My 11th birthday and other trauma’s
I don’t remember much of this milestone; it was my twin who reminded me of the unpleasant ending to this birthday we both shared. This is an age where, still one foot in the innocence of play and toys, dolls and make believe, we start to feel more grown up because we are in “double figures”. In my experience my siblings and I were never really allowed to “be” children. We had to grow up fast, especially to cook tea when mother was comatose, and to clean the house after the nuclear fall out of her parties.
On our 11th birthday, we didn’t have any kind of party. But mother did and as usual, the door was open for all to come. Men, women, strangers. Loud, drunk, and anywhere in between. Music blasted through the thin walls of our small cottage, vibrating like an erupting volcano. We hid upstairs, the only place of refuge. Even then, the doors had no locks, and the sign said “welcome, children here”. I mentioned in previous chapters about my innate desire to monitor my mother, to keep tabs on her as though I could make her safe. I went downstairs, to try and work out how drunk she was, almost like forecasting how the night will end (usually badly). I will never forget, seeing a grown man (compared to my 11-year-old body, he was huge) throwing up violently into our sink.
Only years later, when comparing memories with my sisters, did I realise this had happened on my twin and my 11th birthday. I cried another tear for the younger Grace. That memory has stuck firmly in my mind, and created subsequent phobia of vomiting, no wonder. There were other party tricks over the years, none of them pleasant, and all of them demonstrating how unsafe my siblings and I were in our own home.
Once there was a party just for us children. It was called a Saturday night evening, with a sober mummy, and Chips on the television, in the early 1980s. As we all sat at our little places around a tiny table, eating chips out of home-made cones, one of mother’s ex boyfriends walked into the house. This visit of course, was unexpected and he was uninvited. As a child, I had no clue where he came from, or why he was suddenly back. He carried a crate of groceries and a present for my siblings and me. I remember having no emotion about this. I recall the image of my mummy, calming picking up the cream phone, which stood on the wall, as she rang the police. Soon after, three huge (probably average size, but I was only five) police men turned up and had to wrestle the man out of our side door.
I must pay credit to those three burly police officers, they used their initiative, when, after the struggle became a street fight, (I thought I had a bell ringing, and a loud voice saying “round two”) they brought along a Grandway’s trolley. Odd time to do their big shop? It was when they got the handcuffs out that I realised the apparatus was to be used to confine the man in.
The story ended relatively well. As he was pushed away, to the nearest police station, handcuffed to the trolley, he at least sang White Christmas for most of the journey. We all finished our chips in paper bags quietly, and thanked God we didn’t miss the start of Wonder woman.
