Call Me Evil, Let Me Go. Sarah Jones by Sarah Jones

Author:Sarah Jones [Jones, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780007433568
Publisher: Harper Element
Published: 2011-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Church Demands

By this time I was collapsing under the pressure of my life. Not only was I the main carer for our four small children, but I was also working at least five days a week for the Church, often doing weeding or heavy lifting in the allotment, and helping Peter with the language teaching business that he had set up on the side. Not surprisingly the strain took its toll. I struggled to produce enough milk for both Luke and Daniel. When they were six months old I had to stop breastfeeding entirely because I simply couldn’t cope with feeding both of them. This upset me greatly as I felt that I wasn’t providing for them as a good mother should.

It was during this same month that I came home from shopping and found Peter in our bedroom smacking Luke on his bare bottom, whilst Daniel was cowering in the corner. A wave of rage and panic swept through me as I looked first at Peter, then at Luke’s tiny bottom, and saw to my horror that it already looked bruised. It was a hideous, devastating sight and in a supreme act of self-control I stopped myself from screaming at Peter and instead calmly walked up to him, bent down, and took both Luke and Daniel in my arms. I then sat on the floor in a corner of the room with my back pressed up against the wall. Tears ran down my cheeks as I held them close to me for ages, all the while thinking, ‘My little baby has a heart murmur. This can’t be right.’

I didn’t dare discuss my anxiety with anyone in the Church. Nor was it appropriate to discuss something so intimate with our neighbour Dinah, particularly as she wasn’t a Christian and wouldn’t have understood the demands of the Church. Nor, to her credit, did she ever ask.

And I didn’t consider talking to my parents, as I hardly saw them. At the most they would come twice a year and stay a day or two. Their visits were always a time of tension between Peter and me. I could sense he still felt uncomfortable with them because they were not members of Tadford and could influence me in the wrong way. It all meant they were never welcome. This reached a head a few months after the twins were born. My mother had visited immediately after the birth, but Dad hadn’t been able to join her, so we made an arrangement for them to come down to see them together. They were looking forward to the trip enormously, but shortly before they were due to arrive Peter told me that Black said they weren’t to stay with us because they might try to manipulate me. I felt too embarrassed to tell them myself, but Peter rang and told them why they couldn’t stay. Dinah kindly offered to put them up and looked after them marvellously, as she also did on subsequent occasions.

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