Requiem to an Abused Child

By Emmanuelle

The first part of this true story was published last Sunday, June 11.  To continue:

Maybe, for the first time in his young life, and in the house yet of complete strangers, this abused child experienced how it was to be home. He was the son, the brother there never was. It was like he had always been there, born grown in their midst. Not a disheveled, scarred, broken little boy dropped out of nowhere somewhere. 

His  hunger was one nightmare less. He ate with the family; and this family ate a lot! He learned that there was a game called play, and that it was a lot of fun, especially now that his wounds were healing fast, with no fresh ones to add up to the pile. But most important of all, he discovered that freedom was not just a patch of blue sky you look up at, day to day, through a barred window.

Freedom was stepping out of the house, out of the gate, walking, then running through nearly empty rural streets, then doing the round again. And again. Freedom was screaming his pains out loud, screaming his heartaches gone, screaming his anger hoarse at the top of his voice until the veins on his throat stood out big and blue and sore.

He learned too water sometimes can be thicker than blood. He found out love was coming back to this home of a house, when the running was done, and the screaming was through. The father Dan called Taytay, would gesture a thumbs-up. One of the sisters, Oma or Opa, would hail “wasn’t that good?” then nonchalantly hand him a dry clean shirt. The mother, Dan’s Nay, would smile with her kind eyes, and pour out a glass of ginger juice for that scratchy throat. And at mealtime, he would be given extra servings more.

No one called him, or treated him as crazed. It was fate that had gone crazed.

Not once did Dan beg to be brought back to his house. Nor did he call out for Ma, or Pa.

But then, Dan had other nightmares. Though in this home he was hugged and cuddled, he insisted on sleeping the nights his way – start sleep on the divan, check-up on everybody in the middle of the night, touch them lightly to make sure they  still breathe, then end up curled on his watch infront of the locked front door. Sometimes, they would hear him  thrashing violently in his sleep, fending off devils he encountered deep in his deepest nightmares.

One day, his Pa fetched him. Not because Dan was missed. Both sets of grandparents said he must be brought  back. It was a scandal, one’s child being  raised by a family not of his own blood. And happily too, it seemed, for the child and that family. That was the real scandal.

Sid’s family couldn’t do anything. The law against child abuse was still warbling in some legislators’ minds at the time.

Sid learned from Sig: the abuse picked up from where it had left off.  Whatever caused child abuse to be committed among the closest of family members, the possibilities had frightened Sid. She and Sig broke off, but friends they remained.

Sid  learned that Dan would try, everyday, to walk out of the house, to run out of the yard. Failing to do so, he would throw his body against the padlocked door, against the hard walls, against the barred windows. He would be screaming all the time. In between the child’s bawling, indistinguishable words and phrases – were sounds moaned out in seeming despair. “How did those sounds sound like?” Sid asked. She was told: SSSSSS, and two other sounds, OMMM, POOO. Then Ayyy. Then Ayayyy.

The child was calling out for Sid and her two sisters, Oma and Opa. Then Nay. Then Taytay.

One day, Dan escaped from his prison of a storeroom. He climbed out like a monkey through the skylight. He jumped down the roof, maybe broke a bone or two. He climbed over the fence, he limped away from the house never a home.

He hopped, and ran, and skipped, and ran, and kicked  his bones in line. Tears streamed from his eyes, smudged down his dirty bloody cheeks. “Uwi, uwi!” (Home! Home!), he was reportedly heard to be screaming all the way. He really was in a hurry.

He disappeared down the never emptied urban streets. He was never seen since.

To this child, and countless other children like him, this requiem is offered to  you.

These tears too.

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