Donna

Copyright Oggbashan October 2002 The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

Version 001 25 October 2002

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The weak winter sunlight seeping through and past the dirty broken glass of the wind shaken window barely lit the room.

Donna lay on the blood soaked mattress shivering with cold and fear. She clutched her grubby nylon housecoat trying to warm herself and her new born son. Her face was grey not just with the all pervading grime but with lack of blood and the despair of final loss of hope. She was tired, exhausted, beyond crying or protesting at her inability to move herself off the mattress.

While vainly waiting for Wayne to return to her she thought back through her recent past to the family home she had left in anger only six months before. In her memory the boring existence of sharing her parents' daily routine seemed an Arabian Nights' fairy tale of love, light and plenty. Her father's repeated platitudes and her mother's nagging complaints had at least recognised her needs and had wanted a secure future for their only daughter. Then the shock of meeting Wayne had at first alienated them from her. They wanted "better" for her than they thought that Wayne could offer. Their first recriminations had soon withered in the face of her determined insistence that she wanted Wayne and no other future. The inescapable fact of her pregnancy had overridden everything.

At the time she could not accept that their concerns were for her. When she left home she had thought that their objections to Wayne were driven by their own fears of "What the neighbours would think". Later their unstinting help had demonstrated their love was for her and their unconcern for society's disapproval.

Wayne "had" a flat that she moved into. She didn't know and wouldn't have cared that he had inherited it from another drifter neither of whom had bothered to pay rent to the landlord. There was a pile of legal looking envelopes in the hallway. What did her love care about paperwork? She was setting up her first home with Wayne. Their love would rise above such petty nuisances.

Donna cleaned and polished that flat with a zeal that she had never had for housework with her parents. She cooked meals with her mobile phone tucked under her chin listening to the instructions her mother had never been able to get her to listen to before. Her father had visited her, but only when Wayne was at work, to put up shelves, mend the wardrobe hinges and do the small repairs that had built up over the years of neglect.

Even in those early days there was a small cloud on her horizon. Wayne never seemed to notice or appreciate the work that had been done to make their flat into a home for them and their baby-to-be. Every night the cloud vanished before his passionate love making.

The insignificant legal envelopes shattered her dream only a month later. As she lay in bed with her arms wrapped round Wayne the heavy pounding on the door announced the arrival of the bailiffs. They saved only those belongings that could be hurriedly packed into Wayne's rusty van. The bailiffs' concern and sympathy for her only inflamed her anger with Wayne who seemed wholly indifferent to the loss of their home.

"We'll find another place, babe. Don't you worry." was Wayne's response.

He couldn't or wouldn't understand that Donna was grieving for the loss of her innocence, the loss of her dreams, their expulsion from their Garden of Eden. As he drove the van away she had screeched her anger at him from the torn passenger seat.

Her anger was unslaked that night when they bedded down on a mattress perched on the lumpy pile in the back of the van. She rejected his advances summarily. He responded with heavy punches, beating her almost senseless before raping her. She screamed in pain and terror but no one heard her from the quiet road in the derelict industrial estate. She sobbed herself to a fitful sleep beside a snoring Wayne.

She should have left him the next morning. "If only" are two of the saddest words in English. The next morning Wayne was apologetic, grovelling. He had been as upset as she was, or so he said. When she had rejected him, he had "lost it". He would never do that again. He loved his babe, didn't he? She could not bear to recall his actual words, his extravagant promises, his declarations of eternal love.

Since then she had found out the lies, the deceit and his unchanging selfish self-indulgence. He had never loved her. He had just wanted a trophy to impress his mates. He had never known or cared that Donna was a person. She was just another mark of his status. His pursuit and capture of her had been the most consistently directed effort of his life. Now she was his, why should he bother to consider her feelings? He used words as tools to hold her just as he used buttons to control his stereo system.

That day they had moved into the first of a series of depressing squats shared with the rejects of the local society. Time after time Donna had tried to make the best of each squat, cleaning, scrubbing, decorating and improving with anything she could "rescue" from roadside skips. Then Wayne would have a drunken argument with the other squatters and they would have to move on to another derelict building. Donna's desire for improvement dwindled to the mirage of a working toilet that she could keep clean.

As her belly grew in size Wayne became even less considerate. She was malnourished and her pregnancy drained away the last relics of the beauty he had wanted to own. He stayed away for longer and longer periods. He admitted he had even made her pregnant only as part of his campaign to own her. She wouldn't have left her parents otherwise, would she? He didn't want a baby now, did he? Why hadn't she got rid of it? He had a total disregard for the mundane details. There was somewhere up London where they did "it". Why hadn't she gone there? Then they could have been happy together again. He had even given her twenty pounds to pay for "it". She could have hitched a lift to London couldn't she?

That twenty pounds had been the only money he had ever given her. It fed them for nearly a whole week. Her savings had paid for all their food until she had nothing left. Wayne's job had vanished when his employer lost patience with Wayne's erratic attendance and slapdash work even as a packer and porter.

It would still be OK, babe, he'd assured her. He would get benefit, wouldn't he? He had but each week the benefit disappeared on cans of lager and occasional expensive take-away meals. Then the benefit had stopped because he wouldn't oblige "them" with the minimum necessary pretence of seeking employment.

Donna had wanted to ask her parents for help. She made the mistake of suggesting that to Wayne. His response had been to stamp her mobile phone to pieces and give her another savage beating which left her belly untouched.

That mercy was only because he had long since realised the possibility of child benefit and family income support. He would repeat over and over "Once the little beggar's born, we'll be all right, babe.". Each repeat fouled her with lager smelling breath, tormenting her hungry belly with the thought of food that could have been bought with Wayne's lager money.

Donna did not want their child to be the supplier of more cans of lager for Wayne. Their child was her last hope. Now her last hope was born but could not survive. Her son sucked vainly at her dry flaccid breast. She was too starved to produce milk for him. Wayne had left her days ago. She had given birth alone in this room with no one within call. She knew she was dying. She braced herself to make one final effort. Her son was still attached to the umbilical cord. Perhaps if she put him back inside her he might live a few more hours.

She raised her hips and inserted her son's feet into her bleeding wound. She tensed her tired muscles and pulled. There was a slight movement in the baby's position. She pulled as hard as she could, cradling the tiny baby in one hand as she fed his legs in with the other hand.

Donna smiled weakly. It was working. She was unbirthing her son. If only Wayne came in time and brought the food that he'd promised so her so many times - but his promises were never fulfilled. Surely he knew just how desperate she was?

She pushed harder and screamed as the baby's hips spread her wide. She had only to absorb the chest and head. Then her baby would be safe and protected from a world too terrible to face.

The shoulders entered her. She grasped the head. It had to turn if she was to succeed. Slowly, slowly the head turned. Her bloody skin slipped further and further over her baby's face stifling his weak and sickly breathing.

She screamed again as her son's head tore its way through back through her birth canal into her womb. Then she sank back on the blood spattered mattress. She relaxed into blissful unconsciousness satisfied that she'd saved her child.

She was completely unaware of Wayne's drunken empty-handed return hours later. Her cooling body did not feel the frenzied kicking with which he tried to punish her for the loss of a secure income.

Donna's life and hope had died with her son.

The End.