Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I (6 page)

     I wonder if I will ever be brave enough to kill myself.

“You have stolen my heart

With one glance of your eyes…”

Song of Songs 4:9

Arriving back at school on Monday evening was both a relief and a trauma.
The busyness of school comforted me but the humiliation of the weekend left my
emotions in tatters.

Matron Ruth was on the outside veranda where she could check that all the
girls came right on in. I watched Dad amble over to her and stretch out his
hand, greeting her and saying, “She seems okay now but I hope she’s not coming
down with something. She seems a little tearful today.”

“Hmm, they’re often tearful after the first weekend home. It passes, so
don’t you worry,” answered Matron.

In that instant I saw a pact being made.  “They’re all together in this, all
against me!” I thought.

Dad returned to the car to offload my case. “I’ll bring your case up, Baby,”
he said.

Joanne looked annoyed. “Leave her, Honey, she’s a big girl now. She can
take her own case.”

“Joanne, I won’t be long!” He slammed the boot closed, picked up the case
and walked in ahead of me, flashing Matron another of his ‘good guy’ smiles.
Joanne waved a disinterested farewell from the car.   Dad placed the case on the
floor, and then he hugged me too tightly, and as before, whispered, “Remember
it’s our special secret. Don’t tell
anyone
… I love you. I’ve given
Matron the telephone money. Phone me
every
Thursday.”

Sensing he was again delaying his departure, I remember pushing him out
the room, hissing, “Dad you have to go, this is a girls’ room.” He left and I
burst into tears just as Megan walked in.

 “Hi Jane. What’s wrong?” She sat on the bed next to me saying: “I know
it’s hard to come back to school after a weekend at home, but you’ll get used
to it. I promise. I’ll go and make us some nice hot Milo while you unpack. I
wonder when Tinkie’s going to arrive?”

 I lay on my bed wishing I could explain my tears to Megan but I just
couldn’t let them know what was happening to me at home. It was so embarrassing
and it made me feel like a freak. Part of me wanted to ask them if it happened
to them as well. Perhaps it happened to all girls when they started
‘menstruating’ as the doctor called it. Maybe it was normal and I was weird to
hate it. Still, if it was okay why didn’t they all talk about it? Or were they
all as humiliated as me? Surely, surely they couldn’t hate it any less? Could
they?

Dad always said, “It’s my special way of showing you how much I love
you,” and that made me feel even guiltier for hating it and him so much.

Once, after he had satisfied himself with me in the toilets at work, I
asked why it was a secret and why I couldn’t tell anyone. He said, “It’s
something two people who love one another do to show the other person how each
feels.”

I was unconvinced. Why did you have to do something that hurt and made
you feel so bad to show someone you loved them?

“You do love me don’t you?” Dad had probed. It had been a hard one to
answer.

“Yes… I do … because you’re my dad… but …”

“Well it’s our special secret then,” he’d said with a wink and a knowing
smile. It still felt wrong.

“But why do you have to do that hurting thing?”

 “Don’t you like it when I touch you and hold you?”

“No I don’t!” I was in tears again.

“Why not?” At first he sounded hurt but I could hear annoyance creeping
into his tone. “How does it make you feel?”

“Not nice and sore. Why don’t my friends talk about it? Why is it a big
secret if it’s not bad?”

“I told you before, it’s a special love and it’s private. Just between dads
and daughters. You and me.
No-one
talks about it.”

Dad had looked at me with big hurt eyes. “You make me very sad when you
don’t love me. I love you. That’s why I do what I do to you. Can’t I love you?
Can’t Daddy love his big girl like a man should?”

“But I don’t like ....”

“And if you do ever tell anyone I will deny it and  ...  Jane ….” His
voice then turned to steel. “I
will
kill you.” It was not the first time
he had given me that warning and he never joked about it!

Megan returned with the hot Milo and Tinkie arrived with her suitcase.
Saskia and Sally also burst into the room. Greeting each other  and giggling
hysterically, the girls fell onto my bed. At least my memories had a chance to
fade for a little while.

“Tell us about it, Tinkie. What was it like?”

“What?” giggled Tinkie coyly.

