Tell Me Why, Mummy: A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive.. David Thomas

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ clearly. After that she picks on me mercilessly. I spend most of my time trying to avoid her but she always manages to seek me out.

      ‘What’th the matter, Ginger Bithcuit, have you done poo-pooth in your troutherth?’ she calls out to me in the school playground. ‘What’th your mummy going to thay? I bet she’ll thpank your bumbumth?’

      ‘Go away! Leave me alone!’ I reply miserably. ‘I haven’t done anything to hurt you.’

      ‘Oooh, baby Ginger Bithcuit’th cwying,’ she taunts back. ‘He’th going to wee all over hith troutherth coth he’th tho upthet. Boo hoo! Boo hoo! You’d better go and tell your mummy and she can kith you better!’

      I don’t know how or why, but she’s hit the target, picked on my weak spot. I don’t really understand what’s going on at home, but Mum scares me when she’s out of control and I somehow feel crushed and humiliated by this sneering jibe.

      I blush bright scarlet.

      ‘Look at Baby Ginger! Hith fathe hath gone all red. It’th all gingery like the retht of him.’

      Her friends laugh and snigger. But I’m praying that she’s had her fun now and if I’m lucky she’ll leave me alone now for the rest of the day. Of course she knows very well that the last thing I’m going to do is tell Mum. I can’t tell my mother and I can’t tell anyone else either.

      Karen doesn’t physically hurt me and I don’t mention these incidents to anyone, but this is the first time I have been bullied and I hate it. It destroys my confidence and makes me deeply unhappy. I withdraw into myself, feeling that I’m on the outside looking in. From now on I keep myself to myself and mainly talk to the other quiet kids.

      I’m not used to people being nasty to me like this. In the years to come I will come to understand that I have been bullied, just as I will come to realize that my mother has been sexually abusing me, but at the age of five I don’t attach these labels to what is happening to me. All I know is that at school Karen makes my life miserable, while at home I have two mummies – the Light Mummy, the caring, loving and affectionate one, and the Dark Mummy, who frightens me when she’s drinking and out of control.

      But even with Dark Mummy, I can comfort myself that I’m doing it to make her happy and if it pleases her it makes me feel better. Besides, she isn’t hurting me and that’s what matters.

      I don’t know if Mum notices the effect of the bullying on me, but after a few weeks I start inventing excuses for not going to school.

      ‘I’ve got a headache/toothache/earache/my tummy/ foot/elbow hurts.’

      Usually Mum won’t have any truck with these excuses: if I’m able to get up and eat my breakfast then I can go to school. Then, miraculously, I come down with a real stinker of a cold and sore throat and she keeps me at home for over a week.

      When it’s time for me to go back to school, I am more anxious and nervous than ever. But by this time, to my huge relief, Karen has grown bored with taunting me and apart from an occasional verbal swipe the bullying seems to tail off. Probably she has found another victim, but after that she leaves me alone.

      Besides, things have started to change for me slightly. Maybe Karen has picked up on this and thinks twice before having a go at me, but for whatever reason, she has moved on and so have I.

      What’s changed is that I’m learning how to defend myself – and it helps that I wear clogs as shoes at school. There’s a working clog factory a few miles from where we live and as they are sturdy and long-lasting, they seem not only practical but it also makes economic sense to Mum for me to wear them.

      The front of a clog is very hard and hurts if you come into contact with it. Unfortunately, I choose to employ them as a weapon at school and start kicking out at any kid I fall out with. I have become physically aggressive to defend myself against being bullied.

      This kicking out makes kids more wary of me. Upon kicking another pupil, they start screaming in pain and I find myself getting hauled up in front of the teacher. Despite my protests of doing it in self-defence, I get into trouble. As a rule I only tend to do it in the classroom and these incidents are few and far between, but I’m always unrepentant, which never helps.

      ‘But Miss,’ I plead, ‘they were hitting me first.’

      ‘I don’t care, David,’ she insists, ‘you can’t wear them any more.’

      This scolding hurts me more than the bullying and I try to control myself. I also hate going home and telling Mum I have been in trouble at school.

      It never occurs to me that there’s anything very wrong with what’s going on between me and Mum. I think of the peculiar physical intimacy between us as our ‘Special Time’ and I like it in the way that a child in a normal relationship with their mother is aware of and understands a cuddle. I don’t want to spoil what we have between us, and so from now on I’m a model student at school, well behaved in class, hardly ever getting into detention and never being sent home from school.

      After this I stop kicking out at other kids and I avoid conflicts. If someone tells me to do anything – whether it’s grown-ups or other children – I agree to it or find a way round it to make sure that other people don’t get angry or upset with me. I don’t want to be hurt and I don’t want to get into trouble for hurting anyone else. It’s in my nature to be submissive and I don’t want to be bullied – but that’s going to lead to far greater problems for me in the years to come.

      In my first year at Calder Bridge I win a gold star from the Head and I’m overjoyed. I’ve just discovered how much I like being the centre of attention. I enjoy the feeling of being good at something. When a few weeks later I see another older lad getting a lot of attention because it’s his birthday it makes me feel very jealous. I wish it was me who they were all making a fuss about. I also discover something else.

      Walking home from school with another boy, we race each other and I beat him.

      I love beating him and I love winning.

      * * *

      At home, we have very little money to live on. After my parents split up, Dad pays Mum maintenance but it’s never much according to her – although I have no idea how the money from the houses has actually been split up. I don’t know any different and am grateful for what I have or what is given to me. Although I have some books, board games, Lego and toy cars, I don’t have many toys; they are mostly secondhand. Around this time, 1974–75, Mum is a member of a Halifax Gingerbread Group for single parents who meet at each others’ houses and take it in turns to hold a gingerbread evening. She makes friends and does things with them that also involve children, and she sometimes comes home with toys for me, which is always exciting.

      Although we have little cash, Mum always makes sure I have the things I need and it’s the same throughout my childhood. One day my friend George who lives across the fields gives me a bike. Mum can never afford to get me a bike because it’s too expensive. I sometimes wonder whether Dad will think about buying me one, given his love of two-wheeled machines, but he’s hardly ever around nowadays and I can only assume he’s preoccupied with his own problems.

      There’s no point in my complaining about wanting a new bike, I’m never going to get one. George’s old bike is definitely the next best thing. It is light green and beige and doesn’t have a saddle, which makes it difficult to ride, but I’m not bothered. СКАЧАТЬ