ANGELINE

Childhood dreams

Before I met him, I dreamt of being a dancer or an astronaut or a clairvoyant or something that involved combining the spiritual and the physical, as I saw it as a child. I wanted the sort of freedom I felt in my dreams (and my heart) and somewhere deep down, I believed I could achieve that. How perfectly perfect to live in that head state forever. But no one can remain forever a child. I remember him speaking those words to me, as if they were a lullaby, as if they were some ultimate truth I had always been seeking and for the love of him (and because of the child in me), I believed him, with all my all.

Before I met him, I dreamt of loves first kiss and holding hands and all of that lay raw, unformed and glistening, like future unknown potentials do to most children, I would imagine. But loves first kiss was not accompanied by the sweet smell of cherry blossom or the sounds of a harp. It scratched at my face with a 12 hour shadow and left invisible bruises upon invisible scars upon invisible tears.

By the age of 13 I began to grow sullen and moody. I knew that these secret intimacies, when mum went off to work were wrong but sickened by the enjoyment, (as I saw it) that I experienced at first, I felt culpable and unable to say no. You see, he made me feel special and useful in a way that no one had done before...or since. 

I lashed out violently towards him and my mother. I became that problem child. An issue to be resolved. When it became evident that I was pregnant, I threatened to kill myself. The doctors and social services wanted to know who the father was. My mother begged me to terminate. He... suggested I have the child but that he and my mother bought it (you sweetest Angeline), up as their own.  I fancied that this could be a way to bring us closer as a family...a real family. One where I could go back to being a child and no longer having to bear the brunt of responsibility of his strange desires...perhaps I thought that a baby would soften and distract him. No one ever found out who the father was. The threat was never explicit but I felt my life, with all the trimmings of security, would be in danger if I told the truth. Fact is, it was anyway. Fact is, those trimmings were less than mere decoration even...