They tickled her and said, “Tell, tell.”

“What are you all talking about?” asked Megan.

“At the 21
^st
on the Blakes’ farm. It was Joey’s 21
^st
and all the farmers were there. Joey’s youngest brother James is sixteen and
guess who he had the ‘hots’ for?”

“Tinkie!” gasped Megan. “Did Jamie finally notice you?”

 Tinkie was blushing and they were all shrieking.

“And guess what they got up to …?”

Megan gasped. “What? What did you two do?” Turning to the others she
asked, “And how do you girls know?”

“We were there too and we saw them, all wrapped up in each other’s arms …
oh boy it was love at first sight….” gabbled the girls.

“Did he kiss you?” Megan was thrilled. “Tell us more, tell us more… what
did it feel like?”

Tinkie sat up and spoke conspiratorially. We all leant in to hear.

“First he looked at me across the punch bowl and smiled. I’m sure my
heart stopped beating. Then he poured me a drink ....”

“What were you wearing?”

She had to go back to the beginning and describe the hair, nails, make-up
and clothes, right from the borrowed lacy push-up bra to the skinny-rib vest
and tight fit jeans. Then she built up to the meeting at the punchbowl. She
described their hand-holding and their dancing.

When she reached the part where she told us about the people lying on
blankets and sleeping bags outside on the lawn counting stars she was
interrupted by a girl who said, “Yup – I saw you there.” Turning to the others
she added, “They were messing around in the sleeping bag!”

“Were not!” Tinkie hissed. “We lay down
on
the sleeping bag,
covered ourselves with a rug and … we kissed!” The other girls all shrieked.
“First it was just a little peck on the mouth and we counted stars holding hands.
Then he did it a bit longer. Then he touched my mouth with his tongue.” She
squealed. “My heart was beating so fast I thought it would explode. Then… he
put his tongue inside my mouth and moved it all around…then in my ears and back
in my mouth…”

“What did it feel like?” giggled Sally, breaking the silence and
suspense.

“Kind of slimy really,” Tinkie answered.

“Oh gross!” screeched Sally.

“Yummy,” responded Tinkie.

“What did you do?” asked Megan.

“I kissed him back with my tongue in his mouth …”

“A French kiss! How did it feel?” whispered Saskia, enviously.

“Amazing. And you start to get  …”

I listened in horror. They liked this!

“Did he do anymore?”

“Mmm. Fingering. Under the blanket.”

“What is fingering?”  I whispered.

“When he touches you inside your pants with his fingers, silly!”
whispered  Saskia.

Megan fell back and groaned. “Tinkie you slag!”

“No I’m not. I’m in love!”

“What did you do when his fingers were ... you know?” asked Sally.

“I stared at the stars… and kissed him …”

“Did you like it?” asked Megan.

“Wonderful!” she replied dreamily.

“Did he … you know … do the whole thing?” asked Saskia in awe.

“No, don’t be crazy!” Horrified, Tinkie interrupted the spell of the
moment, throwing a cushion at Saskia. “There were too many people around. That
is a very private thing. Besides, we don’t need to. He said that was enough for
now. He likes me being a virgin. And it’s safe. I think I’m seeing him again at
half term. He said he loves me. And he said he’d write.”

I was desperately trying to put all this information into some kind of
order. Messing around. Fingering. French kisses. Safe. Virgin. Love. Somewhere
in my fragmented world these concepts were all supposed to fit. But how? No-one
at home ever talked about those sorts of things.

Then I made the mistake of revealing my ignorance by asking: “What’s …
what’s a virgin?”

A few stifled giggles told me I’d asked something wrong. Surely  it wasn’t
a bad word because I knew I’d heard about ‘the Virgin Mary’ at Rochelle’s
church and at the Convent and here in the school chapel on the weekends, but
no-one said what it actually meant. It had to mean
something,
didn’t it?

“A virgin is someone who has never had sex before, dummy,” answered
Saskia pompously. “Which basically means everyone in this room … except … well,
no that’s not true …” I froze.

“I was going to say ‘except Tinkie’, but actually she is sort of a virgin
still,” added Saskia.

