Please Let It Stop Read Free Page B

dripping wet, my mother just walked up to me and slapped me across the face. She never confronted John but she did ignore me totally for the rest of the holiday.
    After that incident I believe she knew exactly what was going on. The more I thought about it, the more I felt rejected by her and responsible for what was happening to me. I knew what John was doing wasn’t right or normal and kept asking myself what I had done wrong. I was also living in a time when children did not discuss issues like abuse with other people. It was not commonly mentioned in the media as it is today and children were not warned to watch out for people who might be possible abusers. In fact, to all intents and purposes, it didn’t exist. Even professionals were not very adept at handling it, as evidenced by my encounter with a female GP. I had gone to see her for my self-inflicted constipation. Over the years I had developed this habit of holding my bowels so that I didn’t go to the toilet, at one point for two weeks. I was in a huge amount of pain. Psychologists would probably see it as a desperatechild’s attempt at gaining some foothold and control in the world and I suspect there is a great deal of truth in that.
    I was scared of doctors but I was also aware I was alone with my GP for the first time. As she examined me, I suddenly blurted out something like, ‘I’m being sexually abused at home.’ Instead of making me feel comfortable and giving me the confidence to talk about it, she coldly asked, ‘Shall I send round a social worker?’ Hearing those words sounded so threatening I immediately said no, for fear of getting into or causing trouble. In those days the impression of the social worker was someone who took you away instead of helping you. After that episode and my childish attempt to tell my cousin, I kept the whole thing to myself. I couldn’t tell my father, who had absolutely no idea what was going on – in fact, it’s only recently that he has discovered what went on in that house.
    John’s abuse went beyond the sexual. He was one of those people who was menacing, even when he wasn’t around. My mother became totally submissive to him. I won’t say she was besotted in a loving way. He controlled her and she spent her whole life pleasing him, so Vanessa and I had to do the same. Mum’s sole mission in life was how to keep John happy. He was not only her partner; he was also her main topic of conversation. She talked about him incessantly. When it wasn’t about John, it was about his dog. And that was it: she had no other interests. John would often mock me, taking something I’d said and repeating it backto me as if I was stupid. Mum would then join in with him. His influence meant that she would put me down, often in front of people. I often remember hearing her say in front of visitors, ‘Jacqueline’s so plain and clumsy.’
    As if the sexual and emotional abuse wasn’t enough, there was also the ‘work’. I don’t mean picking up our clothes off the floor or tidying our rooms, but seriously hard labour. After we did our homework, we weren’t allowed to watch TV or relax. We had to apply ourselves to one of four forms of work that John had decreed. One of these was housework, specifically cleaning. Often I would take on the worst room in the house, which was the kitchen. I don’t know how Mum did it but she managed to make it filthy so I had to scrub it. There was no rest for anybody. My mother’s chronic rheumatoid arthritis did not exempt her (although she had lighter jobs) and neither did Vanessa’s age (she was only five when John came to live in our house). With John there were no excuses. He liked to have us working in the garden where he made us dig a vegetable patch. We’d be out there until it got dark trying to make inroads into the stubborn clay. Our work took place every day of the week; at the weekend we worked from the moment we got up until we went to bed. It was relentless. It also