Tears were running down her cheeks, but she bored on relentlessly.
“He took everything, he emptied my bank accounts, he made me take out loans against the business and sign over all my properties to him, everything I’d worked for, and, when I tried to object, to fight back, he’d just hurt someone I loved; his friends beat my father so badly he’s never recovered, and my family found out, because he told them, just to make sure they disowned me, to make sure they’d never lift a finger to help me, and when he got his hands on everything I owned he sold it all for whatever he could get for it because he didn’t care, he hadn’t paid anything for it, whatever he got for it, it was all profit for him. And then it was all gone; I had nothing left, and when I had nothing left, he started using me, because I had nothing else to for him to take, and he said rag-head whores were only good for one thing, so he and his friends used me until he decided I was his personal whore, and that’s what I became, over and over again.”
She paused to sip from her water glass, her hand trembling slightly as she looked past me at something I couldn’t see, before taking a deep breath and putting her glass down and squaring her shoulders as she continued her story.
“When I fell pregnant with Shari he was so angry, he beat me so badly I was in hospital for three weeks, when I came home he told me I could keep the baby, as far as he was concerned it wasn’t his, and he did the same thing with Yasmin; he paid nothing for them, not a penny, I had to scrape around finding whatever work I could just to feed my children, because he wouldn’t, he had you and Robert; my children were nothing to him, my family wanted nothing to do with me and my half-caste, bastard children; we were alone, and I had no-one to help me, to keep that man away from me, to stop him doing whatever he wanted to me.”
I sat in shock; I knew my father had a mean, vicious side, but this? This was monstrous, that a man could do things like that to a defenceless woman? It horrified and sickened me, because this was my father, part of me was part of him, and the thought of that disgusted me beyond all reason; all I could do was sit in silence while this horror rolled over me; my father was a demon, and I was his son…
Ayesha bowed her head, I could see the tears dripping from her chin as she cried silently, and I cursed myself for coming here and stirring all this up again inside her; I wanted to reach out to her but I didn’t know how.
“Barbara… you said Barbara was… my mother?” I began, “how was that even possible, she lived with us, why didn’t…?”
Ayesha cut me off.
“Because he was an evil, psychotic, rat-shit bastard, that’s why!” she screamed, and I cowered down in my seat, suddenly afraid of this woman who’d suffered so much at the hands of my father.
“He took that poor woman away from wherever he found her, he gave her children to keep for himself, he terrorised and abused her, and he killed her, that fucking piece of shit killed her because she tried to help your brother! That fucker sat right where you’re sitting, drunk as a skunk and told me all about it, how he killed her because she went through his papers, how he made it look like suicide, and he gloated about it, he was proud of what he did, everything, what he did to her, what he did to your brother, what he did to me, he thought he was the fucking King Shit of the Western World, like he was some kind of superstar…!”
She abruptly cut her tirade short and laid her head in her hands and cried, huge, gasping sobs as she let it all out, and me, I sat there like a moron, too shocked and disgusted to move, too ignorant to know what to say, just numbed and paralysed by the horror of what had happened to this woman and her life because of my father. One fact that kept clanging inside me, however, and would not be quieted; he’d killed Barbara. He’d killed her and boasted about it, she hadn’t committed suicide, it was him, he’d killed her. She was my mother, Bobby’s and mine, and that hadn’t stopped him, it hadn’t even slowed him down, he’d still tied that rope around her neck and watched her choke her life out and did nothing. He was a murderer, he murdered my mother…
I found myself stroking her shoulder, her back, trying uselessly to comfort her, unable to do anything else, because I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to reach out and comfort a fellow human being. I didn’t know how because he’d done that to me, he’d made me less than a human, just a shell with no understanding of how to be a real person, one with proper feelings, and empathy, and compassion. I truly didn’t know how to express compassion or sorrow, because he didn’t have those, so he’d never taught us.
In a sudden, stinging epiphany I realised I was even less human than the stray dogs I’d seen rooting in the dumpsters and squabbling in the streets. I had none of the gentler emotions, the only inheritance I had from that man was a lack of basic human emotions and connections so profound it passed all understanding. I was a golem, a walking shell, a vacuum, I knew nothing about anything, not even how to try and take someone’s pain away, and that realisation stunned and horrified me.
Ayesha’s hand squeezing mine woke me from my heartsick woolgathering. Her face was grey, but her features composed, tear tracks staining her cheeks but she was calm again, she’d said what she needed me to hear, and the crisis point had been passed. She took both my hands, looking into my eyes, concern and compassion in her eyes, and I realised she was concerned for me, for what she’d made me see.
“Richard, I’m… I don’t know what to say to you, I thought you needed to know this stuff, but I’m sorry you had to hear it, if that makes sense. I know it’s not your fault, or your brother’s, I showed you my anger and it wasn’t your fault, none of it was. Please forgive me, I hated you for what your father did, and I was wrong. It’s gone now, it’s all over, but now you know, and maybe we can, I don’t know, move on together. Will you forgive me?”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say, and she cupped my face gently with her warm hands, a faint smile on her lips.
“So much like him, yet nothing like him at all… ” she murmured, “maybe there’s hope for you, so now we have to ask, “what are we going to do with you, Richard Davies?” Come, sit with me, we’ll talk, and when your sisters come home, we’ll talk like a family should, yes?”
I let her lead me back to the sitting room, going slowly because she needed to lean on her walking cane, into the less confrontational and homely atmosphere, but my mind was still churning with all I’d learned, the things I now knew about where I was from, and what I was. I think Ayesha divined some of what I was thinking, because she sat on the sofa next to me and took my hand while she gazed silently at me.
“Yasmin trusts you,” she said out of nowhere, startling me out of my thoughts of Barbara, Nicky, what had been done to them. “What..? I blurted out and she smiled that faint, enigmatic smile of hers.
“Yasmin. She likes you. What’s more, she trusts you; she thinks you’re OK.”
I must have looked puzzled, I certainly didn’t understand her, but her hand on my arm was gentle, and she didn’t seem mad at me anymore.
“Let me tell you something about my girls, Richard, about your sisters,” she began. “They’re scared; Yasmin is scared all the time, she’s jumpy and nervy, and Shereen tries not to show it, but she’s just as scared. They’ve been scared all their lives, but it’s a funny thing; since you’ve been here, and they’ve been helping look after you, a lot of that has gone; it’s like it’s clicked down a couple of notches. Not all of it has gone, that’s going to take time, but enough that it makes me wonder what they’re seeing. Everything that happened, what they saw, what happened to them, Yasmin is finally getting past it all, and I know you don’t understand this, neither do I, but I think it has a lot to do with you being here.”
She sighed as she leaned back, her eyes looking off into the distance, seeing things I never could.
“Your father left some deep scars in her, and Shereen, well, you saw for yourself; they know he’s been locked up forever, but they’re both still very frightened. What he said and did left strong and lasting memories. Yesterday and last night, for the first time, I saw Yasmin starting to let that all go. She needs a positive male influence in her life, and I think that could be you, if that’s what you want.
She grinned at me.
“I don’t want to pressure you, but just you being here has made an incredible difference in her, because now she knows that not all the men in her family are like that man, and she likes you, she even trusts you. This morning, before she even thought of herself, she just had to look in on you and make sure you were alright, that you were still here, that her big brother was still here and hadn’t slipped away during the night.”