Life with the black demon. Sandra Pasic

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the house without her child. She went away in tears and said she would get in touch. She never did. She started a new family in Serbia, she has two children now, a son and a daughter, and her daughter’s name is the same as mine, Sandra. I don’t know why, but I had respect for that woman, even though I didn’t know her. I believe she suffered greatly.

      Every day of my life was filled with fear and anxiety. I was afraid to do anything, because I would be punished for every single thing.

      The days went by, but how I do not know.

      Mum started working as a food service worker at a hospital on May 14, 2000. I remember she often brought bread and food leftovers from the hospital. To me, that food was delicious. Mum came back from work every other day at 5:30 p.m. She was never late, not even a minute. After finishing work, she immediately ran home, because if she didn’t arrive home on time, father would start shouting, posing a million questions and sub-questions as to why she was late and where she was, etc... Once the chaos ensued, because she was ten minutes late.

      We could have an easier life thanks to my mother’s salary. To be truthful, we always had money for food, for everything we wanted to eat. Father would often take all the money from my mother, her salary she earned, and spent it on drinks.

      Although he spent all the money on drinks, he often came home with even more money. I don’t know how he got the money and what he did, but we were never hungry. He didn’t buy us toys that often, so we took care of the “Nintendo” game we got as if our lives depended upon it.

      My sister, brother and I loved to play. It’s sad to say, but even when playing together with them, I felt rejected. My sister and brother would always be alone, they always had secrets of their own, and some plans they shared. When I approached, they’d stop talking and say:

      - Let’s go, Sandra’s coming, she’ll overhear what we’re talking about.

      If I complained or cried to my mother, she would say that it was nothing and that one day, when we all grew up, we’d be eager to spend time with one another.

      One day, father and mother went for a walk in the fields. They said they would be back soon, and that we should be in the house and behave ourselves. I, as the eldest daughter and sister, wanted to surprise my parents and I cleaned the house nicely. Regardless of his behaviour, my father was very clean and meticulous, the same as my mother.

      As a child, I was always required to do some work around the house, mostly to clean and tidy up. Before their return, I started cleaning used coffee cups. As I was wiping the cups, two coffee cups fell to the floor and shattered. I panicked and was afraid what my father would say or do when he found out about the broken cups. I cried, and my siblings told me that was my own fault, and that I shouldn’t mentioned them when the whole situations came to the light. My parents came back from their walk and as I was collecting tiny pieces of glass from the broken cups, my father started yelling at me and insulting me. Since I wanted to explain to him how it happened, I started to stutter so much at that moment that I couldn’t produce a word. Mum tried to calm him down, but it was in vain. He started making fun of me for talking and mocked “STUTERRRERRRR”

      I could hardly stand it. He started beating me, he grabbed a belt with a metal strap and started hitting me as hard as he could. Petrified, I urinated in my pants and I was shaking. The more I cried, the more he hit me. He hit both my sister and brother, and they said they didn’t do anything, that I broke the cups.

      Mum tried to calm the situation:

      - Please, don’t mind the cups, that’s not a reason for the child to be beaten. Let her go, you’ll kill her!

      My mother’s words had no effect, anger seized him even more, so he lifted me and threw me on the bed. Then he took a chair and threw it at me. He hit mum so hard that she immediately fell down. He cursed her father, mother, brother, sister out, just because she tried to save me from him. Usually, in addition to the beatings, my father almost always punished me with work, which meant that whatever he ordered me to do I had to do it immediately. It was mostly cleaning.

      Soon after that, my father bought some hens and made a place for them behind the house. During the day, he would let them out, so one of us had to keep an eye on them, so that they wouldn’t run to the garden and destroy the crop.

      The next day, or rather the next night we went to sleep. The three of us were in the same room together, my mum put plastic film under me because I used to wet the bed almost every night. That was caused by fear I had been going through for years, as I found out much later.

      The rustling of the plastic film was so funny to my brother and sister, because they could hear my every move that way. We all laughed uncontrollably. We heard someone banging for us to calm down. It was even funnier for us and we laughed out loud, which we were not allowed to do. Father came in with a belt in his hand and hit each of us with it. Naturally, we got scared and immediately fell silent. It no longer occurred to us to make a noise. That night passed also, somehow.

      Morning came. It was as if nothing had happened in the house the night before. My father talked to us in a normal way, we had breakfast and then went for a walk in the nearby meadows. Mum went to work the next day.

      Summer vacation was approaching. After school we hurried home to play with friends who lived upstairs.

      The boy who was always playing with us became my crush, even though at the time I didn’t even know what that was. We were ten-year-old kids. Sister vomited a lot during that period. She often had stomach pain and nausea. Mum and sister had the same symptoms, they both had hernia on both sides of their bodies. My sister stayed in the hospital because they had to operate on her. They let us know when the operation was over. I wanted to visit my sister together with my parents. Mum and dad were very sad about my sister. While walking, I saw “some” emotions awoke in my father that had not been visible until then, and especially not tears. I missed my sister very much because we spent a lot of time together. She recovered and seven days later she came home. She had to rest at home until her sutures got removed. I helped her any way I could and I was happy she was with us.

      Dad disappeared the next day, he went to get drunk, and in a way, we were happy, because we were left alone with mum.

      When he was home, my father wouldn’t let us watch the TV, he would often shout and order us to turn it off. He prohibited mum from watching soap operas. We could watch the TV freely when he wasn’t there. We loved when he was not there. My sister and I were playing with Barbies we had brought from the old flat.

      Our enjoyment didn’t last for long. Father, as always, came drunk and the first thing he saw when he came in were our scattered toys. It bothered him, he took the belt out of his pants and started beating us. He didn’t even pay attention that my sister had just recently came out of surgery, he hit us. We promised that we would never leave things on the floor again and that we would always make sure that everything was clean.

      The next day, we were all sitting in the house, and the parents were talking about summer vacation which was coming soon and that the two of us were about to go to spend some time at granny’s house. They decided it would be my sister and brother. I was sad, I wanted to go. My parents said that my brother and sister would stay there for 20 days, and when they returned, I would go. When they left I remained alone in the house. I was very bored; I didn’t know where to go or what to do with myself.

      Friends from the neighbourhood also went to their relatives over the holidays. Mum worked every day. By the father’s orders, I had to clean the house every day...

      The bite of the black demon

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