Chapter Forty-One
“I can’t believe I’m telling you all this, but here goes…” Sasha began, taking a deep breath.
Maybe it was the wine that had soothed her nerves. Maybe it was the fact that they were curled up comfortably on the sofa. Maybe it was Sam dropping the L-bomb and telling her he wanted to know her more about her. But whatever the reason, she found herself telling him.
“It all started when I was ten, I guess. I just knew that for some reason, Dad had locked Mum in the bedroom for three days solid.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Three days?”
“I don’t know how accurate my memory is, but that’s what it felt like – three days.”
Sam shook his head sadly.
“When he left the bedroom, he looked like an animal; angry, enraged, storming out of the house with a crazed look in his eyes.”
Sasha took another sip of her wine.
“We all went into the bedroom to see Mum. I’ll never forget what she looked like. Covered in bruises. Sitting in her pink nightie. Vulnerable; exhausted; yet smiling at us. Telling us not to worry. She asked us to reach the phone over to her. She was phoning a friend. She was getting help. She was getting out of there.”
She reached over and picked up her cigarette packet, drawing one out and pointing it in Sam’s direction. He took the proffered cigarette.
“The next day, when I walked to school, the world looked different. Grey. The world looked grey. I thought that was interesting. The day before the world was in colour. Now it was in black and white.”
She took a cigarette from the packet and held it to her lips. Sam hovered the flame of his lighter underneath.
“Mum did go. I didn’t blame her. I wanted her to get away from us. As fast as her little legs could carry her. But she kept coming back again. Like a moth to a flame. Back for more punishment. The bruises would happen again and she’d be away again. But she always returned. Always for us.”
She took a long inhalation of her cigarette.
“One time we went to visit her; my sister and I. We snuck out of school and went to the women’s refuge. There was a big room; full of armchairs. A cloud of smoke hung in the air. Lots of women with anxious faces, smoking non-stop.”
Sam set a comforting hand on her thigh.
“Mum was so proud of us. She showed us off to everyone. ‘These are my daughters’, she announced, proudly. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ We were taken into the ‘good room’. A kind woman fussed over us and brought us orange and biscuits. ‘Only the special guests get the biscuits, you know,’ she smiled. But I could see the look of pity in her eyes. She felt sorry for us. Poor neglected children.”
Sam cocked his head sympathetically. He was listening. Truly listening. She could see it in his eyes; in his body language. He never once interrupted her. He encouraged her to continue.
“Mum showed us her bedroom. It was down a windy staircase in the basement downstairs. It was tiny. She shared it with another woman. ‘Look’, she said, taking a shoebox from under the bed. ‘These are all your letters. I’ve kept all your letters. I read them every day’. We looked at the pile of letters in the box. Dad had made us write those. ‘Write to her’, he instructed. ‘Ask her to come home’.”
She noticed something flicker through Sam’s eyes. Anger? Annoyance perhaps?
“But I didn’t want her to come home. I wanted her to stay there; safe. With all the other women and their comforting smoking. With the kindly woman with the orange and biscuits. I wanted her to stay there. And I wanted to move in too.”
She took another drag of her cigarette and felt Sam’s thumb gently caress her other hand.
“The beating had moved on to my brothers and sisters. With my mum not there, he needed someone else to lash out at. My sister; belt marks across her back. Unable to change for PE in case the others would notice. My brother; dragged upstairs and beaten for wetting his bed. He set his alarm every hour after that. He got out of bed every hour to go to the toilet – to try to avoid a beating. My other sister; hit with a belt because he found the contraceptive pill under her pillow.”
Sam just shook his head sadly.
“We eventually got away. I couldn’t believe it. The government gave mum her own flat. She’d been on a waiting list for years.”
She sipped at her wine again. Her glass was nearly empty, at this rate.
“We sneaked out in the middle of the night to join her. We did a midnight flit. We loaded all our stuff into my sister’s boyfriend’s van. Schoolbooks; everything. We used torches and we tip-toed on the gravel.”
Sam reached over and picked up the wine bottle; topping up her glass and then topping up his own.
“The next day in the new flat, I felt something descend on me; relief, freedom. The sunlight streamed through the window and onto the kitchen table. We were free. The world was in colour again.”
Sam smiled, as though reliving her relief, her happiness.
“‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I asked my sister. ‘Yes please’, she replied. I went to the kettle. The brand new kettle. In the brand new kitchen. I picked two mugs from the cupboard. I could do anything I wanted. I could decide to put the kettle on and make myself a cup of tea without tip-toeing or walking on thin ice. I was free.”
Sam’s smile broadened.
“It didn’t last long, though. Dad took Mum out for dinner and coaxed her to move home. Within days, I was back in my bottom bunk bed, wondering how the hell this had happened. How had my freedom been taken off me? Why had she given that flat back to the government? Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
She inhaled again on her cigarette.
“Of course, it only took a few weeks for the bruises to start again. All that, for that. Eventually, I did get away. At eighteen. I went to the first university that could take me and I was gone. Sitting in the student union that first night, cross-legged on the floor, with my new housemates, drinking a bottle of Budweiser, I marvelled at how the beer trickled down my body, down to my very toes. Now I was free. Really free.”
She stubbed out her cigarette.
“But my mum’s words of advice always rang in my ears. ‘Start as you mean to go on.’ ‘Don’t get married’. ‘As soon as you kids leave, that’s me away.’ I suppose I’ve always protected myself. It’s as if I’m looking – waiting for any man to prove himself. Waiting for him to prove himself wrong.”
Sasha stopped then – aware she had said too much. She had been seeing Sam, how many months? And already she had bared her soul to him. He’d be running away as fast as he could.
“Thank you for telling me that,” Sam said softly. “I’m really privileged that you told me all that. It helps me to understand you more.”
Sasha shrugged her shoulders softly.
“It sounds horrific, Sasha. I’m so sorry.”
There was a brief silence and then Sasha said, “I guess it’s just one of those things. You just get on with it at the time. You just take one day at a time.”
Sam sat closer to her and wrapped his arms around her. “I know,” he soothed. He stroked her face softly. “I promise I will never hurt you,” he whispered. “Physically or any other way. I promise.”
Sasha wanted to believe him, really she did. But she knew it would just take time.