Unspoken - Kiss of the Wolf Spider, Part I (9 page)

“But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;

you consider it to take it in hand.

The victim commits himself to you;

you are the helper of the fatherless.”

Psalm 10:14

I ended up in
the school infirmary which we called the sick-bay, until my terrible stomach
pains and heavy period eased. Matron Ruth said if it was ever again that
severe, I ought to see a doctor. When she told me she thought my parents were
very insensitive to have brought me back to school so unwell, I began to see
another side to my Matron.

After I left
the sick-bay, I was initially bombarded with concerned questions from my
friends but s
oon
enough, this made way for irritation and pleas to ‘grow up’ and stop crying.

All the stress and
distress of that terrible week at home resulted in my becoming more moody and
listless. My school-work suffered and instead of the borderline passes, I
started to fail my tests. It wasn’t long before I was called into the office.

“Good morning Jane,” said
Mrs Martingale as I walked into the daunting teak and lavender surrounds.

Terrified, I greeted her
in a whisper and was told to sit in a huge mauve chair. Mrs Martingale was a
sturdy, tall woman, slightly greying, probably in her fifties. Most of the
girls had to look up into her face unless they were heading for six foot
themselves. She carried pride and sternness in her bearing, but, looking back,
I don’t think she ever tormented us with her power.

Shaking and staring at my
hands in my lap, I wondered what awful things I had done wrong now.

In a calm, firm voice, Mrs
Martingale said, “Jane, your teachers are worried about you. You seem to be a
very miserable pupil at this school and you’ve had so many punishments and
three Saturday manual labour days already.  Don’t you like it here? Perhaps it
was a mistake to come to boarding school.”

“No, no I like boarding
school,” I panicked. What if they wanted to throw me out… banish me from my
sanctuary? “I really, really like it here…” I said.

It was against the rules
to do someone else’s punishment for them so I couldn’t explain that I’d rather
stay in at weekends and be paid with chocolates to do someone else’s ‘manual’
than go home to Dad and Joanne. As usual, when confronted by any conflict I
started to cry. I thought the principal was so kind when she passed me a
tissue.

“But Jane you cry so much
that I’m worried about you. You were passing at the beginning of the year. Not
great marks, but you were getting fifties. Now your marks have plummeted.  You
haven’t achieved much above thirty percent in the last month. The staff
complain that you day dream and don’t finish anything. If they moan, you cry.
Is there something the matter that you perhaps need to tell me about?”

I wanted so much to tell
her, but again came the dark  thoughts.  ‘
What’s the use? No one believes
you. Even the doctor didn’t say anything. And what about the nun? If you tell
now, Mrs Martingale will say it’s not true and phone your Dad and he’ll  kill
you when you get home.’

“Jane? Jane, talk to me.”

I opened my mouth but
something stopped me. ‘
It’s our special secret. I do it because I love
you. But if you tell anyone at all I will kill you, Jane.’

No sound came out. I
started to shiver and cry but I couldn’t speak.

Mrs Martingale was
watching me closely.  “Jane, what’s wrong?”

All sorts of thoughts ran
through my head.

 ‘An honest speaker comes
out with the truth.’

‘He’ll kill you
.’

‘Speak. I’ll be beside
you.’

‘Speak and it will be
worse than it has ever been before.’

 
Fear spoke louder.  I
recall wringing my wrists and saying something like, “I’m having a hard time at
home …. My stepmother hates me and … my real mother never phones me or visits
me and my dad … well … he can be real mean to me.…”

Then she asked me something
that surprised me. “Jane, I understand that there was a time when your real
mother hurt you and the school was worried about her. When you were at Black Fern
Primary... Can you remember that?”

“No….”

“Jane? I have your file
here in front of me.” She was sounding stern now.

“I mean yes,” I sniffed.

“What was your mother
doing to you?” Her voice was both firm and reassuring.

“She used to pinch me and
make bruises. And when she washed my hair she scratched me with her nails so I
got sores on my head.”

“It says here that your
mother left your dad. Do you know why?”

I was embarrassed but I
wanted so much to be honest, especially to Mrs Martingale.

“My Dad used to hit my
mother.”

“Did he make her bleed and
bruise her, Jane?”

