Bloodless

By D'Arcy Everette

BLOODLESS: ONE SURVIVOR'S STORY
Abusers plant seeds. Hearts bleed. Pain breeds.
Result? A damaged universal psyche, which remembers and repeats.
For they lie in wait, surreptitiously stalking. Each one, Incubus, hunting vulnerable ones, trusting ones, gullible ones. That’s what sexual predators do, isn't it? Prey. In the dark. In the wild. And sometimes, in the not supposed to be wild. They’re the worst kind, camouflaged by decency, civility, things of status, their jungle, civilised society, their pack concealing them...

Bloodless is written as autobiographical fiction based on actual events related through the words of D'Arcy Everette. Within this memoir, she leaves behind her unfaltering footprint of open honesty and courage.
(Please be advised that some scenes might cause distress to some readers. Some scenes also contain adult language and describe sexual behaviours.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: D'Arcy Everette
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780646801377

D'Arcy Everette

D’Arcy Everette is an Australian mother, educator, and writer. Bloodless was written as autobiographical fiction based on actual events, with the aim of assisting the processing of sexual and emotional abuse, not only for the author, but also for others. Bloodless offers genuine insight for those who desire deeper understanding of this realm of persistent, and often, indissoluble trauma.So, one aspect of her speaking out is that it constitutes a journey towards her healing. But more than that, she hopes this sharing helps towards healing for others who have also borne the shadow of that world of overwhelming and enduring cruelty. She encourages others to heal too, in a way that benefits them.(Please be advised that some scenes of Bloodless may be distressing for some readers. Bloodless also contains some adult language and sexual content.)Instagram: darcyeverette

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Dedication

To courage

To kindness

To rekindling

Mantra

Strive to survive.

Survive to thrive.

From D’Arcy

It’s 1973. I’ve just turned sixteen. I’m a Catholic virgin who doesn’t even know she has a vagina, and yet, I’ve found myself pregnant.

In the seventies, when this happened, information was limited. My world was very small and my days in those days were to a great extent, cloistered. I knew this was an attempt by my parents to keep me safe, and most likely also, to keep me good in the eyes of God. But it didn’t keep me safe. And I became very certain that it had taken me away from any goodness in the eyes of God. Not only that it had taken me away from any goodness in the eyes of myself.

After what had happened, I was very sure that God, or any other man for that matter, would never want me again. After what had happened, for a very long time, I didn’t want me either.

I blamed myself, thinking that something must be lacking or depraved within me. I buried my humiliation within a burning core of shame and guilt, and I used all I had in my small world to make sense of a senseless experience. I used my religion, and I explained it through the devil.

All these years later, I open my soul to you, a hole in my guts – eaten away by the bile of long held secret grief. I now have the words to tell what happened. I now have courage enough to see that telling through. Nonetheless, after much consideration, I write the following as fictional memoir. I write under a pseudonym. Not out of shame for myself, although, to be honest, some of that still clings to me. But at last, the passing of years, and help and support from others, including the voices of those brave enough to speak out, have helped to dilute my shame to bearable – enough to finally speak out too.

But I do have family who would rather remain anonymous. And on either side, victim and villain, there are the slurs and ugly stickiness that ensues from fighting back that can mar families and friends beyond the culpable. At this point in time, I feel that I must protect the innocent and their privacy, even though in doing so, I also protect the complicit. I do not wish for good hearts to suffer, especially when the other hearts who hurt me would very likely carry no feelings of guilt. More likely, they would carry denial, indignation, and concern for disruption to their false lives. The how, or when, or what of any of their reckoning might need to be left for their souls to sort out. So, in light of all this, I hope that the choice to clothe this memoir within a fictional guise does not diminish what I share with you now.

In any case, why speak out now in any form? After all these years? ‘Why make a fuss?’ would be the common mantra for my generation, and many generations before mine. Even now, in these supposedly more enlightened times, those words are common counsel. And I have to admit that some hesitancy remains.

But deep down, for me, this speaking out through my writing is a part of my healing, my words standing like Boudicca before that abusive battalion of blame and shame. More than that, I hope this sharing helps towards healing for others who have also borne the shadow of this world of overwhelming, enduring cruelty. I encourage you to seek healing too, in a way that benefits you.

