Closing the door on child abuse

This isn’t a thread about anything; just threads of memory that are as untidy as the back of a piece of bad embroidery. All the things that seemed to matter so much; they matter so much less now.

*CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses child abuse

ONCE I WAS punished; I don’t remember why. He took my childhood books away. I was very young. I lost my friends, Silky, Moonface and the Saucepan Man. I was inconsolable. And so I stole their books, the “boring” ones. Shakespeare. The works of Edgar Allan Poe. He caught me.

He had already confiscated my lamp. There was a fluoro light in my room. I dared not turn it on. So I lay on the floor, reading avariciously by the thin ribbon of light that streamed below my door. I read until my eyes hurt. I was so engrossed, I didn’t see him coming.

He opened the door into my face, then realised what I was doing. Smashed it open viciously and shut into my head and body. I was curled protectively around the book like it was a child younger than I. It was Poe — an old book, filled with darkness and archaic language.

The punishment the next day – there was always a reaction, then a formal punishment – was that I should learn passages from those books, seeing as I so deeply cared about them, he said. I had to go help him at work as an unpaid kitchen hand. And I must recite the works.

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The Enid Blyton returned at some point, but by now they felt dangerous to me. I hid them at the top of my yellow wardrobe. At work, I would dutifully say the lines. ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’ Peace and Plenty, that pub was called.

I cut up crayfish, packed them with their own meat, reassembled them with the wine sauce, topped them with the Gruyère. I’m allergic to shellfish. It didn’t hurt me, cutting up their red bodies, unless the spikes got me. I was in charge of the bucket, for the Animal’s Bar.

That’s what he called it. With disdain. All the disdain he could muster about having to work in a shitty Lynwood pub instead of the grand hotels he was fired from. Let go, they said, I reckon. Your parents probably ate there, Nick Coatsworth. It’s the Lynwood Arms now.

The bucket for the Animal’s Bar was filled with bones, vegetable scraps and scrapings. Lidded, then boiled into stock for soup by the third day. I would have to scrub it clean while reciting the lines. ‘And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.’

It had a grey scum, that stock, I remember. It frothed and rose to the top like a bad man in a traditional workplace. Sometimes, I dreamed of the smell. The men at the Animal’s Bar raved about his soup. I never really saw them, just heard them. Loud, loutish men.

I realise now that I could have misquoted any of those old poets and I would never have been punished. The spines of those books had never even been cracked. Even good chefs were blue-collar. I never saw him read a book, if I think back. I was so scared of getting it wrong.

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Those days are long, long gone. He is dead; those unseen men in the bar are almost certainly dead. A meal in a bad pub during a pandemic is something rare and dangerous now, as dangerous as reading by that tiny strip of light that flooded in from under my bedroom door.

But I remember this. After the bruises faded, I kept reading by that light. They left the light on for my brother at night; it never went out. And so I lay there and read every night, defiantly, by that thin reliable line of hope.

Later I learned that Poe was a paedophile, almost surely; that he married his 13-year-old cousin. A paedophile like my father, perhaps like my grandfather. Grandfather was a minister, gaoled for public indecency. A paedophile, like Dad. Or queer, like me. Poe, too, perhaps.

I watched The Fall of the House of Usher and recalled every word that I wished I had forgotten. And now, in my advanced crip years, I recall almost everything by night, while I sleep. I’m afraid to sleep, most nights. By day, I forget, blessedly. By night, I remember everything.

This isn’t a thread about anything; just threads of memory that are as untidy as the back of a piece of bad embroidery. But I had forgotten the Poe, until now, until I watched that Netflix series. All the things that seemed to matter so much; they matter so much less now.

All of it seems as bland and meaningless as that bucket of slops in the corner. Celery floating with chicken bones in grey water, that’s what it feels like. The lives of women — well, it’s our whole life, isn’t it? Being hit or raped in one way or another. Cleaning up shit.

The only thing that seems real now is art, poetry and courage. Love, friendship and tenaciousness in the face of capitalism, misogyny, bigotry and evil. I’m not sad about any of it, at all. I just wish that no other women or girls would have to have this happen.

Do something good this week, women. Something kind. And if you can’t be kind, fuck shit up, thoughtfully. Find your voice, find your sisters, make art and make it spread harder than this fucking virus, harder than a door slammed in your face. Keep going. Keep going.

If you would like to speak to someone about abuse, please call the 1800 Respect hotline on 1800 737 732 or chat online. Also, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Sam Connor is a disability advocate currently living on Worimi country. She is passionate about the rights of people with disability, including those living in poverty.