The Real Me - Chapter 9

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Father says he’s coming home next week. God knows what he’ll say about Dannie.’ Mother announced. ‘Really?’ Rachel questioned. They all dreaded the imminent reappearance of Dad. ‘Mum for real. You have said that so often over the last two months.’ ‘Really this time.’ ‘Mum, why are you having him back?’ Rachel asked.

‘Where else would he go?’ Rachel was silent. She could see disaster approaching. It seemed they were enmeshed with the inevitable, their father living with them once more. ‘Mum, it’s been nearly three months. Three months of peace, three months when you have not been beaten or Dannie been in tears.

Mum, I beg you, tell him he’s not welcome.’ ‘Rachel, I can’t.’ ‘I don’t understand you. You must be bloody mad.’ ‘Rachel! I won’t be spoken to like that.’ ‘Mum, I could use stronger language and don’t think you can shelter behind your mother status. You are doing the wrong thing, letting him back in the family. It will end in disaster.

For Dannie’s sake if not your own.’ Mother looked at her, her eyes glazed. Rachel could see the hopeless fear. ‘Very well Mum. I shall move out and I’ll take Daniella with me as soon as I find a suitable place. I’ve looked at three already.’ Mother burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment as a mother.’ For Rachel, it was only her care and love for her sibling, her sister Daniella, that made her fear the arrival of their father.

For her mother, Rachel realized it was more, the love there had once been, loyalty, a residual memory of the fun boy, father had once been perhaps, maybe even her vows of ‘for better or worse, in sickness and health’ did really mean something, still. Why? Rachel didn’t understand. Perhaps it was fear of making the break that outweighed the fear of her husband’s presence back in the family. Rachel resorted to the internet and read what she could find about battered wives.

They stayed out of misplaced loyalty: stayed because they felt they had failed their man in some way: they stayed out of fear; they stayed because their abusive partner had over the years, isolated them from friends and relations. She saw all those reasons in her mother’s behavior. Rachel read all this and still found it hard to believe women could be that frail. For her little brother, her sister Daniella, there was no love from their father.

Daniella had suffered even more than Mum, from his temper and fists. Daniella had been the one that cowered and hid beneath the dining table or ran to his room and barricaded himself in, screaming in terror and hurt. Rachel read that Dannie, not being the son her father wanted, could be another reason why Mother thought she was beholden to Dad.

Rachel hated the thought that all the beating and fear could happen again, maybe even worse this time. She embarked on an intense search for a flat in case the bullying started over. This time she ruled nothing out and saw places that were quite unsuitable. Nice flats, in good areas, with respectable neighbors were a rarity. If they chose the wrong area, she would be continually frightened that thugs would persecute her little sister. Location was therefore paramount.

She decided that whatever happened and however her mother felt, she would remove with Dannie to a new location but found it was the problem.

She could consider Mum no longer. This reappearance of her father would be the one and only test. Maybe Dad would be a different man knowing why his son was so feminine. She had been trying to find the perfect flat, convenient for Dannie’s school that was within her budget but had drawn a blank. Dannie walked home as usual with Andrea and Rihanna until they turned into their street. She swung down her road and into their front garden with the broken fence.

The place looked shabby. It needed love and care, the care a man living there should have given the home. She opened the front door, closed it, and went straight up to her room. She changed out of school togs as she always did, checking her uniform for dirt and stains as Rachel had taught her. She looked at things with girl eyes that picked out imperfections most boys would not even note. She decided she would wash her skirt on a quick wash while she and Rache made supper.

She worked at her books, determined to catch up. She was being coached in Maths by Miss Arya, who had set her extra homework. When she heard noises downstairs, she was glad that Rache was home. She finished the last maths question and stacked her books neatly on one end of the desk that now served as a dressing table. She checked her makeup, something Sis always looked at, appraising and advising. She went down the stairs two at a time, eager to see her big sister and to share the day’s events while they drank tea and prepared an evening meal.

In the hallway, she found Rachel backing out of the kitchen while trying to keep the kitchen door closed. The door was wrenched open, revealing their father, his bulk almost filling the doorway. ’So, who’s this?’ He said, his eyes resting upon Dannie in her little top and mini skirt. Neither of his children spoke, neither dared.

