Free Nobody's Child by Michael Seed

me for no apparent reason; apparent to me, that is. For Daddy to believe that I was a bad boy seemed to me reason enough for him to go on hurting me.
    My teachers clearly shared Daddy’s opinion as, after I turned six, I was old enough to be caned – something that didn’t happen in the first year. Caning appeared to be an integral part of the teaching programme at St Brigid’s. We were regularly lined up and every girl and boy slashed across the palm of the hand with a long, narrow bamboo wand. Some teachers preferred to cane the bottom and some chose to slap the back of our heads. Either way, it was all part of the daily routine for a six-year-old and something none of us ever thought to complain about.
    We were caned because we were naughty. That was the way things were. We had no choice in the matter.

Chapter Ten
    L ife with Daddy was never what you could call predictable. His rages now came with little warning, and the level of damage he inflicted on both Mammy and myself varied in keeping with his mood swings. But, by the time I was six-and-a-half, I thought I knew all the telltale signs and could more or less recognise whether it was the mild or the malevolent Daddy who had come home to us.
    Then he added a new factor to the battleground which was our home life and I was lost again.
    He arrived home one evening with a carrier bag in hand and announced that he had bought us tea, even though it was well after the time we normally had our meal.
    Mammy and I had already eaten our usual sandwiches, and I’d had a banana as well, and she told Daddy she wasn’t hungry at all.
    ‘You and Michael go ahead and eat,’ she said, and went back to dozing on the sofa.
    Daddy fetched two plates and knives and forks from the kitchen and put them on the little table in the living room.
    ‘Come and sit down,’ he told me, and took a paper-wrapped packet out of the carrier bag.
    The moment it was opened my heart sank. That Daddy should bring home food for our meal was unique in itself. With my luck, I might have known that he would have chosen something I couldn’t eat.
    Fish and chips. Other children loved them, and I too enjoyed the chips and the batter wrapped around the fish. But I found the fish itself revolting. I had never liked its slimy texture, its taste or its smell.
    Daddy, after adding salt and vinegar and tomato ketchup, tucked into his meal with obvious pleasure.
    I took my time over the chips and picked at the batter, hoping that Daddy would finish quickly and go out. But, after he had eaten everything on his plate, he sat opposite me and stared at my remaining food. Eventually, there was no batter left and the white flesh sat untouched in the middle of my plate.
    ‘I want you to eat that up,’ he told me, pointing at the fish with his knife.
    ‘But I don’t like fish, Daddy,’ I said.
    He stood up, came around the table and stood behind me and hissed, ‘Eat it now.’
    I started to cry. Partly because I was scared at what Daddy might do next and partly in the slight hope that it would put him off. Tears had never saved me before but it still seemed worth a try.
    He rapped me hard on top of the head with his knife and put his mouth right next to my ear and shouted, ‘Eat the bloody fish, you little bastard.’
    ‘I can’t,’ I shouted back.
    ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said, and slapped me hard on both sides of my head.
    I screwed my head round to see if Mammy would come to my aid but Daddy was in the way. Suddenly, he grasped the hair at the back of my head and forced my mouth and nose into the fish. I kept my mouth shut but some of the fish was forced into my nostrils and, when I tried to breathe, I snorted some of it back into my throat. Mixed in with this was the feel and smell of blood. My nose had started to bleed when he had rammed it down on the plate.
    My stomach reacted immediately and I felt the whoosh of sick in my mouth. But Daddy was pressing my head down so hard it couldn’t come