Broken Pieces Behind the Mask

By Ethel Mae

Set in London, England, this is the journey of a girl that no one wanted.

Ethel Mae's mum emigrated from Jamaica to London and had only been there a few years when she was raped by a family member's boyfriend. Instead of getting sympathy, she was cast away from her family and out of church for being pregnant and unmarried.

When Ethel Mae was born, she was cursed. Everyone wanted her to be born deformed or better still for them, dead. As a young girl, she faced constant physical, emotional, verbal and sexual abuse.

When she wasn't being beaten senseless, she was being berated and vilified. She would be told things like, "Why can't they come and take you away and kill you like they do to other people's children?" or "I should have gone through with the abortion when Auntie Mildred was offering to pay for it." Those cutting words reinforced and confirmed that she was unwanted and unloved.

Get a painful glimpse at how abuse can devastate someone's life and how hard it is to break the cycle as the author shares a courageous story of survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480877191

Ethel Mae

Ethel Mae, a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse, was an angry and often lonely teenager who suffered mental and sexual abuse as an adult. She has always had a drive to prove those that wanted to see her fail wrong. She was able to turn her life around through hard work and faith. She is a mentor to teens, a life coach, writes for magazines, and is an author. She is also the author of Broken Pieces Behind The Mask.

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Copyright © 2019 Ethel Mae.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-7717-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7718-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7719-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906621

Archway Publishing rev. date: 6/5/2019

All it takes to hide is a beautifully fake smile so no

one will see how broken you really are inside. You

wear a mask for long enough hoping to forget who you

really are, wholly broken into beautiful pieces.

Acknowledgements

To my mother, for having the courage, patience and grace to allow me to tell our story, thank you! We’ve come a long way!

To those who came and stayed, thank you! To those who came and left, thank you! To those who are yet to come, thank you!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1     In the Beginning

CHAPTER 2     I’m Back!

CHAPTER 3     Stone Cold

CHAPTER 4     And She’s Gone!

CHAPTER 5     The Bombshell!

CHAPTER 6     The Fight

CHAPTER 7     The Ghost of Fathers Past

CHAPTER 8     Break Up to Make Up—Again

CHAPTER 9     The Break-Up (For Real This Time!)

CHAPTER 10   Life After

CHAPTER 11   The Truth Comes Out

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

Where did it start?

It was the summer of 1974. The first thing I remember was being introduced to a huge family during a power outage. I was standing in the dark, peeking from behind my mothers’ legs, with all these eyes looking at me. I hung onto my box of Jelly Babies for dear life. I’m not sure if that was the end for me or just the beginning.

You see, I am an only child born out of a violent encounter. As it happens, my father (let’s call him father for now because I can’t think of anything better or worse to call him) is the ex-partner of my mother’s aunt—my grandmother’s sister. Whichever way you look at it, he was connected to my family at the time of my conception, the partner of a family member.

November 1970, my mother was nineteen years old and had only been in London for five years. Her aunt summoned her from Northwest to Southeast London to sort out her eleven-year-old brother, who was not behaving at all. Every family has its proverbial black sheep, and he turned out to be it. Not surprising, really, considering the way that same aunt treated him. He had been living with this aunt—we’ll call her Aunt Bee—from the age of six and constantly got into trouble. We will get into that later.

So, my great-aunt summoned my mother to give Uncle Neville a talking-to, only to be greeted by Alfred, the partner. It wasn’t long before Alfred began to make inappropriate advances towards my mum. She fought, and he beat her up, overpowered her, and raped her. Fast-forward nine months—it’s a girl!

During those nine months, my mum was given a hard time by the family. Everyone asked how she could be pregnant by Alfred. She was only nineteen years old. She had grown up a church girl and had only been in the country from Jamaica for a few years. He was more than twice her age, her aunt’s partner, and a supposedly trustworthy family member.

The last my mother saw of him was when she confronted him to tell him that she was pregnant. His response: he gave her £2 (today that would be about £30) and said, Mek sure mi name nuh get called.

You would have thought that a caring, loving aunt would have thrown him out or called the police—hell, even have him beaten by my mum’s older, much bigger brothers. I would have been all in favour of the latter. But then you would have to be a caring, loving aunt to want that to be the case! Instead, they gathered to pass sentence on my mother, her older sister, her aunt, and her cousins—judge, jury, and executioner. Trial by family—the world’s most pathetic People’s Court!

They accused her of having an affair with him, carrying on with him for a while, throwing herself at her aunt’s man, and so the accusations went on. It was all her fault because, of course, she had gotten herself knocked up! Aunt Bee even turned up at my mum’s house a few weeks later with her eldest daughter, my mum’s cousin, in tow, screaming, How could you sleep with my father?

