That

She tried to speak, to defend herself, she tried to cower, but another slap would take the words from her mouth. She tried desperately to get away, but he held her arm so tight he bruised often the skin on either side of her elbow. She fought to get her free arm to her thigh, to defend the skin, and she tried to free her other arm from the grip he held. Her body doubled over, her head went near his crotch. She would twist again if that failed, pushing her head against his chest, her body turned into him, doing everything she could do to protect her skin from the blows, trying with all her strength to get her legs as far away from his hands as possible. 

“Who do you think are talking to anyone like that? Huh? You have to learn what respect is, and if this is the only way you’ll ever learn then hell slap it into ya! I’ll not be talked to like you talk to yer mammy, d’ya hear me?”

He never went for her head. He always went for the legs, for the sting and that satisfying popping sound that skin makes on skin when you hit it just right.

She twisted and turned and flayed and tried to beg him to stop, often ripping her clothes as she tried desperately to pull away. The next scream truncated the one previous as it blasted from her mouth, peppering the air with spit and sweat and snot and silence then noise. He found a way around her every time. He would pull her arm down sharply, turning her with the force created. Often he would get his body beside hers, his torso over her back, his left arm around her waist, from above, her body held in position by his left knee. That way she was defenceless – open at the back for a girl with a school skirt on – like he had her over his knee in a standing position. That way both her hands were free, but the grip he had was unbreakable and that was how he liked it, that was the position he wanted. All Martina could do then was tear at his trousers or reach out to Mum if she could see her in the room. Or she would just take it once more.

We did nothing. We could do nothing but stare. He was unstoppable when he was like that. Drunk or sober and spoiling for a fight, Martina or Pepper were going to get it, sure as the sun would rise the next morning over the roofs in Blackthorn Park. 

Every beating lasted a good five minutes, and they never eased. Martina struggled until the end, even if she did accept what was happening, and I knew in my heart that her struggling meant that she never became used to the pain, no matter how often or how hard Dad laid into her. She always fought. When Dad eventually let go she would run screaming and crying from the room, but he always got a slap or two in as she was running through the living room doorway, or at the bottom of the stairs. 

At Night, No Shadows, No Sounds

As the last of the night minutes crept slowly into the first of the day minutes the fear would leave us a little, and we would go to our rooms and play our new singles on the record player, keeping the volume wheel at a tinny 2 or less. With the lights off, the music so low we could barely make out the metallic voice emanating from the single speaker, our father slumbering downstairs, Mum getting ready for bed and the girls already retreated from fear and now dreaming, Brendan and I lay on our beds and watched the street. Four streetlamps illuminated the stretch of the street we could see from the window, but nothing lit up the garages; skewed toe-pointers had sent footballs smashing into the streetlights just once too often for the borough council to replace them. The substation was pitch-black, the longest, darkest parts of the alleys the same. The garages were quiet, the sub-station might quietly hum if the wind was right, the alley-ways were quiet, and the only sounds that late on would be couples walking home from bars, or cars driving past on Woodburn Avenue, or vulturous children picking dry the bones of some old dead car somewhere behind us in Blackthorn Park. We listened and watched until the early day minutes became the early day hours, the tinny voices of Africa Bambataa or Adam Ant our only comfort. We slept when dawn broke.