Free Nobody's Child by Michael Seed Page A

out. And I couldn’t suck any air in either.
    I started to hammer my fists up and down on the table top and bang my feet on the floor in terror, until at last he let go of my hair.
    As I raised my face from the plate and opened mymouth to breathe, all the sick shot out on to the plate and table before I could inhale. When I eventually sucked in some air, I deliberately blew it out down my nose to try to get rid of the fish that had lodged there.
    Bits of fish and blood added to the filthy mess already in front of me and this brought a roar of anger from Daddy. He slapped my head back and forth with his open palm and then dragged me by my collar towards the fire.
    I screamed, ‘Mammy, don’t let him burn me. Please don’t let him burn me,’ but she just sat there. Perhaps she had switched off when Daddy began shouting and didn’t understand what was happening, but I felt utterly abandoned.
    And when I looked up at Daddy he was actually half smiling.
    ‘Let’s see if this will teach you to do as you’re told,’ he said.
    I could feel the heat coming off the fire from several feet away and knew from the last time he had branded me just how awful the pain was going to be. At least I thought I did. But this time it was far worse than I’d imagined.
    He pulled my shirt sleeve up my arm, tearing the button off the cuff with the force. Then, with both hands, he grasped my arm at the elbow and the wrist and pressed the middle bit against the top bar of the grate.
    It sizzled and the hairs on my arm were singed away and there was a smell of me burning. I screamed andscreamed and wet my trousers. The pain was worse than anything that had ever happened to me before.
    After a couple of seconds, Daddy pulled my arm away from the fire and pushed me towards the kitchen.
    ‘Stop that screaming, you dirty little brat,’ he shouted. ‘And get yourself cleaned up. You’re disgusting. When you’ve cleaned yourself up, then clean up the table and the floor where you’ve made a mess. You’re not fit to call a boy. You’re like a bloody animal, and that’s the way I’m going to treat you in future, like a bloody animal.’
    After I had washed my face and changed my trousers for a dry pair, I got out a bucket and cloth and cleaned up the mess in the living room. My only relief came when I scraped the fish into the dustbin. At least I hadn’t given in. But at what a cost.
    I quietly sobbed myself to sleep in the corner and later, after Daddy had led Mammy off to their bedroom, I went into the kitchen and found the remains of the burn ointment Mammy had got from the chemist after the first time Daddy had burned us.
    I smeared it on my blistered arm and swore to myself that one day I would get my revenge – or run away.
    Meanwhile I dreaded our next encounter, because, knowing Daddy, he would not let it end like this. Forcing me to eat food I hated was a new way of punishing me, and he wouldn’t stop after only one victory. Sure enough, attempts to force-feed me became a regular feature of our violent confrontations.

Chapter Eleven
    F or me life was a battle for survival. I had no idea what Daddy was fighting for. Or why he had so much anger against Mammy and me. I told myself I must be the baddest boy in the world to warrant so much punishment.
    In her rare lucid moments Mammy would try to reassure me. ‘You’re not really a bad boy, Michael,’ she would say. ‘Daddy doesn’t mean all the things he says and does. It’s just his rages. He gets so angry he doesn’t even realise he’s hurting you. Deep down he loves you really.’
    But it was very hard to remember that Daddy loved me when he was in the middle of knocking me senseless or branding me on the grate.
    Mammy also blamed Daddy’s drinking. She had been brought up strictly temperance, she told me. Which meant, she was proud to say, that alcohol had never passed her lips.
    ‘The devil is cunning and uses alcohol to gain easy entry into a drinking man’s mind,’