Page 45 Review by Stephen
"Hi Mom. Are you ok?"
"Oh sure! I'm fine. I just love to move. It's such a thrill! Oh yeah, I'm just fine and dandy."
"Gee Mom, I wish I could just somehow make you happy."
"Yeah. I wish you could, too. I've wished it about a million times."
Following the recent comic art exhibition up at The Castle here, this was the single most requested work, and it's easy to see why: it is harrowing. Brave, candid and affectingly delivered, this is a reprint of Drechsler's account of the sexual abuse she suffered from a very early age, then through into her teens, at the hands of her Father. There's no softening cushion (nor should there be), so I warn you now that the very second page is explicit and horrific.
Some mothers are blissfully ignorant of what's happening under the family roof, some are complicit. It's unclear which of these applies to Debbie's mother, but it's perfectly clear that her total disregard for any meaningful form of care or communication made it impossible for her daughter to confide, which itself makes her culpable of its continuation. She asks no questions and fails to listen; she's a nasty, cruel, insensitive, judgemental, selfish and dismissive dragon, belittling her child at every opportunity, and undermining any self-confidence Debbie might have clung to. Of an early boyfriend:
"I can't even imagine what would possess you to do such a thing! You're much too young to tie yourself down this way. How could you be so stupid? ... Well, young lady, are you going to answer me or not? Well?!"
"Do I have to?"
"Yes!!"
"Uhh... well... we love each other?"
""Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha what do you know about love?"
What indeed, with parents like these? If I read this right, it looks as though her father killed or at least fatally crippled Debbie's pet dog - the sole consoling element to her life - and as to her next boyfriend, any chance of a healthy physical relationship is wrecked by associations with the sexual degradation and incestuous rape at the hands of the very man supposed to care for her most.
"My Dad said it's my fault he did it to me. He said I made him lose control. He always says that. He said they must've gone wrong somewhere for me to become such a slut when I'm still so young. He said he knew I liked it when he did it to me. He said he could tell by the way I act, and by how I look at him. I wish I could figure out what I do so I could stop doing it."
It's a tight narrative distilled to the moments most pertinent to its execution, just as her mother, for example, is distilled to the elements most associated with her nature - angry eyebrow, narrowed, glaring eyes, crooked teeth. It's a highly stylised affair, with some of faces looking like they were made out of bangers on mash, whilst their surroundings are hewn from a suffocating range of textures. All of which, I would imagine, is deliberate.
Unlike Talbot's TALE OF ONE BAD RAT, there is no way that this could be taught in schools. However it may, one hopes, prove an equally cathartic read (to whatever small extent) for those who've also suffered such monstrous assaults, and like Penfold's DRAGONSLIPPERS should be illuminating to others on how such vile abuse and manipulative control leads some vulnerable individuals to suffer in silence.