“Well if you keep doing it you won’t be a virgin for long,” chided Sally.
“Soon it won’t just be fingers and you’ll be sorry.”

“I don’t think that she counts as a virgin now. She has already given
some of her purity to a guy …” argued Margie, a small girl who read a lot and
no-one had noticed her come in.

 “Of course she’s still one!” said Saskia. “Sex is sex and they didn’t do
it!”

“Not true! Virginity and purity also count in your heart, you know,”
argued Margie. “If someone gets raped and loses their virginity by force, they
haven’t lost their purity. They can still be a virgin in their heart. You lose
your purity by your thoughts as well as your actions …”

Of course by this time my brain was in overdrive. Saskia interrupted
again. “Oh, Margie shut-up! She
is
still a virgin.  She’s only had
fingers in her, not … you know…”     

I knew. Finally I’d started to piece it together and how I wished I
didn’t know.

“Well I don’t care,” said Tinkie. “Your kind of purity is so old-fashioned.
I liked what we did and it felt good ….”

“Doesn’t mean it was a good thing to do,” countered Margie. “I want to be
pure in mind
and
body when I marry!”

“Your loss,” Tinkie tossed back and the conversation continued amidst
much giggling and whispering.

“Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred.

In fact  he hated her more than he had loved her…

…and Tamar lived in Absolom’s house

a desolate woman.”

2 Samuel 13:15, 20

Slowly I unpacked my
clothes as I listened to the chatter. They were all so excited about Tinkie’s
new boyfriend and her new experiences with him. They talked as if this sort of
discovery was amazing, forbidden and yet desirable! Some wanted to experience
these things now. Some wanted to wait for marriage. With the exception of
Tinkie, it also sounded like none of them had ever participated in anything
like this before.

Slowly, I sensed myself
sinking into further emotional anarchy at the horrible realization that I, the
one who knew so little, was the one who had done so much!  The sickening truth
was that
I
was the only one who was not a virgin. I was the one who had
already had a man do “you know” to me.  Worse – the man was my father and he’d
said that
all
dads do this to their daughters!

I started to boil with
confused rage. My eyes filled with tears again and as the girls talked, I
pretended to page through Tinkie’s
Teen
magazine, keeping my back to
them, humiliated lest they should look into my face and somehow know.

Unfortunately, they
eventually did turn the conversation onto me. “Jane are you still crying about
your Dad?”

My heart missed a beat.
What did they mean? 

“She’s such a cry-baby,”
stated Tinkie. “She bawled before she went home because she thought she might
be getting sick. Now she’s blubbing because she’s back.”

“I’m not blubbing… I’ve
got something in my eye!”

“You
are
 
blubbing!”

“Not!” I argued
unconvincingly.

“Well I don’t understand
it,” said Sally. “You seemed to love it here before we all went home. Now
you’re all tearful again. It’s really time to grow up, Jane.”

“Oh shut up Miss Maturity,
what do you know anyway?” I retorted blowing my nose.

“More than you!”

“And I am not interested
in your tears,” added Tinkie spitefully. “You can go home next Friday again, just
give us some peace and quiet right now so we can talk about Jamie and me .…”

“Tinkie! Don’t be so
horrible!” said Megan. “She can’t help it if she feels homesick.”

“I’m
not
homesick,”
I retorted angrily. “I
hate
going home. My Dad is harsh and my stepmother
is really cruel. She only wants to spend time with the babies and she leaves me
out all the time….”

“Your Dad’s not harsh!”
gasped Tinkie. “He babies you every time he’s here. You don’t know what harsh
is! Gee, my Dad would thrash me if he knew what Jamie and I got up to!”

“Well, I heard that Kylie
Walter’s dad thrashed her with a belt for being a smart-ass. He left her
bruises that lasted for weeks!”

“It’s true,” said Megan.
“Once in the sixth grade, she couldn’t even swim in the inter-school gala because
of all the marks.  Matron Phelps said it would be bad for the school image.
That was when we were in Hillmore Primary School.”

“What happened to her
dad?” asked Sally.

