There is a photograph. I am eight years old, wearing a black coat, with a brown-black faux fur collar and cuffs, and a matching faux fur hat. I am not sure exactly which outfit I’m wearing underneath, but I have a strong memory urge to say the orchid-magenta, soft denim trousers, with small white daisy print, and the matching cotton top. We are in London, visiting my aunt who lives there- this aunt is my mother’s younger sister. I am standing a few feet in front of the gloss-black lacquered, mid-height railings of a major park. I am in focus, slightly to the right of the centre of the frame, and my aunt is on the far right, partially out of frame, and slightly out of focus. She is sort of smile-laughing, her hand partially over her nose and mouth, perhaps out of awkwardness and embarrassment- that’s what I want to believe. I am holding half a sandwich in one of my hands: my head is tilted up, mouth agape, as I am scream-crying, and my face is wet with tears because of my mother’s frightening treatment of me in the moments leading up to this image.
The story behind this photo is, like the scene within it, a snapshot of my mother’s behaviour towards me: from my earliest memory, she had always been this way with me. On this day, the Saturday of this weekend trip, we had gone to M&S to get some lunch while out sightseeing. It was just the three of us- my aunt was married, but her then husband was miserable, haughty, and abusive to her. I gauged that spending time with his wife, his recently separated sister-in-law, and niece would certainly have been beneath him, so he wasn’t there. I was hungry, as I often was when alone with my mother.
Up until she moved into her house, the year I started secondary school, she lived with her parents, which is where I would stay when it was her week with me. My maternal grandparents, particularly my grandmother, looked after me when she was out, and were definitely a buffer between me and my mother’s behaviour towards me. I wouldn’t ever admit this to my father’s side, for fear of upsetting the grandmother who raised me, and introducing a new dynamic of knowledge of how I feel into my primary household, but I loved spending time with my maternal grandmother. We would hang out, and watch programmes and films on the Hindi language channels, she would feed me and let me eat whatever I wanted, provided I ate my roti, and whatever sabji she had made in the evening- I had the delight of instant noodles, crispy pancakes, and mini frozen pizzas that my grandfather would get in for me, once he and my grandmother gauged I liked them. I felt like I could exhale when my mother wasn’t there, and could do whatever I wanted, which was largely my schoolwork- the minimal amount I had at primary school- watching TV, and keeping myself occupied with my imagination as an only child. My grandmother used to take me with her to the shops on Stratford Road, getting in a good walk on that long stretch from their house to the markets, and she would take me around various places in Birmingham, doing the rounds of her friends’ houses. It was immensely fun, and adventurous. I have talked briefly, in a previous post, about my upbringing living between several houses- there isn’t a lot to add here, so have a peep at that one, if you wish.
It was some sort of cheese sandwich, most likely a Ploughman’s, and a packet of crisps. I was really looking forward to eating them, which should have been soon after they were bought, but she didn’t let me. Instead, she made me carry around the bag, holding onto them while we walked around, went on the tube, and she and my aunt talked and bitched and laughed; I didn’t feel like I could even look in the bag without her shouting at me. She shouted at me a lot, not just on this trip, but any time she was around me: my memories from a very young age are littered with her vocal and physical disdain of me, which she never hesitated to show, even in front of other people. I grew up being tarnished as an uncontrollable, back-chatting, troublesome child, among numerous other things, when the truth of reality did not actually match up with how she portrayed me to others; nevertheless, her family, her colleagues, and her friends looked down on and judged me, harshly and unfairly, anyway. I carried around this bag, in the September cold, getting physically and emotionally wearier. A couple of times, I did eke out strength enough to ask her if I could eat it, but my question was always laced with fear of repercussion; her facial expressions, body language, and the energy she put out were enough to make me recoil. When we got to the park mentioned above, I told her, once again, weakly, that I was hungry: her response was to scream at me in front of my aunt and the other present members of the public, causing not only palpable, temperature-raising embarrassment and dread in my seven-year-old self, but the captured response. She said something degrading about my desire to want to eat, as she did frequently, and bullied me into opening and eating the sandwich right there. I cried throughout the whole scene, of her shouting, and forcing me to open the wrapper, which I could barely see through my tears, or grip firmly enough in my hands, while still grasping the bag. And then she took this photo.
My mother took this photo. It is one physical document I can think of that is demonstrative of her chilling, calculated sadisticness.
My mother has always treated me like she hates me. Her saying the words ‘I love you’ has felt perpetually cold and emotionless, the way someone would say it in the most disconcerting of horror films: devoid of expression, before killing you with an axe. I have never felt safe with, or around her, not as a child, as an adolescent, or as an adult.
