Foreword: This fictional piece was inspired by my interest in the psychological and neurodevelopmental effects of childhood trauma, which began after reading The Boy Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz. Throughout this story, I have attempted to touch on the powerlessness felt by victims of child abuse and the brain’s natural survival mechanism of dissociation. The nature of this story, which includes descriptions of violence, bullying, and references to sexual abuse, may be upsetting to some readers.
I hate making eye contact with other kids on the walk home. Sometimes I forget and glance up, only to see the hope in their bright eyes, glowing with the excitement of returning home to afternoon tea and their games. Worse would be if they noticed the despondency and dread in my eyes, so I have made it my mission to keep my face parallel to the ground.
I shuffle along, scuffing my torn-up Roman sandals on the concrete, feeling the growing gnaw in my stomach. My destination pulls at me like a weight around my neck, but my body drags forward, powered only by instinct. In those moments, I wish I could vanish, move unseen like a panther slipping through shadows, invisible and strong.
“Hey, dummy! Get out of the way!” a voice yells behind me.
Eyes locked on my feet, I step to the left side of the path, letting my classmates pass by. “Dummy! Do you even hear me?”
I keep walking, head down, muscles tense. I know too well what happens when you get in the way of angry people.
Be brave, it’ll pass. That’s what Mum used to tell me when I was scared, though I think she was mostly trying to convince herself. Her voice echoes in my head constantly, a hollow comfort in a world that feels anything but brave.
The boys brush past me aggressively, the spokes of their bikes spinning in the corner of my vision. “No point, boys! She’s just a sissy!” one of them jeers.
As they cycle away, I release the breath I didn’t realise I was holding.
Don’t be a sissy. Everyone hates sissies. Tony tells me that every time I say no to playing with him. When he touches me, sometimes he whispers, “No one likes you because you’re always scared. That’s why you don’t have any friends but me.” And deep down, I know he’s right. Nobody likes me – not my classmates, not my teachers, not Mum, and definitely not Dad. I don’t even like me.
I arrive home too soon. Any hope of today being different – of finding Mum dressed and asking me how my day went, like a normal Mum would – is crushed when I see Dad’s beat-up car in the driveway.
I stare at the front door, my heartbeat clambering up my chest and sticking in my throat. Be brave, it’ll pass. But I’m not brave. Not like a panther. Like a coward, I swivel away from the house before anyone notices me. Not that anyone would care.
I walk until I find the old playground and awkwardly wedge myself into the narrow tunnel, away from prying eyes. Slipping my Unison backpack onto my lap, I dig through piles of neglected homework and failed tests until I find my drawings. Most of the teachers have given up on me; they don’t even ask about my missing work anymore. To them, I’m invisible – just how I like it.
I smile down at my sketch of a panther, carefully filling in the shadows with my chewed-up pencil. The panther is sleek and powerful, moving silently through the jungle, faster than anything else. A predator. I bet panthers don’t hide in playground tunnels like prey. Nobody calls a panther a sissy.
Shouldering my bag again, I take a deep breath, summoning the courage to face home. Running away only delays the inevitable, Mum says. But she’s wrong – hiding makes me stronger. When I’m hidden, I can dream of being like the panther, untouchable.
My entrance into the house is announced by the hollow floorboards that betray me. Mum’s hunched figure tries to slip away unnoticed, but hearing my halted footsteps forces her to hesitate in the bedroom doorway. She tilts her head just enough for me to catch the swollen raspberry welt across her eye and forehead.
“Dad’s in the kitchen,” she murmurs, a warning tone concealed in her voice, before closing the door with barely a sound.
Hypocrite. That’s what I learned at school this week. Be brave, she says, but she never stands up to Dad. It’ll pass, she says, but it never does. It just goes on and on and on.
I don’t know how long I stand there, staring at the closed door. Seconds? Hours? But when I hear the sound of Dad pouring my rice bubbles – the ones Mum buys just for me, and I only get them once a fortnight and have to make them last – that’s when something inside me snaps.
I storm into the kitchen, my heart racing, fury driving me forward.
The next hour is a fog of garbled images, like when you skip forward on a movie with an old remote. Moments too sharp to hold.
Shouts. A fist. A cry of pain – maybe mine.
For maybe seconds, minutes, hours, I am my father’s makeshift punching bag. The outlet for his self-frustration. Every hit reverberates around my body, and I’m flinching and jerking and trying to move away, but with every contact, I feel the pain less and less.
Lying on the cracked kitchen tiles, cowering, I watch his heavy footsteps storm away. Milk is trickling down the sides of the kitchen drawers, pooling next to my clenched hand. The slam of the front door is aggressively jarring, but then relief floods my body, rushing to my head and blurring my brain.
I think Mum carried me to bed. My eyes were closed tight, my world still floating and tilting, and in quiet shame, she said nothing.
When I find myself back in my bed, my breath is shallow, the pillow is wet. My blurry eyes focus and unfocus on the streetlight breaking through the fracture in the tired purple curtains.
The muffled sounds of the hallway reverberate on the stained walls, blending with the static in my head. As if I am hovering above myself, I see a small, broken figure cowering beneath a Disney princess duvet. A princess is the last thing I feel like with splotches like squashed plums blooming under my skin.
Yet even in this broken body, I feel stronger. In my mind, I am faster. Mightier. Someday, when I’m big enough, when I’m strong enough, people will look into my eyes and they won’t see a scared little girl anymore. They’ll see someone fierce. Someone untouchable.
Maybe, one day, they’ll see a panther.