“I don’t really know,”
answered Megan. “I guess her mother chucked him out. Her mother lives with a
new boyfriend now.”

“That was lucky!” said
Sally.

“Maybe not,” said Megan.
“Kylie told me he’s all over her and she hates him too.”

“I wonder why. He looked
quite nice when he came to school,” said Sally.

“Well looks can be a lie,”
I shouted. “Maybe you would also hate it if he was touching you all the time.”

“Who said he was touching
her?” asked Sally.

“Megan did!” I answered.

I remember my face
starting to burn as Megan entered the discussion and in a way, saved me.

“Yes that
is
what I
meant! It does happen,” said Megan. “My Mom is a social worker and she says
sometimes girls get touched by their fathers and step-fathers, but not in a
nice way. It’s called abuse!  But if it
is
true she should tell
someone.”

“Maybe she’s too scared,” I
answered without thinking. “Maybe he said he’ll kill her if she tells.”

They all looked at me.

“You should write books,”
said Tinkie mocking me. “You have such a wild imagination!”

At that moment the evening
dinner bell rang out and everyone charged downstairs for the highlight of the
boarding school day. Food!

I slept restlessly that
night but was so glad to be back at school. The weeks continued to pass in a
flurry of busyness which I loved. The other girls objected to homework but I
found solace in the activity and the chance to be creative even if I wasn’t
very good at it.

I managed to occupy myself
every day with school sports and I went to every club I could fit into my
timetable. I was often teased for being oversensitive and for crying easily, always
feeling something of an outcast. Well, I
was
different from the other
girls. I had shameful secrets. But it was still better than being at home
waiting for Dad’s touching.

The girls continued to
think the tears were because I was homesick, so I let them believe that.
However I became a master at finding ways to stay at school every possible
weekend. No matter how bad the teasing became or how cruel Tinkie could be, it
was still better than home.

One Thursday evening, when
I went downstairs to make my agreed phone call to Dad, Matron called me into
her office.

 “Jane, I thought you
liked boarding school?” It was a question.

“I do!” I answered, a
little shaken at her irritable tone.

“Well then, why all the
tears? You cry at the drop of a hat. Every time someone looks at you sideways
you ‘drizz’. Either you’re ill or you are being a bit of a cry-baby. You cannot
go on and on like this you know! You’re already fourteen years old!”

 “I’m sorry. I’ll try
harder.” My eyes were filling again.

“Jane!” Matron’s severe
attitude had a gentler edge. “Is there something wrong? Here at school … or at
home?”

“No, Matron,” I lied
without even thinking.

“Well then I want you to
try to cheer up. You don’t go home very often, and if you are so homesick you
should do less sport and go home more often!”

I panicked. “It’s … it’s
not that. Actually, I don’t get on very well with my stepmother. She is selfish
and … and I miss my real mother so much. But she never phones or writes to me. She
only writes to my brother.”

“I’m sure she writes to
you sometimes.”

“No!  Never! I haven’t
even seen her since I was in the sixth grade!”

I was hopeless at stemming
my tears so Matron passed me a tissue and I thought of telling her about my
father. I really wanted to tell someone about it. But he’d already said he
would say I was a liar and he would hurt me. I was so afraid of that side of
him.

“Well Jane, up at the school,
you have to try to cry less,” said Matron. “Your teachers asked me to talk to
you; to find out if something is wrong, because they notice you are tearful so
often. I spoke to your dad a few nights ago. He said perhaps sending you to
boarding school was a mistake. Maybe you should tell him how your stepmother makes
you feel.”

 In that moment my heart
sank. Matron had talked to Dad! Their conspiracy continued so I couldn’t
possibly tell her.

I made my Thursday duty
call home and as usual, my dad dissected my week’s activities with a fine
scalpel, searching for any chink in his ‘good-guy’ armour. Every Thursday I
would face the same barrage of questions.

“Have you told anyone our
secret?”

“No, Dad.”

“Are you free to come home
this weekend?”

“No Dad, I have sport … No
Dad, I am on tuck-shop duty ...  No Dad, I have detention … No Dad, I am on
manual labour … No Dad, we’re practising for the musical ....”

