Living With Evil by Cynthia Owen (ap literature book list txt) 📗

another long night of putting up with pain. I felt very drowsy and tired and fell into a patchy, fear-filled sleep.

Suddenly, I saw a man looming over my bed, I didn’t even realize he was there until it was too late. I snapped open my eyes in terror, smelling danger, and was shocked to see it was a ‘friend’ of Mammy’s I called the thug.

Mammy knew I was particularly scared of this thug, but she had clearly given him free rein to come into my bedroom and do what he liked to me while my daddy was out drinking. I was exhausted mentally as well as physically, but I made an instinctive decision that night.

I sat up tall and looked him straight in the eye.

‘No way!’ I screamed. ‘I just can’t take any more.’ I had reached absolute breaking point and this man wanting to hurt me was the final straw.

I thought I might be able to fight him off. I was quite small and skinny, and he was much stronger and bigger than me, but I lashed out with all my might.

His eyes flashed angrily. My bold talk seemed to enrage him and make him more aggressive. ‘Oh yeah? Try and fuckin’ stop me,’ he snarled.

He made a grab for me, and I struggled, kicking and lashing out with my fists for all I was worth. I felt tiny and helpless, but I wasn’t giving up. I really couldn’t take any more.

Suddenly I was aware he was hovering high above me. He was standing on the pillows, holding on to the big wooden headboard behind me.

I screwed my eyes shut in a blind panic, realizing what he was about to do. Stamp! went his heavy foot, down on to my face.

I felt something snap, and the pain was excruciating. Stamp! he went again, cursing and shouting at me as he lifted his foot ready for the next blow.

I felt blood coming from my nose as he stamped on my face again and again. As I lay there writhing in pain, he had his way with me.

I went to Mammy afterwards, once I eventually found the strength to lift myself off the bed and stagger downstairs. ‘That thug stamped on my face!’

She was sitting by the fire drinking her favourite sherry, and she didn’t look up. ‘Stop being such a complainin’ little bitch.’

I begged her to take me to the doctor’s, but she refused and sent me back to bed. I’d heard her say before that Daddy’s wage was too high for us to get free medical care. I guessed that was why she never took me to the doctor.

The thug visited me in bed many more times. I never had any warning, and he had a habit of appearing from nowhere.

I often went to school with black eyes and bruises. I’d get fresh bruises on top of old ones, so my skin was always pitted with varying shades of black, blue and yellow marks. When I looked particularly bad, I just tried to make myself invisible at the back of the class and keep out of everyone’s way. Nobody at school seemed to notice, or perhaps they just thought I got into lots of fights.

Mammy said nothing. She seemed quite happy to sit downstairs drinking and smoking and turning a blind eye to what happened to me upstairs night after night. I felt so weak and exhausted, like my body was being broken over and over again. I wanted to fight, but I felt like a tiny speck compared to my abusers. There had to be another way of escaping them.

As summer turned to winter, I started pretending I wanted to use the toilet to get out of the bedroom and away from the possibility of more pain and terror.

I figured that the thug couldn’t get me if I was in the outside toilet in the back garden. It was dark and damp and stank so badly it made my eyes well up and sting, but it was better than lying terrified in bed.

Sometimes I huddled out there for ages, imagining spiders crawling over me, but it was far better than lying in bed and waiting for the thug to crawl on top of me, knowing Mammy was downstairs pretending nothing was happening. Or maybe she hated me so much she was even enjoying the fact I was suffering so badly?

One night, I was standing in the toilet in my vest and knickers. It was a bitterly cold night, and I was wondering how long I could stand it before I would be forced to go back inside.

All of a sudden, my nerves started to twang, and I felt myself physically shaking with cold and fear.

I could hear a strange noise outside, above my head. Someone was prowling around. I listened so intently that I could hear my own blood pumping through my veins. It was him looking for me, I just knew it. He didn’t come in that time, but he made it clear he had worked out what I was up to. I knew it was only a matter of time before my plan stopped working.

That time arrived just a few nights later, when he hid in the toilet, behind the door, waiting for me. When I crept in, hoping for a few minutes’ peace, he slammed the door shut, put his hand over my mouth and hurt me very quickly, and very violently. Afterwards he shared a laugh and a joke with my mammy.

There was no escape. I felt utterly trapped. I wasn’t strong enough to fight him off, and it felt like the only weapon I had was my mind.

I tried to switch it off whenever he appeared. I didn’t want to feel anything or think anything. If I emptied my brain and let it fuzz over, I would feel less hurt and pain. It worked a bit, but not as much as I would have liked.

It was impossible to feel normal. Daddy was still