Amityville 2

 Amityville 2

The Rainbow Hallway was an eclectic style all of her very own. She also had pictures on the walls down near the ground about a foot or two up. they were that low down because, she said, the teddy bears had put them up. And teddy bears are not very tall. It was not when we were small children it was when I was a teenager so it wasn’t for fun with toddlers, and being a toddler at home was definitely not fun, it was because it amused her.

Ironically the pictures put up on the walls by the teddy bears were the only framed pictures on the walls were there were some posters stuck on with Blu-Tack and there was the remnants of Christmas decorations in the corners but my mum has secured them with a staplegun and then of course they could not completely come down a little bits were still stuck in the ceiling.

During the summer holidays from school when I was home alone each and every year from a young age it was my job to repaint the hallway with white paint. each year I could paint a little higher as I grew taller and each year repainted up as high as I could reach. A few years later I was working I a job while at university selling kitchens over the telephone. It was here that I met one of my colleagues and she commented that she needed to decorate inside her home. I said that had been my job while I was a child to paint the inside each summer holiday and she gave me the oddest look. I visited her at her home once, where I met her daughter. I recognised her daughter as a girl from my school. She asked me how long I had worked with her mum and I said it’s just something I do during the holidays while I’m at university, and I wondered why she wasn’t working there too. they could have travelled together, and it seemed like in this family it is the parents job to go out and provide and the children didn’t. It was as though the children’s job in that house was to be looked after. And I could tell that my school friend look down on me for doing the work that her mother did as if it was Beneath her.

At the same time as I was working selling kitchens over the phone I also had two other jobs on the same day each day I work seven days a week then my lunchtime job is working in the canteen in the factory and any leftover food I would take home to feed my family my mum and her husband and I guess all the lodges and I was pleased to be able to do that so why was indeed providing for my parents as opposed to the other way around.

Thinking about the floor tiles at home plastic floor tiles on all the floors they were tickly neatly arranged and it’s possibly a saving grace that they were plastic floor tiles round and say carpet because who is the cat poo because there was so much cat poo on all the floors and it stank because as a small child I pretended not to be able to spell it or as I’d have to have cleaned it up and I didn’t want to clean up cat poo as I think it’s reasonable for a young girl to feel that way and it’s also reasonable frankly to expect the grown-ups to be cleaning up any catfood but there was loads of cat poo and eventually stop smiling because it dried up, it went dry and no longer smelt when it was dry.

I grew up in this house with its whitewashed walls and untidy floor tiles and cat poo everywhere and within it for walls by parents took out the height for one another I am a daily basis they argue they fight they scream the tassle and throw things at one another very often the police would get called and they’ve come round and say it’s just a domestic and then they go away my sister would still my dad‘s glasses because as a man who was born blind and registered disabled his glasses gave him something, some partial vision and without them he really was totally blind vulnerable helpless and afraid and that is why my sister used to steal his glasses to make him very afraid.

Discipline my father usually use a slipper and while that stone physically the worst part of spanking for me is always the bit where he pulled your pants down and spank your bare bottom because it is humiliating and it is the humiliation that affects me not the physical pain I would sometimes hide his slippers thinking that then he could not spank me but he could use a shoe and would do if he could not find his slippers to do that with I can’t remember if you did ever uses about I seem to remember that he may have I remember the frets the If you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about and I’ll knock you from here to kingdom come.if you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about and I’ll knock you from here to kingdom come

I remember him punching me in the head such that I temporarily lost my sight and was blinded, I remember my mother punching me in the head and I know that I was about three years old. I remember my mother throwing me into the road and I curled up into a ball in the road afraid that I would be hit by a car. What I don’t understand, even though my parents always said, “ you’ll understand when you’re old enough”, although I am now older than they were then, but I do not understand. I never have to hit my child. I never have to threaten him. I never tell him that I’m going to give him something to cry about. If  he’s crying I comfort him. I never tell him I’m going to knock him ‘from here to kingdom come’ and so leave him wondering how far is kingdom come and imagining flying over the tops of the conifers as we were approaching a line of conifers where my father said this on one occasion I’ll knock you from here to kingdom come and I wondered how far and high that would be.