She was only small, but the fox terrier bared its teeth and growled menacingly at us. Its milk-swollen underbelly and protruding teats let us know it had a litter nearby. We kept a wary distance and spoke soothingly to the little mother. She lunged at our ankles, snapping and snarling. As we approached she backed away slowly, keeping up a barrage of barking and growling, her dark eyes blazing.
We were at the old farmhouse, revisiting the place where it had all happened.
I had been a teenager then and it had been spring. Now, as then, the wind gusted and howled, rattling the loose iron panels on the walls of the farm sheds. The iron flapped and creaked, metal scraping harshly against metal. Tall spring grasses whipped back and forth, the wind drying the moist stalks and leaves, the fragrance of the grass saturating the morning air.
I remembered hiding in the tall grass to escape my father. I remembered the same blasts of wind, the same smell of new growth. And my heart began to pound.
What had happened at this place, so long ago, had caused a lifetime of deep-seated fear and anger. They were years lived with an inability to understand or express turbulent emotions. Frozen years. And the last few years had been a journey through mental illness, ridicule and despair.
When I had sought help and understanding from my mother during these last years she did not want to hear me, did not want to know about it. But why should I have expected more from her?
During that spring so long ago my sister had heard my terrified screams coming from the woolshed, and she had pleaded with my mother to intervene. My sister knew what my father was doing to me. She could hear it was terrible and she knew it was wrong. She wanted my mother to help me.
My mother must have known what was taking place. She must have known it was wrong, but she pretended ignorance. She told my sister that I had to be punished for whatever it was that I had done wrong. That I deserved this punishment.
Recalling this fuelled my anger and made me determined not to let my mother and father defeat me. I was visiting this place to strip these old events of their power, to strip my father of his hold over me, and to