PART ONE

Antecedents

Penance

1973

There are eleven of us – Mum and Dad, and nine children, although, for some time, on and off, my mother has been ‘away’, incarcerated far from us, from herself as well, lost in misery. In a way, we’ve become used to her being away because she’s done a fair bit of it, with having so many babies. They usually keep her, and the latest new baby, in hospital for a week or two. But it’s been harder this time, with her being away for such a long stint, and so far away we can hardly visit, and with so much else on top of all that.

I’m the second child, the first daughter. My earliest memories are of my mother’s adoration, and my father often seeming awkward around me. He’s better with the boys and doesn’t quite know what to do with us girls, with me, I suppose. Although, for a year or so after our first TV arrived, we’d watched Westerns together, after the younger ones had been tucked into bed. For a while, once a week, that became ‘our thing’. But I’d only ever been allowed to see the first half hour, because then it was my bedtime. But it was something. I’m not sure if that special time had been important to him, but it had been important to me.

Dad’s definitely head of the family, in every traditional sense of the word, except when his father is around. Then he becomes a child again, obedient, subservient, compliant, almost cowering beneath his father’s stern and domineering opinions. Beyond that, the unwavering and unequivocal voice of the Church always overrides and controls my father’s actions and opinions on everything.

We live rather squashed together, under a tinned roof, one miniature bathroom, but now, a brand new flush toilet off the back verandah. There were three bedrooms until the recent ‘reno’, when Dad added on two more, at the same time as the small room for the flushing loo. The birth of the ninth child had forced him into action, as there was literally no room for him. After months and months of banging, and dust, and mess, it was completed just before Christmas. Dad did it all himself – to save money. Not many people could achieve such a thing.

In the back yard, our recently retired dunny still lingers, fringed by Acacias, a few large steps from the Hills hoist. There’s a vegie garden, where far too many cabbages and beans flourish, planted to save money, but also, we kids are certain, to add continuous torture to nighttime meals. We are all thoroughly united on how disgusting cabbage is, and mostly as well, on our distaste for beans. Of course, being Catholics, any thoughts of torture are expected to be transmuted into the glory of doing penance.

Under the house is bursting with what we call ‘Dad’s junk’. He doesn’t think it’s junk, of course, and finds plenty of opportunity to justify it. There’s always something requiring fixing, whether at home, or in the homes of family or neighbours, or at the parish and its school next door. Generally, Dad has something amongst all that chaos that has come in handy and done the job. His biggest challenge is trying to locate that very thing he knows he needs, which is ‘in there somewhere’.

In the winters, the cold from downstairs seeps upstairs through unsealed floors, which open themselves very willingly to the elements. Those creeping chills and cruel winds fill the house, infiltrating our thin bed covers into aches in our backs. Sometimes we sleep together, just to keep warm, which for me, often means being peed on by a bed-wetter, so there’s always indecision. And of course, if Dad discovers us, snuggled together to keep each other warm, he sends us back to our separate beds, clearly unsettled about the inappropriateness of our actions.

So, the winter is always a cleansing penance too, just like cabbage and beans. It’s an opportunity to suffer without complaint, to be disciplined and obedient, and not to give in to such earthly desires as seeking warmth. It’s a time to gain good graces through restraint, and also, to share in the misery of those worse off, as a kind of empathetic suffering.

All in all, we live in a home where we are provided with considerable opportunity to atone for our sins – those which have been, those which might have been, (such as those in our thoughts about seeking warmth on cold winter’s nights, but not acted upon), and also, for those sins to come. Nothing goes to waste when there’s a chance to atone in advance for what might come in the future. A bit like a savings account of sorts –something that’s definitely required for the impure creatures that we are, because apparently, unfortunately, only certain saintly ones are capable of maintaining consistently pure, unstained souls.

Jesus, of course, is one of these fortunate ones, and his mother, Mary, and all the Saints. I’m not sure about the Pope, except that his soul has to be totally clean and pure before he becomes one.

Many a time I have pictured my soul. It’s like a translucent scuba tank inside my torso. But it only fills my torso – not my arms or legs, or even my head. Just my torso.