He continued to stare and advanced into the hallway. Dannie turned to run, back to the stairs and up to her room, but she was dragged back by her hair, screaming, ‘You’re hurting me. Let me go.’ ‘For fuck’s sake Daniel. Not only a sissy but dressed up like a bloody maid. Christ, what the fuck’s been going on while I’ve been away. Get up those stairs and come back down properly dressed.’ ‘Dad! She is properly dressed. She’s transgender Dad.’ Rachel said. ‘I hate you.’ Released from her father’s grip on her hair, Dannie speaks from the stairs. ‘

Why do you have to keep returning like a bad smell, upsetting everything.’ She screamed at her father. He caught Dannie’s hand on the banister and pulled her down the stairs, punched her in the chest once, a full-on blow as though he was a prize-fighter meeting an equal adversary. It wasn’t equal at all, his six feet two inches, her five feet three or four inches; his sixteen stone to her seven and a half stone.

His barrel of a chest, forty-eight inches, and shoulders to match against her size six, just thirty-two inches chest beneath her bra. Dannie fell the two steps to the hallway floor, gasping for breath, uttering a stifled scream. Her father pushed Rachel out of the way, and she screamed as she collided with the front room door frame. Father reached down and ripped Dannie’s blouse open, the buttons shooting like bullets across the hallway, revealing the dainty pink broderie Anglaise training bra Dannie wore beneath.

At that moment, the front door opened, revealing Mother silhouetted in the doorway. ‘What have you done.’ She screamed at her errant husband. ‘Get away from her.’ She knelt by her youngest child. ‘Lie still darling. Rachel gets a pillow for her head.’ Rachel darts into the living room and grabs a cushion returns and puts it under her little sister’s head. ‘The children were right.’

She says from the floor, looking up at her husband, ‘I should have changed the locks.’ ‘For fuck’s sake, what’s going on with that bloody kid?’ He said. ‘What’s going on? Why as soon as you’re home, has the violence and bullying started?’ she said, her voice low, stronger than Rachel had ever heard.

‘Fucking queer boy for a son, that’s what. Look at it, dressed up like a fucking tart.’ ‘What did you do? Is she alive Rachel?’ ‘Yes, Mum. I think we should phone for an ambulance.’ ‘I haven’t killed him, better I had. He’ll probably die of AIDS anyhow.’ Father said gruffly. ‘People don’t die of AIDS any longer or shouldn’t. Leave her alone or I’ll call the police.

Take yourself down the pub, anywhere out of here, away from us.’ ‘I think I will. If he had been disciplined more, he wouldn’t be a bloody sissy boy in a mini-skirt. That’s you, spoiling, pampering, your bringing-up. You made him that way,’ he moves to strike her. She steps across Dannie’s legs and looks up at her man who towers nine inches over her. ‘You strike me, you brute, and I swear, it will be the last thing you ever do.

I’ve had enough of you, and I have evidence planted elsewhere of your crookedness because I thought it might one day come to this.’ There was a silence. He stood like the statue of a prize-fighter, fist clenched, arm pulled back like a cobra’s head ready to strike, while his brain assimilated what his wife had said. At last, his fist lowered. His eyes she saw were glazed and she knew he had already been drinking. ‘Fuck you for a wife.’

He pushed past her, nearly knocking her off her feet. He hesitated, then kicked at Dannie’s still body. The door slammed behind him. There’s silence, except for Dannie’s and Rachel’s miserable crying. ‘Hush now Rachel. I need your help.’ ‘Yes mum,’ Rachel manages. ‘Good girl, Now,’ she kneels by Dannie’s side. ‘Where do you hurt?’ Dannie feels her chest and then her forehead where a bump has appeared and where her head had met the newel post at the foot of the stairs.

‘Let’s get him into the sitting room. Can you get to your feet, Daniel?’ She had apparently forgotten her son’s new status, misgendering and using the wrong name. ‘Yes, mum. I was just winded.’ She started to rise but let out a sound something between a grown and a shriek. Together, mother and daughter help Dannie to her feet and into the sitting room. They settle her on the settee. ‘I think we need paramedics Mum, just in case.