“Yes.” I whispered it,
feeling treacherous to my father.

“Did he ever hit you?”

“Yes. But all dads hit
their children … I think.”

“Yes, some do, but did he
hit you hard, Jane?” she asked. “Did he ever make you bleed or leave bruises?”

I looked at my hands and
began to shake my head. Mrs Martingale took my hands and looked  at the scars
that were healing. I looked away.

“Jane, it says in this
file from your last school, that one day you wouldn’t swim at school and the
teacher saw a huge bruise on your leg when you bent down to pick up something.
That was in … Mrs Liebig’s class. She wrote it in your school file. Do you
remember?”

Heat surged in my cheeks.

“Look at me, Jane. Did
your dad maybe do that to you?”

“Sometimes I couldn’t swim
because I had my period.”

“Your teacher thought you
couldn’t swim because you didn’t want her to see the bruises your Dad gave you
… and he had written you an excuse letter.”

“Well…maybe he didn’t mean
to… he was always angry and Joanne said he was stressed at work … and we should
just keep it in the family. It was family business.”

“So he did give you
bruises?”

“Umm, maybe. But I could
have got that one when I fell off the motorbike.” I knew I was unconvincing.

“Are you sure, Jane?
Sometimes children tell a lot of stories to cover up for bad things their
parents do. But parents are not allowed to do bad things and hurt their
children, Jane. It’s called abuse.”

 “Yes I did fall off the
motorbike … at the river crossing…”

Mrs Martingale wrote in
her file and I sat uncomfortably, waiting. Then all of a sudden she stopped and
closed her file.

 “Well Jane, if you think
of anything else you might want to talk about, I want you to come to me … or go
to Matron Ruth. We are here to help you. In the meantime I hope to see a big
improvement in your marks.” She smiled at me.

“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll try.”

“Are you still playing
sport?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“What about the choir?”

“I am in the choir and
I’ll be in the musical. I love to sing and watch the actors.”

“Good, Jane. You must keep
busy and that way you won’t be so homesick.”

“I … I’m not homesick. I
promise. I love school. I just haven’t been feeling well lately.”

“You are very pale. I
think you should have a blood test sometime soon to see if you’re anaemic. Are
your periods heavy?”

I blushed. Why did
everyone want to know about my private business? I grew hot and flustered.

“Jane, I’m just trying to
help. Sometimes if a girl loses a lot of blood it can make her a bit miserable
and unwell. So I want to know if you are losing a lot of blood. Are your
periods bad?”

“Only the last one was.
But maybe it was because I missed for two months and it was catching up.”

“I’ll tell Matron to get
on to it. Perhaps you need some iron.”

Matron took me to the
doctor for a check-up. He drew blood for testing and later I was given a script
for iron tablets. Matron said I should stop feeling so weepy quite soon but I
thought it would take more than a few brown pills to do that.

“Love does not delight in evil

but rejoices with the  truth.

It always protects, always trusts,

always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails…”

1 Corinthians 13:6-8

 On Sunday
mornings, it was compulsory for pupils who stayed at school over the weekends
to attend church. Matron Ruth and the girls all sat on the left, while Mr  Emerson
sat with the boys on the other side of the aisle.

Church was a
source of enormous anguish for Tinkie but it was a great joy to me. I was never
allowed to go to church at home but here I
was at peace. It was a haven from
the world I knew outside its walls.  During the long services that my friends
complained about, I loved to stare at the beautiful, stained glass windows
reflecting stories from the Bible. I knew that I often argued with God and
accused him of not caring for me but every Sunday, Reverend Simons seemed able
to renew my hope that God did love me.  

On the Sunday following my
visit to Mrs Martingale’s office, the sermon was all about God’s love and
protection. I liked the idea of God’s protection even though I found it
difficult to relate to in my own life.

After church, we girls
asked Matron if we could walk home past the dam as it was such a lovely day.
Matron Ruth said it would be okay, as long as we kept our ‘Sunday best’ clean
and got back in time for lunch. The dam was a pool of brown water trapped by a
small earth mound,  and could be seen quite clearly from the hostel.

