Helpless by Marianne Marsh Page A

arm was on my chest, stopping me from moving. The explanation of the word ‘fuck’ I learnt that day was my knickers being pulled down and my dress up. It was him on top of me, his mouth over mine, silencing my protests and cries but not stopping the pain. It was tiny stones grinding into my back and coarse grass under my bottom; it was the muscles in my legs pulling; it was that thing going into me – in and out of me. I thought that day that he was going to split me in half, and wondered if when he finished there would be two pieces of Marianne lying there. Then I was looking at the blue, blue sky and hearing him telling me to wipe myself clean. I used a clump of grass – it stuck to me – and put my knickers back on.
    ‘Did you like that?’ he asked. ‘It means you are no longer a little girl.’
    But I had no words for him.
    Seeing my face with the tears of a lost childhood sliding down it, he put his arms around me.
    ‘It’s what men do,’ he whispered then. ‘What they do to girls who are special to them.’
    He called the children away from the rabbit hole, scooped out the promised ice cream from a white Tupperware container, placed it on melamine plates and gave it to them. It had melted but the children did not mind. His arm went round my shoulders again – it felt heavy but I did not have the courage to shrug it off.
    My back was stroked, he called me his little lady and spooned the runny ice cream into my mouth. ‘Eat,’ he told me. My mouth opened and I swallowed, but afterwards I could not remember what it was I had eaten. Later, when we returned home, the little ones asleep in the pram and him pushing, I walked behind them and with each step I took I felt the place between my legs hurt.
    ‘Well, did you have a nice picnic?’ asked my mother, ignoring my lack of enthusiasm in telling her about the day’s outing.
    ‘Yes,’ I replied, then went out of the back door to the lavatory.
    I took my knickers off, dipped them in the lavatory bowl, then used them to rub and rub at that part he had hurt. Then I washed the bit of my knickers that went between my legs, rinsed out the traces of blood and that white stuff, squeezed them between my hands to get them as dry as I could, before putting put them back on.
    That night as I lay in bed with my eyes shut, I saw the image of a woman with a rope around her neck swinging back and forwards. But she did not have blonde hair and a pretty face; instead her hair was mousy brown and her face was the same one that I saw each day reflected in the mirror.
    Why could my mother not guess? I asked myself. With that thought anger mixed with fear ran through my body. I sat up, crossed my arms and rocked backwards and forwards, hitting my head on the wall, and as I did so my fingers involuntarily nipped and nipped at the soft underside of my upper arms. The fleeting pain of my own pinching dulled my anger – the anger that had made the landscape of my world become bleak, and the people in it hateful. And as I pinched and nipped I did not care that in the morning my arms would show tiny bruises that matched my fingertips.

Chapter Nineteen
     
     
    I have often wondered how different things might have been if Dave had not come into our lives. But he did, and from the moment my mother met him the atmosphere in our house changed. My mother became distracted, showing even less interest in me than normal. Her moods and my father’s unpredictable temper started flaring up for, in my mind, little reason.
    Before Dave’s appearance life had been fairly peaceful for several months. Extra money was coming in, and having a friend next door had seemed to make my mother more content and, even though she did little housework, tasty hot meals had become a more regular occurrence. My parents, although giving little thought to the buying of new furniture or even bedding, had purchased the largest black and white television on the market. Standing near the fireplace and usually tuned