Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again. Joe Peters
he goes to the crematorium.’
Marie put up a bit of a fight. ‘But William always believed in burial,’ she protested. ‘You know that.’
‘If you don’t agree to the cremation,’ Mum replied, ‘I’ll pay for the fucking funeral myself and I won’t be letting you through the fucking doors.’
Even though she knew Mum didn’t have the money, Marie was aware that it wasn’t an idle threat. If she wanted to say her last goodbyes to Dad she had no choice but to do as Mum wanted.
After Wally had explained to me what a funeral was, I begged Mum to let me come along to Dad’s, but there was no chance of that. She was playing the role of grieving widow and I suppose it would have spoiled the act if I had run over to cling to Marie during the ceremony rather than her.
‘You all right, Bro?’ Wally asked me now and then, giving me a comforting cuddle if no one else was watching, and I would nod gratefully, even though I wasn’t all right at all. I felt that he understood a bit of what I was going through and I wished it was just him and me living there with the little ones.
Being only five years old I’d had no concept of death until I was told that Dad had gone. Marie had talked about heaven, but Mum said he’d gone to hell. I’d never even had to think about it before. So my way of finding out about it was by discovering that the one person in the world I loved above all others had gone for good; that I was never going to see him again, or talk to him, or ask him any questions or take shelter behind his long legs. It felt as though I had been hit with a sledgehammer, the weight of my misery crushing me into the ground.
Occasionally Wally would try to put things right for me in a hushed whisper when he was sure Mum was out of the house. ‘Don’t listen to Mummy,’ he would say under his breath, ‘she’s wrong. Your dad has gone to heaven, not hell.’ I wanted to believe him, but I was afraid he was just being kind and that it was Mum who was telling the truth. She was the grown up after all, I reasoned, and she was my mother; why would she lie to me about something so important? Nothing made any sense any more.
Mum kept the house in immaculate condition, obsessively cleaning and tidying all day long. It was a show home although hardly anyone other than her and her children was ever allowed to set foot through the door. None of us dared to make a mess because it could result in her exploding with fury. Apart from drinking and beating her children about, housework was all Mum ever did. It was as though she was trying to control every object and every speck of dirt in her little kingdom. Each morning she would be up at half past five sweeping round the paths outside the house and vacuuming every dustless room. The towels in the bathroom were lined up in perfect sequence and even the bar of soap by the bath would be positioned at exactly the correct angle. No one was allowed to sit on a chair or settee in case they dented the cushions; we all had to sit on the floor. Before she went to bed at night she would lay out all the breakfast bowls for the morning, every setting lined up and every portion of cereal measured out and ready. The immaculate state of the house added to the image of her as the admirable mother in the eyes of any visiting authorities. If she was looking after her home this well, they must have reasoned, she must be caring for her children with equal passion and dedication.
As my overwhelming grief and anger began to erupt as tantrums, in which I threw cups and plates across the room, and lashed out, kicking and biting my brothers, Mum stepped in quickly. Having a disturbed five-year-old smashing the place up in temper was far more than she was ever going to be willing to tolerate. I had to be brought under control instantly and completely, so that I would obey her as readily and blindly as the others did. She didn’t intend to teach me how to behave better with love and encouragement, which is how most mothers would have approached the problem; she intended to break my spirit in every way possible. She couldn’t be bothered to try to find out what was troubling me and work towards helping me come to terms with the shock that had traumatized every atom of my body.
To achieve instant results she needed first to isolate me from the rest of the world, from anyone who might disagree with her methods and might show some sympathy for me rather than for her. In the early days some of Dad’s family came round hoping to visit me and see how I was getting on, but Mum wouldn’t allow any of them through the door or anywhere near me. She wanted to keep prying eyes away from what was really happening inside her home, inside the kingdom that she ruled with a rod of iron. If they came knocking she would order them off her property with a stream of threats and obscenities.
‘Fuck off out of it,’ she screamed into their faces, ‘or I’m calling the police. Go on, fuck off out of it!’
She’d always hated them all, particularly Aunt Melissa, and now Dad was gone she felt she didn’t have to put up with any of them sticking their noses into her business any more, telling her how to bring up her children. I was her son and as far as she was concerned it was nothing to do with them how I was getting on. I was more than just her son; I was her sole property now that Dad had gone, to do with as she pleased.
Within a few days of me arriving, I was told that I was only ever allowed to wear my underpants because I didn’t ‘deserve’ to have any clothes. If I refused to obey any of her orders I would be violently punished, so I quickly learned always to do as she told me.
I was only allowed to use the bathroom when she said I could so I soon became unkempt and dirty, in contrast to the immaculate cleanliness of the rest of the house. Then because I was so dirty I wasn’t allowed to use any of Mum’s crockery in case I spread my germs and diseases to the others.
‘You’ve inherited the “dirty disease” from your filthy fucking father,’ Mum told me. ‘I don’t want you infecting the rest of us.’
When you’re little you believe whatever your mother tells you, so I assumed it must all be true, that I must be inferior to the others in some way. The fact that I was the family dog became a standing joke and later they bought me a metal dog’s bowl for my Christmas present, laughing happily at their own wit as they gave it to me. It was as though I was there to entertain them. They were constantly thinking up new ways to amuse themselves, like offering me my meal in the bowl and then throwing the food at me anyway, or spitting on it before making me eat it up, saliva and all. They called me ‘Smelly Woof’ when they were pretending I was their pet, and I knew I did smell, mostly of my own wee, which would escape me involuntarily when fear overcame me and I lost control of my bladder. If I had been allowed a bath occasionally maybe I wouldn’t have stunk the house up and made them all so disgusted with me.
As the days went past a mixture of shock, fear and grief was taking control of my head and sometimes it wouldn’t let the words come out of my mouth. There were so many things I wanted to say but when I tried to talk the muscles in my throat would seem to freeze, refusing to obey me, making me stammer and stutter as I attempted to force the words out. It felt as though someone was trying to strangle me into silence. All I could think about was my dad. I was constantly seeing the pictures of him burning and Mum’s words going round and round in my head. I tried to say, ‘I want to see my dad’, even though I knew the words would earn me another beating, but as I struggled to find them my tongue would stumble. Wally was the first to notice that I was stuttering.
‘I’m worried about Joe,’ he said to Mum.
‘What’s fucking wrong with him now?’ she wanted to know.
‘He’s not talking.’
‘It’s probably a throat infection,’ she said. ‘He’s fine.’
Over the following week the stutter became worse and worse. By the end of it my brain had completely lost control of my voice and I fell totally silent, unable to form even single words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘help’. Mum thought at first that it was just me messing about and being difficult but eventually she had to admit that Wally might have a point and agreed to take me to see the doctor. Sitting in the surgery she related my story to him, giving it all the necessary drama and pathos to make it clear that she was really the one who was suffering the most, having lost her husband and been left with six children to bring up.
‘The poor boy was there to witness