That bruise on her forehead, she might have a concussion.’ ‘Oh, dear. The phone then Rachel.’ Rachel ran to the kitchen, grabbed her phone, and made the call. She returned to the lounge, the phone to her ear. Her mother sat beside Daniella, stroking her forehead. ‘He phoned me that he was coming home, that’s why I left work early. This is what I wished to avoid. Rachel, bring me the frozen peas from the freezer for her head and see if we can stop that bruise.

She will need an X-ray.’ Rachel fetched the peas. ‘They’re on their way, Mum.’ Daniella lay on the couch, eyes closed. Mother sat beside her, holding the frozen peas to Dannie’s forehead. ‘I gotta change Mum. Don’t let them all see me like this?’

Dannie pleads. ‘You look OK. No, you stay as you are.’ ‘’But Mum, if they take me to hospital everyone will know, Mum.’ ‘Daniella, this is something you are going to have to put up with. We will put a new top on you because your father has ruined that one, but you say you are a girl, and a girl you will now be.’

The paramedics arrived at a fanfare of sirens. A man and a woman entered in a green uniform. They are followed by a policewoman. Rachel sat with Danny while their mother seemed to answer question after question. The medical team enquired about what happened and checked Dannie over. The Ambulance arrived with more people. The lounge was distinctly crowded. The paramedics spoke to the constable.

Daniella, of course still in her girl persona, was taken to the ambulance. Rachel asked if she could accompany her. ‘Yes of course,’ the female paramedic said. Rachel stepped into the ambulance. The ambulance departed with a squawk of its siren. In the house, an older, male police officer arrived. ‘Will you give a statement Madam?’

‘I thought I had.’ ‘We need a written statement.’ ‘Oh yes, I have plenty to say.’ It was forty minutes later when the statement was finished. The door opened and her husband entered. ‘Yer called the filth? Goddam you for a wife.’ His speech was slurred, his eyes glazed, dark, and wicked. ‘Mr. Artherton, we are arresting you for an alleged assault. You do not have to say anything, but, it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.

Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ ​‘For the love of God, what would you do if you came home and found your fourteen-year-old boy dressed like a tart. I’m his father, it’s for me to bring him up as a man, keep him on the straight and narrow. He should be out chasing girls not dressing like one. For fuck’s sake. What’s happening to the World? Aren’t I even allowed to do that now?’ ‘Not if you cause actual bodily harm, no, that is assault.

Denying a child their instincts could be classed as mental cruelty.’ The policewoman said. ‘So, that’s it? That’s really how this fucking country now operates? You’ll be sorry, wife.’ The police were ready to restrain him. ‘It’s an all right boy, I’m coming quietly,’ Artherton said truculently. He added, over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be back so you all better watch out.’ ‘No, you won’t my son.’ The male officer said.

‘We’ll be making out a domestic violence protection notice, prior to a magistrate making a domestic violence protection order. And that’s not all we have on you to take you out of circulation.’ The female officer informed him. ‘You got nothing.’ Atherton replied. The police and their prisoner passed through the door and Mother closed the door after them.

She went to the kitchen and made tea for herself.  She sat and only then, burst into tears. She drank her tea and poured herself a second cup. The phone rang. She could hardly be bothered to answer, then she saw her daughter’s number. ‘Mum, they are keeping her in overnight. Shall I come home? Are you coming here mum?’

‘No, I’ll go and pick her up in the morning. She’s all right?’ ‘Just bruised Mum, no internal injuries. A cracked rib which is awfully painful. She’s sedated and asleep. Will you pick me up?’ ‘Does she need anything?’ ‘Not immediately Mum.’ ‘Well then, I’m a bit busy. Will you please get a taxi, only there are things to do while your father is out of the way. He’s been arrested.’ ‘Oh. Well, OK, mum. See you soon.’

Mother took her husband’s keys and went out to his car. She opened the boot and took out two metal boxes.  She slammed the boot and took both boxes into the house. She made a phone call. ‘I want to report a fraudster,’ she said. ‘Yes, well he’s my husband, but if he knows that I’ve reported him, he could kill me.’ She listened while she was transferred. ‘Yes, that’s right. My address is 36 Greenways, Burston.

