Why did she do nothing at all about her husband and her daughter?

‘I did not know.’

Truthfully?

‘Really.’

It is okay to tell the truth now, nothing can be taken away from Genevieve if she tells the truth. There will be no harm to anybody, there will be good. Eventually.

How final is finality; Genevieve perceives this for the first time in her life because no one has asked her this before, it is her call, she answers it, as if an adult has asked a child a question, she replies, ‘I wanted all of us to be a happy family. I thought so, on some days I felt that he was not doing good things. But what could I do to stop him, he was so big and strong and he was always overpowering me.’

Exactly what she did when she was told that her son, too, was being sexually abused by her husband—file for divorce, file for the house and custody of all the children. Apart from filing a police complaint which she has yet to do vis-à-vis the criminal aspect of Child Sexual Abuse.

‘I did try once, to talk to him, I wanted to stop him. He threatened me with my life, he said he would kill me or one of the children. I spoke to his family, after all what are families for?’

What, indeed.

‘As a child I was always taught that families are for support. Aren’t they?’

Families are also about offering endless possibilities for pain.

‘My husband’s brothers ignored what I had to say, to this day they are supportive of him. One of my husband’s sisters said he had done it to her too, she had to take psychiatric help after her marriage, she is lucky, her husband is a very understanding man. She had told her brothers soon after he had done it to her as a child for the first time, no one had paid attention to her.’

Did she speak to her own family, her sisters?

‘No.’ Her voice falters. ‘All of them are not happily married, most of them have too many problems of their own, with their own husbands. I am not really close to them for that reason, when my mother was there it was different, she held us all together in a family bind.’

Her good mother, she the bad mother; Genevieve closes her eyes and moving her head slightly, tries to push the thought away, it won’t go.

A wave of grief soaks her so thoroughly that she begins crying, softly, the tears chasing each other down her fair cheeks. She weeps, she talks, she weeps; a mother saying she is sorry, but promising she did not set out to be a bad mother; a child remembering her own mother; an adult remembering a childhood and yet an adult who has preferred to forget how her childhood worked, how it is supposed to work but refuses to for unhappy children. She talks, she weeps, her eyeliner streaking lightly over the discreetly coloured face, her lipstick blotching against her lace-edged handkerchief as she presses it against her mouth and tries hard, so very hard to keep those memories away.