I used whatever ploy I
could. If I wasn’t picked for the hockey or swimming team that week, I
volunteered for tuck-shop or garden duty and failing that I would make sure I
was punished and gated; or I would offer to do someone else’s punishment for
them. The girls paid me with a couple of coins or a chocolate bar but really I
was the one getting the favour.

Well this particular call,
Dad decided to tackle me about being so weepy. “Matron says you’re a cry-baby
and you’re homesick all the time. Why don’t you come home more often then, my
Baby?”

“I’m busy Dad. You said I
have to work hard and I am.”

“Yes but you don’t have to
do
all
that sport, do you? Daddy misses you.”

“Well I like it,” I
answered, “And I’m good at it so I get chosen for teams.”

“Well it seems like you
also get too many punishments.”

“Sorry Dad.” I said and
silently added, “Not! But it’s way more fun than what you do to me at home.”

His tone was changing
because he wasn’t getting his own way and he began lecturing me about the
crying.

Naturally the call ended
off with, “I love you Jane. And don’t tell anyone our secret … or else.”

Thursday 16 March 1989

I haven’t written for a
few weeks because I’ve been busy. I am really happy to be here at boarding
school. But I cry a lot, I really can’t help it. I feel like there is a huge
lump of sadness sitting on my heart. I think God still hears my prayers – at
least I hope so. There is a long closed weekend coming up soon and you can
guess what’s going to happen to me. I feel sick.  Especially when he makes me
watch boxing with him. Joanne and Anthony can’t stand boxing and they go to
bed. He tells them I like it and makes me stay up to watch. Then he does it to
me from behind and I feel like I am being boxed from the rear end up. It’s hard
to express how much I hate it and him when he’s doing it.

Today he yelled and
lectured me on the phone as Matron told him I cry a lot and he said it reflects
badly on the family. How can he shout at me when he is the cause of all this?
He’s the one who makes me feel so sad and ugly about myself. I despise him for
everything I’m going through and I hate myself for my angry thoughts. What must
I do?

The next dreaded closed
weekend was a four day affair and arrived seven weeks into term. I could no
longer avoid the inevitable.

As Dad signed me out of
the hostel, he greeted Matron Ruth with his usual convivial façade. Strangely
though, once in the car he didn’t start by touching me. Instead he began by
questioning me.

 “Jane have you had your
monthly visitor?”

“Dad you never let anyone
visit me.”

‘Don’t be stupid! I mean,
have you had your monthly period? You should be having it about now. Are you
bleeding?”

I couldn’t understand his
preoccupation with my menstrual cycle. He always kept a check on me, and seemed
to know my cycle better than I did.

 I tried to think. It was
always hard to think when my father was probing into personal aspects of my
life. When had I last needed to be excused from swimming because of it?  Not
once this year! Come to think of it, my last cycle had been at the end of the
holidays, in mid January actually! And I hadn’t even noticed it. More than
seven weeks without ‘the curse’ as Joanne called it. Lucky me!

His voice was more urgent.
“Jane, have you had your period this month?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about this term?”

“
No!
” I was both
irritated and humiliated. “Anyway, why do you need to know? It’s private!”

“Don’t use that tone of
voice with me, young lady! I’m just being a concerned father!”

He seemed wrapped up in
thought. I sat there, tensely waiting for him to make his move but he kept his
hands to himself.

Near the end of the trip,
he stopped the car at a service station and filled up with fuel. He took me
into the Garage Café and we ordered a drink. I was amazed and a little
excited!  Maybe the weekend was not going to be so bad! No touching; a
chocolate milkshake … could life be getting better?

Naive and ignorant, I hadn’t
reckoned on what a missed period might mean.

The large Café was almost
empty and Dad chose a table isolated from the few other diners who were there.

As I relished my
milkshake, Dad’s voice pierced my little spot of calm. His tone was low, soft
and urgent as he delivered an instruction I could not comprehend.  “Jane you
have to do me a favour… I want you to tell Joanne that when you stayed with
Roxy at the end of the holidays, two black boys pulled you into her garage and
raped you. Also tell her you’ve missed your period for two months.”