I fail grade seven and half way through grade eight the second time life is unbearable. I sit slumped over in my desk, head down and I pray no one will notice me. There are seven of us over sixteen in grade eight, we are humiliated daily by the teacher and classmates. One day a boy that is at the top of the class says to me, "You are so stupid. I don't know how you exist." The teacher said, "She can't help it Colin. Go, the volley-ball team needs you."

Grade nine starts, a tall thin man with steel grey hair and piercing blue eyes teaches Algebra. By October my luck has run out and I am called to the board to do a question. He walks back and forth behind me cracking a yard stick on the steel ledge of the board, on either side of my legs. My lower lip trembles, huge tears roll down my face, I mumble, "I don't know how to do this." He cracks the stick on the board and shouts, "What do you mean you don't know how? I taught this, the rest of the class understands.

Well why don't you know? Don't just stand there looking at me with your brown eyes like a dog, answer me!" I was silent and the stick cracked one more time. "Sit down for God's sake! Violet, come and do the problem for the class." Violet struts to the front, her plaid reversible pleated skirt swinging, her angora sweater pushed out in front of her. The chalk on the board sounds quick and hard, like hail on the metal roof of the chicken house at home. "Very good Violet", he says. "What would I do without you in my class? You may be seated now."

Recess comes and I am alone. I wish I could die. I look at myself, the jeans I have on are the only ones I own. Yesterday someone said, "Are those the only pants you have?" I nodded slowly. My mother washes on Saturdays so they will be clean for Monday.

On Saturday night we bath, my father gets out the old metal grey tub and sets it in front of the stove. Hot water is added after each one of us bathes. We draw straws to see who will be first.

Last night it snowed again, the sky is like lead, dark as my mind. I see nothing, I under- stand nothing, I am a social outcast, a failure. I don't go home very often and no one seems to mind. I drink a lot and the men I sleep with are shapes passing in the night. Sometimes I say no and they push me down on the back seat of their car and I hear these words more than once, "What do you mean no? Am I not good enough? I'll show you how good I am." Alcohol becomes my salvation.

I quit school before grade nine is over. I move away and find a job as a waitress. I know that wherever I am it is better than where I was. I never stay long in one place, drifting from job to job and never making lasting relationships. Eventually I meet the man I will marry.

In the beginning the abuse is silent, but living with him is like writing a final exam every day of my life and never passing. He keeps me up all night, pushing, bullying me, convincing me that our problems are my fault. I sit at the table silent, I have no language. The kitchen is a grim battlefield where he has to win and I have to lose. I learned years ago that telling the truth doesn't work. I read almost constantly; with one foot on the vacuum switch and a novel in hand I'm lost in the world of fiction.

One sunny afternoon in early summer we are returning from the lake, we have just dropped our eldest son off at camp. I feel the car accelerate, I look up from my book and crossing the road ahead is a fat mother duck with seven yellow babies in a long straight line behind her.

The next morning I pick up the phone and call Mental Health. The silence has ended, language is power.

Sharon Ferguson-Hood is forty-six, the mother of three children and single after leaving a twenty year marriage. She entered university as a mature student, graduated with a BA. in English and is now working on a Master of Divinity at St. Andrew's College. She hopes to be ordained as a minister in the United Church.