You have just been here because he just beat up our son.’ ‘Yes, I do feel we are in danger. My son is spending the night in the hospital and you arrested my husband. Yes, I was a witness to that attack, and so was my daughter Rachel. Yes, we are all in danger. You’re coming now? Thank God. Yes, I am frightened if you let him go, he will do for us.’ She put the phone down and sighed. Five minutes later, Rachel walked in the door. ‘How was she?’ Mum asked. ‘Hurt, in pain, embarrassed, arriving there in girl clothes, in makeup.

I would have thought medical people would be accepting of trans, but I saw some looks. Poor Dannie, she’s on a long uphill road.’ ‘Poor kid. So, what was going on when I came home?’ Rachel told her mother the whole saga. ‘Well,’ Mother said, ‘I think we all knew that would happen, didn’t we?’ she said locking the back door and throwing the bolt. She walked to the front door and did the same, leaving a key in the lock.

‘Mum! I warned you but you took no notice.’ ‘I hope the police come soon.’ Her mother seems completely detached. ‘Why, what have you done?’ ‘I reported your father for fraud. I hope the police have put a thingamy notice on him.’ ‘A what?’ ‘A domestic violence protection order, to stop him coming near us.

I’ll sue for divorce, I’ve had enough.’ ‘More than enough Mum, we all have. Well, we are both earning, aren’t we? He hardly contributed, so, we can get by.’ ‘Better poor than living with a brute, and he hardly contributes enough to pay for his beer and whiskey. Now tell me everything.’ Mum demanded. Rachel told her mother about coming in and hearing movement in the kitchen. She thought Daniella was in there and instead, found her father.

How Dannie ran down the stairs to see her and how the two met and the blow that followed. ‘Well, we both talked about this, haven’t we, what would happen when Dad came home.’ Rachel said, exasperated with her mother, thinking why the hell didn’t she get rid of him when she had the chance. ‘I blame myself.

I was nearly forty when Dannie was conceived. I can’t help thinking it was having a late pregnancy, that’s why he’s not normal.’ ‘Mum? We looked at the sites. There is no known cause. You can’t blame yourself.’ ‘I’m ashamed to say, that I find this trans thing difficult, but then I’m an older generation. I don’t think Dad would be like this if he had a proper son.

When I was a child, we didn’t have all this LGBT nonsense. People conformed to birth gender.’ ‘And suffered in silence, Mum, because they were scared. They were still there, walking about in pain or committing suicide.’

‘Don’t put that idea into her head, Rachel.’ ‘Suicide? As if Mother. I don’t need to, she’s hinted at it, before she transitioned, more than once, said life was not worth living if she had to be a boy, a man.’ The doorbell rang. Mother went into the front room and peeped out of the window.

‘It’s the police. Thank God.’ Over the next hour, she told a detective and a uniformed lady police officer, all she knew about her husband’s dirty dealings, robbing pensioners. ‘Well Mrs. Artherton, thank you. We have him in custody for grievous bodily harm. We have to release him by ten-thirty tomorrow, but now we have enough to keep him a further twelve hours. That’s ten-thirty tomorrow evening. I’ll badger the Super to get a domestic violence protection order urgently.

We’ll also order him not to come near, in view of what he did to your son, to Daniella. That’s the best we can do. It might be an idea, to stay elsewhere for a time. Is there anywhere you can go?’ ‘Anywhere I can go, he will know, like friends and relations, he knows them all. In any case, I thought he would be banned from coming here?’ Mum asks ‘If we get the order. Is he always violent?’

‘It’s not the first time he’s beaten Danny up. He’s hit me before now?’ ‘Will he know that Mum tipped you off about the scams he’s been pulling?’ Rachel asks, fearfully. ‘We don’t disclose our sources, but we are not allowed to lie. I can’t say a complaint from one of his victims, but we won’t say, ‘your wife and daughter told us’. I know this is not satisfactory.