Oh, I’m sorry! Are you saying your father didn’t take any part? Even a sperm donor has to do something for a child to be conceived! Did he just lie there and, poof, a pregnancy materialized? Please!

The cousin, as it turns out, is my sister. Yes, my mother’s first cousin is also my half-sister. Who saw that one coming? I didn’t, until a few days before my twenty-eighth birthday; that is when I understood why Aunt Bee had never spoken a word to me a day in my life. She would just stare at me. I thought it was because I was so gorgeous and she was spellbound and mesmerized by me.

My mother was ostracized and cast out of the church. The sin of all sins: pregnant and unmarried—sacrilege! Back then, that was the biggest sin anyone could commit. Premarital sex and getting pregnant—it would have been easier to forgive you if you had killed someone.

So, as you can guess, I was not exactly planned or wanted, which put me at a bit of a disadvantage. My family and others in the church literally cursed me, wishing that I would be stillborn or deformed. Nice!

Anyway, going back to the family in the dark (that sounds so much more dramatic than it needs to be). A couple with ten children of their own, who knew my grandmother from back in Jamaica, had moved to London. They offered to take my mother and me in, with the goal of helping to raise me. Life with Uncle Reggie and Auntie Gina and their family began.

Back then, we had power outages regularly. This particular Saturday was one of them, and I was taken to a house in Wimbledon, a box of candies as my security blanket. I wondered if that was what an animal in the zoo felt like. All those eyes on me. I nearly waited for someone to either poke me or throw food my way.

Soon after the initial introduction, I settled in seamlessly. After all, children are adaptable and resilient, right? I had already left preschool by then. Even though the couple had ten children, nine of whom still lived at home, I found it to be a lonely life. Only one of the children spoke to me. The others alienated me, making me feel like an outsider.

I was three years old but somehow felt much older, like an adult caring for and looking after herself, especially because there were days and days when I didn’t go to school, as no one knew where my mother was.

I’m not quite sure why her being a no-show meant I couldn’t go to school. All I know is that it led to me being treated differently and snubbed by the other children, as if they thought I was receiving preferential treatment.

I was a child; I had no say in the matter. I watched all the others get ready to leave for school, and I would just be there, trying not to make eye contact to avoid the glaring, sullen looks. I spent my days wandering around the house aimlessly like tumbleweed.

Even though my mum was often a no-show, she would turn up for my beatings. There were times when I was beaten senseless. The reason? Who needed a reason? Maybe because it was Thursday, or it was raining—and as I grew up in the UK, it rained a lot.

One particular Sunday morning before church, after a beating over a misunderstanding involving a chocolate bar, they had run out of plasters (Band-Aids) in the house to patch me up with. My beatings were usually carried out with whatever came to hand. Two items I remember as part of that beating were a wire clothes hanger and a wooden clothes brush. It was one of the worst beatings I’d had, to the point where my mum was pushed into the living room to separate her from me. I was only five years old.

I remember being taken by my mother to Kew Gardens as a treat after being patched up. It was a beautifully sunny day. Kew Gardens is the most famous botanical gardens in the UK. In over forty years, I don’t think I have ever been back there.

Don’t get me wrong; my childhood wasn’t all bad. I did have playmates, at least during the times when they’d forget or overlook the fact that I was the outsider. We would go to the local parks, climb trees, play on the swings, and do all the things children do. Just for a moment, I was a normal child with no cares, no beatings to cower from, no need to feel alone. I was included; I belonged!

However, there were many confusing times ahead at home, at school, at church, and in public. I was isolated at home, but we were a united front in public as a family. They called me their cousin outside of the house. I’m not sure if the kids were told to say that, but in public I was the cousin or a triplet. The youngest two children of the ten were twins and two months older than I. Their parents dressed us alike and that is how we became the triplets.

In the house, we were called the babies. Get the babies their tea or Get the babies ready for bed. As weird as that was, I really liked it. I felt as though I were a part of the family, something I’d never had before, nor would I for many, many years to come.

A few months later, my mum moved into the house, a three-bedroom, single-bathroom house holding four adults and nine children. How we made out in a house that size still amazes me. The beatings continued, and the number of times I was held back from school grew less.

One thing that was great about living there was that we had to go to church (not the same church that kicked my mum out when she was pregnant). There I met some cool people, some of whom I am still friends with to this day. There I didn’t feel so alone; no one knew the deep, dark secrets of my childhood—not just conceived and born out of wedlock to a teenage mother, but also conceived from rape, not knowing my father and a victim of severe beatings. I could be a completely different person; I could hide. In fact, I could be anyone I wanted to be.

During those first few years, I had my first sexual encounter. When I was five years old, one of the boys took me into a bedroom and made me lie on the bed. He exposed himself to me, took my hand, placed it on what I later found out was an erection, and kissed me.

