Red and Grey
By: Loveday Davies
Tags: Colourandfun, Abuse, Sad, Newbeginnings, Family

And the list goes on, it was endless. That was when it started. He couldn’t get another job. Nobody wanted a good-for-nothing, lazy, drunk who had been fired from two jobs. He was angry. Angry all of the time. My mum and him argued constantly. I became accustomed to the noise of glasses and plates shattering as he got increasingly hot headed. For a while my mum would try to calm him down, attempting to restore a sense of humanity in him, to rationalize his words, help him resolve his drunkenness. But her effort frustrated him, and when he shouted, she wouldn’t be with him, she would sleep on the sofa at night or she would sneak into my bedroom. That angered him more, if she wouldn’t talk to him she certainly wouldn’t satisfy him. So he forced it upon her and hearing her screams and tieing her against her struggles granted him some freedom. Until she became helpless against it when she would give in, just to stop him from hurting me. But to my dad, this was a silent act of rebellion, he wanted her to resist, he wanted to know that he was hurting her. So he turned to me. Watching my screams and my mothers clashing together was his idea of a perfect harmony. Where he used to listen to our voices twine together softly to a plinking piano, he listened to the duet of our agony. The clashing chords resonating around the room as he stood in the middle, conducting a musical masterpiece of manipulation. A symphony describing his loss and angst.

Sometimes I dream, of him playing our old Steinway piano. His supple fingers glossing along the ebony keys effortlessly and elegantly. The room starts to spin as we sing our waltz to his keys. All the while as our song plays, the perfect harmony, my soprano line and my mums alto fitting so beautifully into the jigsaw of our music, I feel that man stripping us down and tying us up. The singing has stopped, but the piano continues. In one half of the dream my dad is softly playing the piano as i curl up with my mum on the sofa listening, but on the other half, his piano continues, but the singing replaced with the cacophony of our shrieks.

Sometimes I wake up screaming, sweat dripping down my face, shaking uncontrollably. My mum comes running in, enveloping me in her arms. It still hurts sometimes and I cry, more often then I’d like. But I remind myself. I think back to the day, only 6 years ago. When I was 11, Josh was 15. My dad was outside of the pub where I got off the bus. He swaggered up to me, most of the mids had gone home by this point, but not Josh he waited, to walk me home - a special ask from my mum. Dad stood, inches away from my face a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I was nervous but I knew to stand my ground with my dad, to smile and walk away and pretend nothing ever happened. But he was angry with me, so angry. I didnt know what I had done.

"Didn’t I tell you not to get off the bus here?" He spoke loudly and slurred. He had never said such a thing before, this was my usual stop. He was just usually inside drinking away his troubles.

Timidly I said very quietly "I always get off here"

But that set him off big time.

"Speak up girl!" He yelled, "don’t you give me this shit, you speak to me like a son. God if I had a son. Did you know I always wished you were a boy?" I did know this but nobody in heir right mind would have told him that.

Then I heard a voice behind me,

"Look sir, your obviously not in the right frame of mind to be speaking to your daughter and I’m sure you don’t mean half of what you said. Emily asked me to walk Alice home and if you dont mind thats what I’m going to do" Josh grabbed my shoulder and turned me around to start walking towards the hell hole that was our home when the words "how dare you" came rumbling out of my fathers mouth, and the bottle came clashing down on my head. I don’t know much about what happened next but that Josh caught me before I hit the ground, picking me up and running to the nearest shop to call the police, an ambulance and my mum. My dad was restrained by five large local farmers also in the pub before the police came and took him straight to custody.

I later woke up in hospital, a thick gauze around my head with my mum crying tears of fear yet also happiness. She explained to me that we were safe now. That my dad wasn’t going to be anywhere near us, that we never had to worry about him hurting us again, that we could move away, just the two of us and start a new life.

After four years of constant fear, i cried and cried and cried. So much more than an eleven year old girl should ever have to. But for once they were happy tears. We were finally be on a road to normality.