A CHILDHOOD MEMORY, THE BORN AGAIN PRIEST

Mother would attempt to talk to Father and, to stop the torrent of words he had little or no answer for, he would punch and kick her into a stony silence. If his anger had not totally blinded him to anything other than the bleeding image of Mother, who staunchly refused either to blink or cry, no matter what, then I would get my fair share of abusive language and my fair share of real violence too, and I did, all too often.

So I would shut myself into the cupboard under the stairs at the first sign of conflict, wedged into the far corner from the door where the downward fall of the stairs met the floor, behind the cardboard boxes of Dash washing powder, old abandoned and broken dolls, cleaning products and rags, behind the upright cream coloured Hoover vacuum cleaner that stood guard over me with its blood coloured dust bag and electrical cable wound round hooks on the handle as if it were the weapon of some futuristic robot soldier. There, I would wet myself and be comforted by the warmth and smell and release of urine soaking my clothes and soaking into the bare, wooden floorboards. Damp cotton, damp unvarnished wood and sweet Dash soap powder, me, myself, I.


There was light in this refuge and a brown bakelite switch close at hand, so I could choose light or darkness. More often than not I would choose light and feel comforted fingering the silver heads of the nails that fixed the boards to the timbers beneath, and I travelled beneath. I used to melt between the gaps in the floorboards, down into the dry, cool dust and earth, way down under the timbers below until the floorboards were my sky and the earth became the cooling mattress that soothed my boiling head. Nobody could get at me and the bruises and pains would seem to have been left in the cupboard way up there in a puddle of yellow urine.

Father could do the same too. He could turn himself into wallpaper. He often melted into the walls and woodwork around the house and, once or twice, I actually glimpsed him disappear into the sheets and the yellow foam mattress of his bed too, to escape from the fierce beauty and eloquence of Mother, because she really was both beautiful and eloquent. I knew she was eloquent because I could never understand a word she said and that hurt. I knew she was beautiful because she looked like the pictures of saintly martyrs Father collected.

I hated Mother and her powers. I loathed it that the more she bled the more power she wielded. The more beauty she possessed. The more power she wielded the more Father would get self destructive and remorseful and lose his dignity at every turn. The more ugly he would become.

As my head would cool in the healing dust in my world under the floorboards, my thoughts would inevitably turn to revenge.

The revenge of the victim, cold and calculated, and there would be a lot of death in my head like the death pictures in my father’s magazines hidden at the back of the top shelf of the tall larder in the kitchen. Under two old biscuit tins full of screws and nails and the like.

A lot of death and, at least I was not suffering and that made me feel good because I, me, myself, I was not in pain.