Sylvia Read Free Page B

who was otherwise compliant to all his wishes, would fly at him with a knife in her hand, eyes blazing. ‘Touch my child, you bastard, and I will wait until you sleep and kill you!’ she’d snarl.
    Alas, with her death, I was now alone with my father who, no longer able to vent his anger on my mother and now free to do as he wished with me, would rape me when drunk. In one fell swoop I had gone from a loved, cherished and innocent child to becoming the victim of a wantonly cruel father who regularly slaked his lust on me. He would never rape me in the cottage, but instead drag me into the pigsty where he’d point to the black boar and in a slurred voice, he’d whine, ‘Your mother loved that brute more than me!’ Then he’d push me face down over a broken wine barrel. ‘Let the bitch look now! See who has the last laugh!’ He’d lift my shift and with his peg leg stuck out at an angle, its brass point buried in pig shit, he would take me, meanwhile grunting and snorting like the three pigs jostling alongside.
    When it was over he’d grab me by the hair and jerk me to my feet, turning my head so that I looked directly into his broken face. A sour smell issued from a mouth possessed of yellow rotting teeth and blackened stumps. ‘Sing! Sing for your papa,’ he’d growl, releasing his hand. Fighting back my tears, I would sing a folksong my mother had taught me. When it was over he’d place his huge hand upon my head. ‘Remember, it is I who have been forgiven past sins and will go on another crusade before I die to redeem myself for those I have since committed. It is you who are now the sinner condemned to hellfire.’ Then tucking away his vileness, he’d add in what he thought an amusing tone, ‘Never you mind, when you are older you too can be a pilgrim to the Holy Land, just like your brave papa who suffered so terribly in the name of the true Cross.’ Pausing to cackle at such an amusing notion, he’d exclaim, ‘Then, abracadabra , all your sins will be forgiven!’ With his tunic and pouch adjusted and his peg leg upright he’d reach into his pocket to produce a lump of honeycomb wrapped in a twist of cloth. ‘To sweeten you for the next time, liebling. ’
    There are few secrets in a small village and those who knew themselves my betters soon gave me the disparaging name Sylvia Honeyeater. Why I have to this day retained it I simply cannot say. I have no cause to remember those days with fondness and have been given many more flattering names in life. Perhaps we come to think of ourselves in a certain way and by removing a childhood name, no matter how disparaging, we lose some small part of ourselves. Today most folk think ‘Honeyeater’ such a pleasantly amusing appendage that it must have come about because of my sunny disposition. I have long since learned that the hurt that we acquire in life can be disguised behind a smiling face.
    I missed and mourned for my sainted mother with a terrible ache, and prayed every night to God that while I knew myself to be a sinner condemned to roast in hell, He would protect her in heaven from knowing what was happening to me. Knowing myself condemned, I grew silent and withdrawn and showed my face in the village as little as possible, only attending religious feast days or venturing in when I had something I might sell in the market. As my mother had taught me I attended Church on Sunday. I would hide in the graveyard until the last of the worshippers had entered the building before creeping silently into a back pew, seating myself convenient to the door so that the moment the service was completed I might escape the curious and accusing eyes of the pious parishioners. While in Church I remained mute, concentrating on the sounds of the Gloria, refining in my head the purity of the notes flattened and corrupted by the tuneless voices of many of the nuns. Later in the