What did my teachers think?

• November
• 11

7:30 am Mental Illness, Survivors of Abuse, The Friday Files

The Friday Files continue …

I’ve often wondered what my teachers thought, and if they were aware of the abuse and the difficult family situation I found myself in. I had always been a good student, and comments like “a pleasure to teach” and “very polite and helpful” made a regular appearance on my report card.  As Catherine Camden Pratty put it, “Despite erratic home lives, academic achievement and school life was a way in which some of us gained positive self-esteem and glimpsed a future based on something other than our chaotic and painful home lives.” School was an escape from home.

My Grade Six teacher was an older lady known to be something of a martinet or tartar. However I found her to be firm but fair, and understanding and sympathetic of my situation when she learned of my parents’ decision to separate.

It was when I was in Year Seven that Mum’s behaviour became much more bizarre.  One day she came up to my classroom and when I went outside to see what she wanted, she promptly began to hurl abuse and insults at me.  I can’t even remember what – if anything – had stirred her up. Fortunately we were just out of sight of the class, but obviously not out of earshot. By the time Mum left I was a sobbing, quivering mess. My male teacher must have felt out of his depth because he sent the female teacher from the class next door to check on me. Again, this particular teacher was also known for being extremely stern, but her gentle and caring manner that day only made my tears flow all the more.

Nowadays teachers are primed to be on the alert for domestic violence and abuse, and have a legal requirement to report any suspected cases, but in those days there didn’t seem to be anything the teachers could do.

High school was a relief in many ways because students become that little bit more independent, and your parents are not so visible or involved. Although my mother backhanded me across the face, hit me, shoved me, dragged me by the hair, and threw me to the ground many a time, I don’t think that the bruises and marks were obvious. One time she beat me across the backs of my legs with a wooden spoon until it broke, another time with the cord from the electric jug. I’m sure that the bruises would have been visible on the backs of my legs, but nobody ever remarked on it. And I never said anything. Despite everything, I still felt an overwhelming urge to cover up and protect my mother.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe I thought it was my fault and I deserved such harsh treatment for being such a self-centred person. At the end of the day, she was still my mother and I loved her.

It is hard to remember exactly what triggered an explosion from my Mum – often it was something so minor, she herself used to say that she would “put up with a lot” and then explode over the least little thing – the straw that broke the camel’s back. What I do remember is the violence that followed, when she hit me over the head with a coffee mug which shattered on impact. I think the amount of blood that flowed from the wound shocked her out of her insane rage and she bundled us all up into the car and to the after hours medical centre. On the way we concocted a story to tell the doctor of how I’d hurt my head – I’d slipped on the wet kitchen floor and hit my head on the corner of the stove (at least it wasn’t walking into a door!). I needed several stitches and when I finally sat up from the stretcher where I had been lying, I was stunned by the amount of blood.  The pillow was soaked and ruined despite a protective cover.

Even today, all these years alter, I will occasionally get a hairdresser comment on the scar on the back of my scalp as apparently no hair grows from that spot.

Once again, I can’t help but wonder what the doctor thought that night. Surely he knew?! Why didn’t he do anything or report her to the authorities?  It just wasn’t done back then . . . thankfully things have changed!