie and defend
themselves and their lawyers accuse us of making everything up.”

Miriam agreed with her and
squeezed my hand.

I told them about the
events from a few months back with the white pills, the cold baths, and the
lies Dad made me tell Joanne.  

 “Where did your Dad get
the pills?”

“He said he got them from
a friend…a sort of doctor.”

Doctor Mary, speaking
mostly to Miriam, said, “There are quite a few illegal products out there that
are used to cause terminations. It could have been any of them but most of them
can have nasty side effects
and can cause
intense
bleeding, internal damage, sepsis and so on.  For a father to administer any
one of these drugs to his child is utterly unthinkable.”

Then she turned to me and
said, “Jane, what you need to do now is to eat well and keep fit and healthy. You
must not allow yourself to get a sexually transmitted disease or accidentally fall
pregnant because you’ve already been damaged enough inside. Diseases and abortions
can stop people from getting pregnant again and they can make you miscarry so
never
have an abortion. If you ever do want to have a baby, you must tell your doctor
about what happened with the white pills, because falling pregnant just might
be difficult for you.”

She turned to Miriam and
said, “I hope you nail him.”  

 Dr Mary Chandler then smiled
kindly at me and said, “I know you thought I was very severe at the beginning of
the consultation. To be honest, I find these cases very stressful, Jane,
because if I miss the signs, as your first doctor did, I could leave a child to
suffer for years. But if a child is lying, which does sometimes happen, and I
misread the signs, I could destroy a family. So I have to be extremely
unemotional and very careful.

“I’m very glad you were
brave enough to tell about what’s been happening, Jane,” she continued. “Some
girls never tell. They become old ladies still hiding their secret shame and
guilt and it’s not fair. The court case will probably also be horrible but
you’re going to be so glad that you brought this to an end. When it’s over,
you’ll be able to move on with your life. I promise. And Miriam will be there to
help you.”