It felt weird, but I went along with it. Someone wanted to do something with me. I was getting a hug; I was receiving the affection that I didn’t even know I craved. This happened only a couple of times, and as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. As the years went by, I blocked it out as though it never happened.

Shortly after that, an older male neighbour began to show an interest in kissing and touching me, so I let him. This was all before I was seven years old, and I had no idea it was all abuse. However, it did make me wonder in later years why a lot of male interest in me was purely sexual. What was it about me? And why was I so willing to accept it?

During this time, in addition to all of us children already living in the house, many other children were taken in as Auntie Gina was a childminder. She took in a brother and sister from a home nearby who were living in a volatile environment. The father was a chronic alcoholic who was well known in the neighbourhood for being drunk at all hours of the day and night. Everyone knew him and knew when he was around since he would walk the streets singing at the top of his lungs regardless of what time it was. He actually had a very nice voice.

Sadly, he was killed in a pub by someone who wanted to start trouble. The saddest part: even though he was always drunk, he never hurt a soul. At least not physically. His wife ended up in a psychiatric unit at the hospital, where she stayed until she passed away a few years later, and their son was plagued with mental illness all his adult life. Their daughter, however, did go on to lead a quite well-rounded life albeit living with physical illnesses, having two children of her own and taking in her brother’s child.

As if there weren’t enough people in the house already, the eldest son got a young woman pregnant. Her parents flipped out—and guess where she came to live? Yes, with us in the three-bedroom house. That made it five adults and ten children living together. It was nice when the baby was born; she was adorable, and everyone focused on her.

The house was known in the neighbourhood as the one everyone came to, including all the friends of the children, people from the church, and the children from the childminding. It was a busy house!

To add to the mind games played by my mum, she treated me great in between the beatings and verbal abuse. She would take me to work with her. She worked at the depot for a rail company, where I would play on the tracks running in between the empty trains that needed repairs or hide out in the storeroom. I was in a world of my own. I was everyone’s daughter or granddaughter as she was the only women among twenty men. They were very protective of me, if only they knew what my reality was. She took me to the cinema often to watch the Disney cartoons: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin. I had seen them all.

Because Mum worked for a rail company, we travelled free of charge. Some weekends she would just pack a lunch and we would go to the station, jump on a train, and go to a seaside town. Mum would play with me, hug me, and tell me she loved me. Those times I loved; there was just peace in feeling as if I had a mum.

When I was seven, we all moved away from that house to somewhere larger. You can imagine that the poor house was bursting at the seams. It was then that the worst of the sexual abuse began. An older friend of the family who lived closer to this new house began to come over. He was always too nice to me; I didn’t realize he was grooming me for sex.

It began with him using his fingers to penetrate me. I didn’t dare say anything, because again I was receiving the affection and love that I wanted from an older figure. It then escalated to full-blown intercourse, and still I said nothing; it just hurt. With so many people in the house it was easy to slip away unnoticed. For two years, he was regularly having sex with me and I just lay there and let him. I blocked it out. I blocked out his voice, his breath on my face, his hands touching me. I blocked it all out. More than anything this time it was the pain I blocked out. Outside of the beatings I had never known pain like it.

I had a feeling that what he was doing was wrong, but as wrong as it was, I was also getting attention. It only stopped when I said I was bleeding (I wasn’t; I just wanted it to stop), not realizing he thought I had started my period and the thought of getting a nine-year-old pregnant was a prison sentence—in more ways than one!

To this day, I still haven’t told anyone who it was. I have only ever told two people that it ever even happened.

My mother and I moved into a room with a family from our church for a short while. I remember she was dating an Englishman, Robert. He was really nice, and everyone loved him. He would come with us on trips to the seaside on the weekend. It was as if we were a family. And for a while, the beatings stopped, which was a relief. All of Mum’s attention was on him. I loved him as though he were my dad and often wished that he was.

When we weren’t being a happy family, he and my mum would occasionally get into some crazy arguments. It was nothing physical but just crazy heated arguments. I wished that I were invisible and would make believe I was grown up with my own happy family and life.

One evening they had a particularly bad argument. My mum found out he had slept with her friend and didn’t want anything more to do with him, no matter how much he said he was sorry and pleaded to stay. Robert tried to take the television since he and my mum were splitting up. My mum grabbed a knife and slit his arm from his shoulder to his elbow. He put the television down and left. What else could he do at that point? I never saw him again. The person whom I felt was my saviour was gone.

Yet again Mum and I were on the move. We moved back in with Auntie Gina and the family for a while before we moved again, this time into a room with another family from our church. A short walk away on the same street.

During most school holidays, I would alternately stay with three families. This was outside of all of the different places we had moved to live. I felt as though I was a nomad just moving from place to place. One family had six children; I guess one more made little difference. One family had two, and the other three.