He will probably know. In the meantime, we circulate his description and hopefully, some of his victims will identify him in the areas he’s been operating in. If they come forward, it will take the pressure off you. Anyway, the paperwork gives us lots of leads.’ ‘He’s a violent man. He could do us real injury.’ ‘What I can say to him, is that as a result of the assault causing actual bodily harm to your son, we investigated his background. That puts the onus back in his court.’ ‘And protection here?

He’s the sort that would kick in a door or a window.’ ‘We obviously can’t station an officer here. It would be possible to install a panic button, linked into the police station. You will have to install an alarm, at your expense if you consider that really necessary? That’s for you to consider.’ ‘So, our protection, even after my fourteen-year-old lies in hospital, is up to us?’ Mother asks. ‘The way police funding is at the moment, yes.

We just don’t have the budget.’ There’s a long silence. Mum is thinking about how she can raise money for the installation of an alarm.

Rachel closes her hand over her mother’s. ‘Have we money?’ ‘I’ll raid the dual account, draw everything out, and put it in your name, that will be the quickest.’ ‘That might provoke the worst reaction,’ Sergeant Grimston observed. ‘Well, no help from you, we need to make this place secure, and for that I need money.’

After the police departed, Mother went online. She moved all but five hundred pounds from their dual account into her daughter’s bank. Then she searched for alarms and panic buttons. She would ring the installer first thing. ‘Tomorrow you will have to collect Dannie.’ ‘I better take him some clothes.’ ‘Why? There was nothing wrong with his clothes.’

‘But he was in my castoffs.’ ‘He went in hospital in a skirt, he can come out in one.’ ‘Well, the blouse was torn.’ ‘He can wear that pretty pink dress you gave him.’ ‘She Mum, she.’ ‘There you go. Look Dannie can’t have it both ways. I’ll try to remember. She. If she persists in this trans-girl thing, then she has to get used to it. She can’t be a shrinking violet, sneaking about, hiding from people.

Out and proud.’ ‘Mum! Isn’t that a bit brutal? She’ll be terribly embarrassed in hospital as it is.’ ‘If she likes looking like a girl, then what’s the point of pretending she doesn’t? No, he, she had bottled this too long as it is. I’ll not have her making a pretense of being some, what do you call it, androgynous creature. She has to have the guts to be the person she is if that’s who she really wants to be.’ ‘A dress? That’s even more femme than a mini and top. Mum?’

‘That pink, the one with the pretty lace sleeves. You only wore it about once. And those sandals with pearl and crystal straps. We’ll have pizza in the mall for an early lunch, then I’ll bring her home. You will be here?’’ ‘I ought to be at work. I think I’ll phone HR, tell them the truth, that dad beat my brother up. I’ll take the rest of the week off as a holiday. Mum, you seem so cruel towards her.’ ‘Rachel, it’s a hard World.

The truth has to be faced, whether it’s her gender, whether it’s her father and his crookedness. I don’t doubt that her trans feelings are genuine, we have talked about it often enough between us. She must now live it, say to the World, be damned, this is how I am. That pink dress and the sandals. You’ll make her hair as girlie as possible in hospital, you can do makeup. He, damn, she will walk out of there, looking like a princess, head held high, or this nonsense ends. ‘Now, I have to pack for your father.

You can help. I’ll put everything in the car and he will know, the game is up, he’s no longer welcome.’ They packed everything of their Dad’s in two large suitcases, placing them in his car that was left parked at the curb. Rachel saw curtains twitch across the road. She realized her family, with ambulance and police would be the chatter of the district. She really needed to move. Rachel marveled at her mother’s swinging sentiments and resolve.

She welcomed that her mother had now taken belatedly, the right course. Wishing it had been sooner was of no benefit. What had happened could not be undone. Hopefully, Dannie would recover with no real harm done to her and they could all start afresh. Dannie emerged the next day, in the pink dress. The nurses looked. Some were complimentary, one amused. Another seemed disapproving. They all agreed, she looked clean and sweet.

The family had lunch in the Mall. Dannie had little appetite for pizza but made up for that with an expensive ice cream, a treble Ben and Jerry. When they arrived home, they found their father’s car had gone. They all sighed with relief. When mother went to bed, she cried until exhaustion brought oblivion. She had shown strength finally but at a price.