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Sleeping with the Enemy

It was 1987. I was 17. I met him.

They called him “Nag,” which translated into Punjabi or Hindi means “Cobra” or “hooded snake.” I should have run a mile just then but I stayed.

Most of what I will write will be in a narrative style, as it all seems like a long-distant memory. It is like I am silently watching the events of another person’s life. This was just one part of it.

Roses are red... There were many love letters and poems that I’d write for him. I’d constantly be writing; this was ironic since he was illiterate and could barely read and write. I use to be secretly embarrassed about this given I was studying for the equivalent of a U.S. Bachelor’s degree.

And I debate right now whether to talk about how it ended or how it began. Both were dramatic as the other, as were the bits in the middle.

What I remember… He use to hide me upstairs in his dark cluttered loft above the big “rabbit warren” house he lived in. A house in which one door seemed to lead to another but always seemed to take you back to the same place. A bit like what was going to happen with this relationship. He’d have me up there for hours and sometimes he’d sneak me into his bedroom in the middle of the night. We lived apart. I lived with my family and he with his. I generally went along with what he said because he’d wear me down until I gave in.

Most of the time it was verbal abuse and occasionally he would get physically abusive. He would always buy me a present after the fight and say how sorry he was. Even though he would probably take it back off me the next time we fought. And we fought a lot.

I think the only one genuine time I missed him, as it seems to stick out in my memory, was when he allowed me, for the first time in 4 years to go away by myself. This was when I came back from visiting India in 1991 I believe. I recall feeling like I’d been set free and actually missed him a lot. I remember wrapping my arms tightly around his neck at my front door feeling like I really loved him. He was a charming, funny, and good looking guy with a crooked nose, wavy black hair and a ripped upper torso as he regularly boxed.

September 1990 He let me get a job. I had such low self-esteem that I didn’t allow myself to have high hopes. I managed somehow to get an interview one day because of a neat application form I had submitted with a top accountancy firm. They asked me in the interview what my weakness was and I actually said, “I have no confidence.” Needless to say I did not get that job.

Then there was the time I went for a graduate assessment one afternoon and he was waiting for me outside. Always keeping an eye on me and always watching me. I never got that job either.

My friends had given up on me, and the only way I eventually got to see them was if “he” came with me. (It was just like my mom watching me in the playground at school but I will come to that later). So we’d go and meet them at Pizza Hut or something, once in a blue moon. It was a major deal and he was making a big sacrifice for me. I was mortified inside and embarrassed, but I had little faith in myself at the time to believe I was worthy of anything else. So we would sit there, and he’d charm the pants off them. He’d sit there in his expensive Armani shirt unbuttoned, wearing his heavy gold wrist and neck chains and smoke his Benson and Hedges.

And I’d have to be so careful what was said in case he had any “ammunition” on me.

He would always use the same old story as to why I could not be trusted. Or more importantly I’d feel guilty about that time I was “characterless” (another term my mom would use that seems appropriate to use here but more of that later). Now that is a tale worth telling.

I met Nag when I was dating his cousin Zak, on bonfire night, October 1987. I was at college with Zak. Zak knew from the first moment Nag set eyes on me that he was in trouble. Nag was much better looking than him, and had more money than him.

Zak tried to hold onto me but soon enough I found myself flattered by the attention, at age 17, someone like Nag was giving me. He drove a white RS X turbo sports car that caught everyone’s eye. And I loved it!

At first he treated me like a real lady and did not even lay a hand on me. This all changed after that fateful afternoon.

I was the party girl and I partied all the time.

To tell the truth I did even take Nag seriously at the beginning. Since I had got my freedom from my mother, I was like lapping up all the attention I was getting from guys, all of them. And of course the drinking and use of “pot” had been going on since the summer of 1986, when my so called freedom had kicked in.

I was a bad, wild girl by most people’s standards. My family, and the community I lived in, had my card marked.

So that afternoon I was at a day time party in the centre of town where Nag worked. I must have known that there could have been a chance I would see him later. But that could not have bothered me too much as I preceded to get absolutely trashed.

I think it was on Tennant’s super-strength lager. I seem to recall what I drank for some reason, probably because it became so significant. I was hanging out with my party friends and they were a “bad” crowd. I’d met most of them through hanging out in the train station in town with my cousin Sherry.

They were shallow party people, here today and gone tomorrow. I remember someone gave me the can and I downed it in one drink, and that was it. I was out of it.

Then it became a blur; I found myself randomly snogging one of the guys in our party crowd and he gave me a “love” bite on the neck.

Well you can guess what happened. I got outside the club after the party finished and Nag appeared. He took one look at my neck and world war three erupted and he stormed off. I remember he grabbed my face tightly and called me a “slag.” I could taste the venom in his words.

A few days later I woke up at my family home. A message had been spray painted in blood red on the wall outside my house. I lived on a busy main road and the message said, “Rita is a slag.”

I don’t really recall my reaction to it. Back then I had so much stuff buried under layers that I never knew what I felt. I’d probably have felt what ever someone told me I should be feeling.

Life was out of control especially when alcohol got involved. It seemed to tip me over the edge, right over it into a dark echoing ravine.

Next day we got a house brick through the front window, early evening; I recall it was in July 1988.

The party was definitely over and this is how it would continue for at least 7 years. Nag only spoke the language of aggression and violence. He had to control everything and everyone.

At the time I would not have thought twice about what I did next. I just got through from one day to the next the best way I knew how. Survival instincts I guess.

I arranged to meet with Nag, this was the only way out at the time. I had no one to protect me, no one to turn to. I only had myself.

Nag said he would stop the threats if I agreed to sleep with him ten times.

I looked up at the cloudy grey evening sky, in the dingy overgrown yard we were standing in and said yes.

He had got me in his clutches.

Shortly after this I discovered I was pregnant with his baby.

Until…we meet again to break the rules!

Love,

Rita x

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