We chattered and giggled
as we walked to the dam. It was so good to be there. My hockey team had drawn
our match yesterday morning and I’d helped in the tuck-shop in the afternoon.
Last night had been movie night and Sunday was church. No wonder I loved staying
at school on weekends.

We began by skipping
stones across the calm water but as the sun grew hotter, the cool water became
rather tempting. One senior girl took off her shoes and waded into the brown,
muddy shallows. Her friend followed suit and soon we were all ankle deep,
trying to keep our white Sunday dresses clean.

Suddenly someone kicked a
foot-load of mud into the air and half a dozen girls were spattered with the
brown ooze. Squeals and shrieks and a fair number of swear words rang out, followed
by a voice yelling, “Mud fight!” and a bucket load more of the stuff was sent
into orbit.

Angry shouts were followed
by laughter and more splashing.

Next someone had a crazy
idea and yelled, “Come on everybody, follow me!”

“Where are you going,
Germaine?”called Saskia in horror as she watched the girl wading deeper into
the water.

“To get the raft. Come
help me!” She was heading towards a floating wooden structure in the middle of
the little dam.

“You’ll soak your dress!”
called out another coward.

“It’s already dirty. It
needs a wash,” Germaine shouted back.  “Just like all of yours! Including you,
Saskia! Come on! ”

“Matron will kill us.”

“Oh well, too late, I’m
dead. Anyway it will be worse if we don’t get the stains out of these dresses. Join
in people!”

Saskia looked at me and
smiled. “I’ll go if you come too Jane!” Delighted to be included, I grabbed my
skirt and tried tucking it into my panties. Soon we were laughing hysterically
as our white skirts billowed up on the water surface around our waists.

“Come on Megan!” I yelled
and soon Megan and Tinkie were there too.

Girls were wallowing and
splashing, armpit-deep around the wooden structure, when Saskia let out a
scream. “Something touched me! Aagh! It touched me again. Help! It’s an eel!”

In a flash the floundering
was over and we were all aboard the raft, soon to be named “
The Cutty Sark
”.

Fear of the eel lasted
momentarily and the next cry was, “Man overboard!” as Germaine pushed Saskia.
She landed with a splash and a few girls still on the bank cheered them on. In
no time, Saskia was screaming, “Eel!” and scrambling back up to push someone
else off into the ‘eel infested’ waters.

As the circus continued, a
few more girls ventured through the cold muddy water to join in the madness.
Fancying ourselves as the crew of
The
Cutty Sark
, we tried to use
some oars we found on the old wooden raft to move in towards the bank but the
thing must have been anchored for it was going nowhere.

A game of raft gladiators
followed and those on the bank continued to cheer and yell like rugby
spectators as we pushed each other off with the oars. Finally, hunger defeated
us. Leaving the oars on the raft, we braved the slime and eels, screaming all
the way back to the bank.

In the shallows Megan
turned to me and said, “You know, you’re such fun when you’re happy, Jane!”

We stretched out in the
sun trying to dry our dresses when someone exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, we’d better
go or we’ll miss lunch!” Then the scheming began. How would we explain the mess
we were in to Matron Ruth and Mr Emerson?

 Germaine, the noisy girl
said, “Well Rosie and Sammy, as you are still dry and ‘cleanish’, you’d better
go in the front door and distract Matron. Ask her for a headache pill or
something and we’ll all sneak in the side door and quickly go upstairs to
change.”

 We spent ages arguing
over our plan and finally set off back to hostel actually thinking we could pull
it off! 

 
Sunday 18 June 1989 

I have just had the best
weekend ever…

 I described all the events
of the weekend in detail, and then giggled as I recorded how we’d tried to
trick Matron.

…Suddenly we noticed Mr
Emerson was watching us from the hostel veranda. He had binoculars! It made us
laugh even more because he’s rather stuffy and ever so proper! Well, all our
planning to sneak in past Matron was a complete fail. She was waiting for us at
the side door! Boy, I thought we were in trouble when she made us go with Mr 
Emerson – but it was to swim and clean up in the pool first, not to be punished! 
The pool was freezing but such a blast.  Then we had a cookout which Mr Emerson
organised!

 I wish every day was like
this with no worries and no-one to touch me and make me feel worthless.