Inside, I can see the sludge of my sins, which rises and falls depending on my behaviour, my state of mind, and I guess, God’s reaction to it all. So, inside that tank is both light from when I am good, but also darkness from the sins I commit. If I’m selfish, or talk in class, or tell a lie, the level of sludgy darkness rises, and the white translucence diminishes. If I let my beans roll onto the floor under the dinner table for the dog to eat, that dark waterline rises even more. And if I put my arms inside the bedcovers to keep warm, or roll onto my stomach to sleep, I’m quite certain that by morning, my soul will be filled to the brim by blackness. I will have become an evil child with a murky soul.

However, there are ways to redeem such dire transgressions, to transmute some of that sludge into clear, clean translucence, thus turning my struggling soul into a space of goodness, all at once, in one massive clean. Like a detoxification, perhaps. (It still doesn’t nullify the fires of Purgatory, but at least I might not go straight to Hell.)

So, one possibility is to say a perfect prayer of contrition. While I’ve been told by many a nun that my desire, (or possibly, ambition), to achieve a perfect contrition, is prideful, and therefore, sinful, (being a mere lowly one), secretly, I haven’t given up. I am continuing in good faith on the assumption that if that option exists, then it is possible. With the state I’m in at the moment, it might be my only hope.

Confession is supposed to cleanse me, somewhat at least. The priest is supposed to be able to cleanse souls – even of mortal sin – if the contrition is sincere. But how do I make a sincere repentance about something I didn’t actually do even though I must have? Which brings my thoughts to the devil, and repercussions there, because I think he’s done this thing to me – made his replica inside me – and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be too happy with any priest who tried to take it away from him, or with the one who’d dobbed. So, confessing about something like that might not be good for the priest, or me.

I’m also rather squeamish about talking to a priest about this sort of thing – a priest who pretends he doesn’t know me, but really does. So, with confession off the list, taking on the challenge of making a perfect contrition in the privacy of the shadows under the loquat tree, seems the best option. Because I can’t do nothing – with my soul in such a state.

I’ve always endeavoured to keep my soul sludge less than the halfway mark inside my soul scuba tank. Surely, that would ensure me a pass to Purgatory, and keep me safe from the fires of Hell? Until recently, that had been my thinking – to at least be halfway to purity in case I die suddenly.

Most young people my age don’t worry about dying. They feel too young, and don’t think it’s actually going to happen to them. But when I was in primary school, the sister of a good friend died of cancer at sixteen, (same age I am now). That sister was also my young aunt’s best friend, so her dying was very close to home. I’ve also seen the pallid skin of my grandmother sticking too close to her bones, her eyes glazed and vacant, while death hovered, taking her well before she’d had time to grow decent wrinkles. I saw her in her coffin too and kissed the cold grey rigidity of her ashen cheeks.

And I’ve seen my mother almost die on our dining room floor, while I tried to breathe life into her until an ambulance arrived. So, I know with certainty that anyone can die at any time, and the soul has to be ready for that.

However, living with teenagehood, I find that sin can creep up on you. And now, with this poor little dark soul inside me, obviously, sin has definitely overtaken me! And not just some menial venial sin, but mortal sin, the kind that will send me straight to Hell!

So, I’m saturated in it, inside and out! I’m choking on it! That black ooze of my mortal sinning is staining my soul so viciously that it’s erupting like a volcano through the lid of its scuba tank confinement, up into my throat. (I literally feel and like throwing up all the time, so surely that’s proof enough!)

My soul must look like it belongs to the devil himself for what I’ve done. And I’m desperate to do whatever I need to do, not only to save myself from Hell, but perhaps also, the soul of this devil’s creature inside me.

My theory is that while it’s in me, a baptised Catholic, it might have a chance of being transformed at the same time as me, and therefore, saved from an eternity of living with the devil. Conceivably, if I’m successful with my perfect contrition, this thing spawned of sin, and likely black with sin, can become purer too? Maybe even cured?

So, despite what the nun’s say about my prideful incompetence, maybe I can overcome this devil’s grasp, and save us both. Perhaps even if my contritions are close to perfect, (being a mere, non-saintly mortal), then maybe, just maybe, that heavy glug of devil’s sludge will dissipate, at least a little?

It’s challenging though, because I’m not really sure how to gauge how well I’ve done, how close to perfect my contrition might have been. Beyond that, I keep sabotaging my efforts with this nagging interruption that it’s not my fault, because I didn’t put this thing inside me, so why do I have to be sorry? And if I’m possessed by the devil and can’t help it, then when I die, God will realise and understand – and save me.