Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again. Joe Peters

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СКАЧАТЬ I was the only one who had lived with anyone else, the only one who realized that life didn’t have to be this terrifying and this painful all the time.

      ‘He’ll sleep on the floor in your room,’ Mum told Larry and Barry. ‘He’s not good enough for a room of his own. Take him up there and get him out of my sight.’

      They were happy to oblige, kicking and punching me all the way up the stairs before pushing me into their bedroom.

      The house was four storeys high, as tall as a tower to a small, frightened boy. It had a railway line running directly beside it, the trains making the sturdy walls tremble every time they rattled past. I crouched by the window, shaking, and gradually my fear was turning to anger. The only thing I wanted was to see my dad again and the frustration at not being able to do that was building inside my head like a volcano waiting to erupt. When Larry and Barry came to fetch me for dinner, I lashed out at them, biting, kicking and punching, earning myself a clout round the ear and, I suppose, fulfilling Mum’s description of me as a spoiled brat.

      The family dining table was made of glass, with steel legs attached to the underneath by what looked like giant suckers. I went to sit down at it that first evening and Mum sneered, ‘No, you’re not good enough to sit with us. Get down on the floor, under the table, and we’ll feed you scraps, like a dog.’

      Larry and Barry wrestled me to the floor, and thus began a new pattern in which this was how all my meals were fed to me. As I crouched under the table, they would kick out at me and drop scraps on the floor, grinding them into the tiles with the heels of their shoes and then ordering me to lick them up with my tongue. They would actually make me jump up and down and beg for my food like a dog.

      I might have fought back if it was just my brothers but with Mum I already knew I had to be more careful how I behaved because of the fearsomeness of her violence and the willingness with which she would dispense it. After a few more beatings for looking at her the wrong way, or answering her back, the message got home to me once and for all and I realized I was not going to get any preferential treatment just because I had lost my father – quite the opposite in fact. I quickly learned not to do anything to antagonize her any more than I did simply by being there. My very existence was a constant reminder of Dad and his treachery, but even doing nothing wasn’t going to save me from what was to come. To the outside world she seemed like a tragic grieving widow coping with a traumatized child; to those of us who lived with her she was a vindictive, vengeful, violent force of nature.

      ‘You’re nothing special,’ she kept reminding me, over and over again. ‘Don’t you fucking forget it.’

      The day after Mum brought me back to her house, I overheard a conversation on the phone between her and Marie. My ears pricked up when I heard her name, hoping that she was going to come and fetch me back to hers, but it wasn’t to be.

      ‘I tell you what,’ Mum said to her, unable to resist another round of gloating. ‘You can fucking have him now. He’s no use to anyone any more, is he? I’ll let you take care of the funeral.’

      I didn’t understand what they were talking about but I found out later from Wally that Mum was refusing to pay for a funeral and insisting that Marie covered it. Marie had her own little market stall at the time selling perfumes and cosmetics so Mum knew she had a bit of money and she knew she wouldn’t want to refuse to do something for Dad. But even at that stage Mum still wasn’t going to let go of her powers as the legal wife that easily. Although Dad had always believed in having a burial, she insisted that his body be cremated.

      ‘She may be paying,’ she told the poor embarrassed funeral directors, ‘but I’m his wife so I get to say what happens, and I say he goes to the crematorium.’

      Marie put up a bit of a fight. ‘But William always believed in burial,’ she protested. ‘You know that.’

      ‘If you don’t agree to the cremation,’ Mum replied, ‘I’ll pay for the fucking funeral myself and I won’t be letting you through the fucking doors.’

      Even though she knew Mum didn’t have the money, Marie was aware that it wasn’t an idle threat. If she wanted to say her last goodbyes to Dad she had no choice but to do as Mum wanted.

      After Wally had explained to me what a funeral was, I begged Mum to let me come along to Dad’s, but there was no chance of that. She was playing the role of grieving widow and I suppose it would have spoiled the act if I had run over to cling to Marie during the ceremony rather than her.

      ‘You all right, Bro?’ Wally asked me now and then, giving me a comforting cuddle if no one else was watching, and I would nod gratefully, even though I wasn’t all right at all. I felt that he understood a bit of what I was going through and I wished it was just him and me living there with the little ones.

      Being only five years old I’d had no concept of death until I was told that Dad had gone. Marie had talked about heaven, but Mum said he’d gone to hell. I’d never even had to think about it before. So my way of finding out about it was by discovering that the one person in the world I loved above all others had gone for good; that I was never going to see him again, or talk to him, or ask him any questions or take shelter behind his long legs. It felt as though I had been hit with a sledgehammer, the weight of my misery crushing me into the ground.

      Occasionally Wally would try to put things right for me in a hushed whisper when he was sure Mum was out of the house. ‘Don’t listen to Mummy,’ he would say under his breath, ‘she’s wrong. Your dad has gone to heaven, not hell.’ I wanted to believe him, but I was afraid he was just being kind and that it was Mum who was telling the truth. She was the grown up after all, I reasoned, and she was my mother; why would she lie to me about something so important? Nothing made any sense any more.

      Mum kept the house in immaculate condition, obsessively cleaning and tidying all day long. It was a show home although hardly anyone other than her and her children was ever allowed to set foot through the door. None of us dared to make a mess because it could result in her exploding with fury. Apart from drinking and beating her children about, housework was all Mum ever did. It was as though she was trying to control every object and every speck of dirt in her little kingdom. Each morning she would be up at half past five sweeping round the paths outside the house and vacuuming every dustless room. The towels in the bathroom were lined up in perfect sequence and even the bar of soap by the bath would be positioned at exactly the correct angle. No one was allowed to sit on a chair or settee in case they dented the cushions; we all had to sit on the floor. Before she went to bed at night she would lay out all the breakfast bowls for the morning, every setting lined up and every portion of cereal measured out and ready. The immaculate state of the house added to the image of her as the admirable mother in the eyes of any visiting authorities. If she was looking after her home this well, they must have reasoned, she must be caring for her children with equal passion and dedication.

      As my overwhelming grief and anger began to erupt as tantrums, in which I threw cups and plates across the room, and lashed out, kicking and biting my brothers, Mum stepped in quickly. Having a disturbed five-year-old smashing the place up in temper was far more than she was ever going to be willing to tolerate. I had to be brought under control instantly and completely, so that I would obey her as readily and blindly as the others did. She didn’t intend to teach me how to behave better with love and encouragement, which is how most mothers would have approached the problem; she intended to break my spirit in every way possible. She couldn’t be bothered to try to find out what was troubling me and work towards helping me come to terms with the shock that had traumatized every atom of my body.

      To achieve instant results she needed first to isolate me from the rest of the world, from anyone who might disagree with her methods and might show some СКАЧАТЬ