Requiem to an Abused Child

By Emmanuelle

This writer is neither the singer nor the reason for this song. The story and the memories do not belong to her. But in the process of retelling – she lived through it. So, in the final requiem, the story and the song are hers too, as much as they will be yours from hereon.

Dan is the middle of five children of lawyer-parents, one a public prosecutor, the other in private practice. As the children came one after the other during the early part of the marriage, one might say the couple were not only passionate about their profession, but were also as equally passionate in their private lives.

They are considered one of the successful legal tandems now, but during the occurrence of Dan’s story, the top was a long, long way up. Husband Ping still had to prove his worth among fiscals and judges; wife Pet had to hold her own among other private lawyers. They were a couple of social climbers, too. They loved the good life; they loved being “known”.   

The kids grew up with the maids. The two eldest and two youngest children were often brought to parties or were seen at home when visitors drop by. These four kids look almost alike, with their fair skin and uniform good-looking features. If the visitors were not familiar with the kids’ actual number, they wouldn’t have known a Dan ever existed.

Dan existed. This fact an “almost-relative” learned. Pet had a younger brother Sig who was taking a nursing course. Once, he brought his girl friend, also a nursing student, to his sister Pet’s house at a time when he thought everybody were out. When their smooching got heated, somebody was doing a groaning. And it was neither of them.

Curiosity got the better of lust, the couple decided to investigate. They peeped through all the barred windows, tried the locked doors. Nobody was supposed to be in the house when doors were padlocked from outside.

The groans were coming from what was supposed to be the storeroom. They stacked wooden boxes to reach the roof and to peer through the skylight. The scene they saw would haunt them all their lives: Sig’s nephew Dan was tied to a post with plastic straws. He must have been there for more than a few hours because the child had peed and pooed on himself more than once.

Sig removed the skylight by sheer force of anger and shame. He dropped down, untied the child, opened a window from the inside, passed him through to his girlfriend. They washed the child thoroughly, gave him dry clothes hanging on the line, brought him to a hospital.

Upon x-ray, Dan was found to have advanced primary complex. The child was seven, but had the size of a four-year old. He was dark when his siblings were fair. His skin bore the marks consistent to continuing physical abuse – healed, healing or fresh – such as bruises, scratches, gouges, also hematomas on head, torso, upper and lower limbs; lash marks made by belt buckle or strap at upper back, buttocks and legs.  A starving, malnourished body. A starving, malnourished mind – dazed, frightened stare; delayed reaction to stimuli; slow, trance-like movements, stuttered speech.

Sig’s girlfriend Sid brought Dan to her home for a month. She fed the child as how a child should be fed – nutritiously and well. She hugged him too, clumsily at first because the child was all creaky bones, and Sid had also just passed being a child herself.

Dan slept on the reclining divan in the sala as there was no extra bed in the house. Sid was one of three girls, and they occupy the one other bedroom; the other one was for her parents.

Every night, after seeing him to sleep, they close the two bedroom doors after themselves for privacy. Each morning, they would wake up with both doors wide open, Dan deep asleep before the locked front door, meters away from his divan. And wasn’t that a ghost or something walking softly every night, touching each of them softly, but fleetingly fast?

Sig intentionally dropped word among his family about the child’s whereabouts. But it was just to ask: was it about time his sister and husband did something about a missing child of theirs? Because, it seemed to be, no child in that family was reported missing or was even being missed!

To have been lost and searched for and never found. To have been wanted lost and never wanted found – these are two entirely different situations. And more woe to one who belongs to the latter.  

                                       (To continue next week.)

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