Free Never a Hero to Me by Tracy Black Page B

anything that was different. I do remember looking at other little girls one day when we were trawling round charity shops looking for shoes for me. I was being dragged along and she was telling me to ‘stop being so bloody slow’, while these other girls were having a nice time with their mummies, walking together, swinging their arms, being friends. I guess I just saw our relationship as something to be accepted. That’s the way she was. When, in my adulthood, I asked her why she was like that, she just shrugged and said it was her illness – maybe it was. I’m sure her condition was awful for her, but she managed to be different with Gary.
    We stayed in Rinteln until 1970, when I was eight, and I was abused throughout those years. Actually, ‘abuse’ isn’t a word that was used in those days by many people, and at the time it wasn’t something I applied to my own situation, but, as people have become more aware of what happens to many children and as those children have spoken out, the term has become much more accepted. I use it now, because it is clearly what happened, but in those days, if it was spoken of at all in public, adults would refer to it using words such as ‘fiddling’ and ‘interfering’, terms which underestimate and minimise devastating attacks on young people which should never be hidden.
    But mine was hidden, and I didn’t even have words to describe it back then – I barely knew what was happening, just that I hated and dreaded it. Of course I’ve wondered if my mum knew what was going on, but I realise that it’s hard to analyse the past. I remember on many occasions saying to Dad, ‘Mum doesn’t love me,’ and his reply was always the same. ‘She’ll love you more if you do this.’ Everything I said about her was linked to another excuse for him to do things to me; he never missed a trick. ‘If you do this, she’ll love you,’ he’d say, or, ‘If you keep doing these things, she’ll start to love you, but if you stop, she won’t.’
    She never did. She never gave me a squirt of her perfume or little presents. I can actually remember the specifics of the times she was nice to me – once, she put the Avon lavender shoe soaps in my bedroom, and once she gave me a purse with 20p in it.
    For Christmas and birthdays, I got mostly practical presents, clothes and educational books once I was at school. I tended to get one playful present at Christmas and the rest would be things such as a three-pack of socks, which was expected to last all year (with Gary’s being given to me when that didn’t happen) and two pairs of pants. I was once given a ready-reckoner-type machine for spelling where the words came out at the top and you had to see how quickly you could read them and spell them back again. My father kept saying to Mum, ‘She needs education, she doesn’t need toys,’ and she accepted his word unquestioningly, so they have to share the blame really.
    There was a toy cupboard in our house, but it was Gary’s really as I didn’t have much to put in there. His side was crammed with cars and soldiers and boy things, but mine was sparse. I had a kaleidoscope, a golliwog that had travelled with me from when we had been based in Singapore, and a three-foot-tall walking doll. When I got the doll, the first thing I did was strip it completely, including the knickers. I was sitting in the living room doing that one Christmas when my dad came in. He went ballistic but had to keep his voice down as he didn’t want to draw attention to what I was doing. ‘What the fuck are you up to?’ he whispered in an angry voice, trying to avoid Mum or Gary hearing him from the kitchen. ‘Get the clothes back on that fucking doll, you little weirdo.’
    ‘I just wanted to look, Dad,’ I told him.
    ‘Well, don’t. It’s none of your fucking business.’
    The irony wasn’t lost on me even at that age. I couldn’t look at a naked doll, but I could engage in sex acts with my own