This woman will not leave me alone. Over the years, I have changed my mobile number, my address, and even had my husband tell her over the phone that we will have to get the police involved if she doesn’t stop contacting me. We have got the police involved. I have had statements taken by officers, one at our house, about my mother’s behaviour, and my very real fears that one, or a number of my blood relatives, including those from my father’s side, might show up at our house; in my mother’s case, per her request, and/or through getting themselves incandescently wound up, and inserting themselves into the situation on her behalf, and, in my father’s, through various, similar, personal ‘reasons’ that justify continually ignoring my boundaries to themselves. The officer that came to our house assured me that they take these matters very seriously, and that everything I had, and was continually experiencing was domestic abuse. Having that confirmation from the mouth of a police officer felt like slightly more vindication than the definitions and contextualisations of my blood family’s behaviours that I had learnt and had make over the years, but, even from their side, the onus was still on me to change my number, and move elsewhere, if we were able, to evade them. Of course, it’s just so easy, for anyone, to pack up and pick up their life, especially when they are unwell and in constant fear for their safety….
It is all too commonplace, wrongly, for the responsibility of keeping yourself safe to fall on the victim of abuse, rather than on the abuser(s) to leave them the fuck alone. My mother will leave me alone for years, then resurface in some way, getting people she knows to ‘test the waters’ before contacting me herself. The most recent instance of this was my birthday last year (2023), when I received an email from my uncle, the oldest of her younger brothers, wishing me ‘happy birthday’, and saying that he ‘hadn’t forgotten me’. It must be such a leisure to be able to pick and choose when you contact your oldest niece, if at all- I guess all the years, through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood up until my late-twenties, of getting in touch with me, seeking me out, out of genuine care and concern, to see if I needed and wanted him, and others, in my life, fell by the wayside, hey?
He contacted me through one of the forms on this site. These pages are not something he would have known about on his own, unless he had spent time googling my name and had come across them. I knew sending a message would have been her idea, and, as most people seem to, he bowed to her will. I couldn’t help but feel a snideness in the ‘I haven’t forgotten you’, as if to suggest that I have indeed forgotten everybody else- they must all feel so great spending their time being so reductive about my feelings and my life. Like clockwork, within a week of sending that message, I received an email from her to the same address. It was typed in the form of a text message, in a light, jolly tone, as if we were in habitual contact- this is what she does, and has done countless times.
She is a very real, tangible threat. She is very mentally adept, and expert in playing the victim, making most people believe that she is, and turning them against anyone who opposes her fabricated narratives. She will justify anything to continue emotionally stalking me, if she can’t physically, and will manipulate others she knows to do so on her behalf, and they always, and unquestioningly do. This is what abusers do. They continually and tirelessly attempt to insert themselves into your life, to tunnel into your psyche, especially on significant dates and occasions. I have spent years utterly immobilised with fear at receiving calls, texts, and voicemails, on birthdays, Diwalis, Christmases, New Years etc. Deaths are also a good one: there’s nothing like being guilted into contact with a sob story about a relative you have neither met, nor known of until that point. It’s never about the person who has died, but their proximity to, and the effect of their passing on those I do know- absolutely any level of remorseless, tactical tantrumming to endeavour to make you feel like you are a foul, unfeeling human being. Nobody, especially on her side of the family, knows what I have endured, and what I continue to endure, because they won’t listen to me, let alone believe anything I say. None of them are beyond reproach in what they have done in their own lives, to each other and other people, so judgement from them is a laughable thing, and it’s not like our behaviours are, in any way, on the same level. Not a single one of them has ever wanted to understand, or know me, so they don’t, and never will. She is evil, and one of the most dangerous people I have ever known- I know part of her will love that description.
I feel satisfied that I have accurately communicated the content of that photograph, but I also feel sorry that I can’t remember every exact, factual detail of it, including the location. I didn’t, as a child, or adolescent, have the foresight to think that, one day, I might be estranged from my entire blood family, so I didn’t think to nab the photo, or the negatives, for the occasion that I might need them for reference in future, even just for my personal confirmation, that what I remember and what I felt did happen. This is one example of what abuse does to you. It makes you feel that your memory is unreliable, not to mention the effects that years of grief-crying, trauma-triggered, co-morbid mental illnesses, and medication has on your brain development and daily executive functioning. There is also the expectation of being a ‘perfect victim’: being a child is, apparently, not enough.
One thought I also had, when describing my clothes, and the place the sandwich was bought, was that people reading won’t believe, or have sympathy for me, even though I was a child, because they indicate that my family had a bit of money. Because I didn’t grow up in, or anywhere near poverty, or being physically abused- beaten up, starved etc, with visible bruises and wounds- I still fear, as an adult, that my experiences of abuse will be grossly viewed as diminished, which feels, and is, absolutely horrendous. Not that victims of abuse don’t have to endure enough ordeals in order to be taken seriously and helped, we are also compounded with the shame of not victimming hard enough.
It is not our job, or my job in my posts, to be an all-knowing, educating hub about abuse and how it manifests. It is not my responsibility, as a survivor, to do anything other than try to live my life as best as I can, but I still have to continue blocking, deleting, ignoring, and stonewalling every single person who keeps trying to infiltrate my life, and I still have to give precious time and personal energy to keep them physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as far away from me as possible. Where is the ongoing and consistent help and protection for victims of abuse? Where is the dedicated compensation for everything we have lost, and continue to lose, due to what we are forced to live with because of what has been done to us?
Ciona Bhachu-Nankervis 