The Life-Story of Iris Galey that led to a happy-end at 76!!!
Little Girl und Mr. Sky
A fire was cheerfully crackling in the sinister Victorian House, Cranbourne Road Number 8 in Bradford.
Mummy had settled in her favourite chair in the living-room and was drawing while the housekeeper cleared the last plates and dishes from the table. Little Girl was sitting in front of her school-books. ‘Seven eights are?’ shouted Daddy while at the same time hitting the nine-year-old across the face. Mummy poured herself another glass of Whiskey. ’What seven eights are, I want to know’ Daddy repeated even louder. Little Girl saw figures dance madly inside of her head while she murmured: ‘Five eights are forty, plus eight are forty-eight … ‘when another slap hit her. Blood flowed out of her nose. ‘If only Daddy would wait, just once … Why doesn’t Mummy say anything … forty-eight is six times eight and 2 makes fifty, that leaves 6 of the next 8 … ‘ FIFTY-SIX shouted Little Girl with relief!
‘At last’, Daddy answered flatly and added: ‘Walk!’
Little Girl turned white as she knew there was no escaping. As if in trance the child put on her raincoat, pulled her gloves over the open chilblains, calling to the dogs which Daddy put on two leads. Silently they walked up the steep road with the dogs to the Moors. Daddy limped, as Little Girl looked up into the sky and asked herself why God whom she called ‘Mr. Sky’ let happen, what was going to happen to her up there. She prayed: ‘Please, oh please Mr. Sky, let there be an earthquake so that this whole world can disappear.’
Daddy let the dogs go and grabbed his daughter by the neck. Forcing her to her knees behind the dry-stone-wall whose patterns she adored on sunny days, he undid his pants and did with her small mouth and throat what he always did.
Little Girl closed her eyes and asked herself why she hadn’t deserved a nicer Daddy like Rosemary whose Daddy had bought her a Pony. She gagged and then it was over for today. After that she was permitted to sleep, for after that he didn’t come to her bed but he always had his pistol with him …
Little Girl grew older.
The fear of suffocating and the pictures and his voice in her head never left her. Since before this time in England, when her Mummy had sent her away to children’s homes and Forsterparents, she couldn’t eat with strangers because her throat and stomach simply cramped.
Mummy called her hysterical and Little Girl panicked, scared to death that she would fall into a black, bottomless hole. Daddy mostly scolded, especially at the time of school-reports. At school she was dumb as she was unable to concentrate like the other children could. They seemed to understand everything better.
She didn’t belong! Not in the school bus, not in class, not during recreation … nowhere… and she was not allowed to have friends or play with children.
That is the reason why she got married at nineteen, as back in Switzerland she also didn’t belong and because Mummy insisted on this marriage. But the night before her wedding she prayed: ‘Dear Mr. Sky, please, please let the whole Wold disappear through one huge earthquake. And if you don’t do that this time I’ll say: ‘Good-bye Mr. Sky forever.’
In bed she lay there just like with Daddy while thousands of Killer bees gnawed at her stomach. For Daddy had said: ‘When a woman doesn’t do what a man wants to do, she has no right to live.’
And when Little Girl screamed at the beginning with Daddy and had huge lumps and bruises on her forehead, Mummy never said anything, and so Daddy must have been right….
