Sawdust (10 page)

I don’t know how the phone arrived back on the hook, but at that moment when Marge and I thought we had seen our last, the phone started to ring. Almost astounded, Dad looked at it like he was going to kick it, like it was some kind of beast he could murder, and then, on second thoughts, eyeing Mum like a prison guard, he picked it up and answered it. He stared forward like he was seeing an unexpected mirror.

It turned out to be our elderly neighbour, Grace. Someone not so far away who had heard the damage going on in our home, who knew there could only be something wrong. She was checking to see if the house wasn’t falling down or that we weren’t being attacked by some murderous, drug-infused bikie gang.

Holding the phone, seeing it shake like a frightened rat in Dad’s hand, we thought Dad was going rip it from the wall or at the least growl as loud as he could at whoever it was on the other side to go and get whatever’d. And then, of course, he was going to continue his attack, first on Mum and then us two girls. Or maybe even the other way round.

But somehow, almost like the sun had poked out in the middle off a storm, Dad’s upper lip began to quiver, and then silent and pliant, almost like a reborn gentleman, we heard him say thanks to our elderly neighbour for her concern. He then quietly replaced the receiver. A different man, he looked away from Mum and released me and Marge. He began to heave in oxygen.

Standing there, stock still, breathing in deep breaths, it was like he was unsure what to do. We knew, inside of us we knew, out neighbour Grace had saved us. Knowing someone was hearing him had somehow diminished him. Had taken the fight out of him. It was a kind of lesson, something I learnt as life progressed, never to be silent. Always tell someone.

At the time, never mind speak, I could hardly catch my own breath. I was too scared to take in oxygen.

But what I also remember thinking is that I did not want to die. As bad and rough as it looked on that day, I did not want to die. Life was too precious. For all that was going wrong, for all that was upside down, life still held too much. It is difficult to know why.

When I was nearly twelve, Mum started going away a lot
. Really, I suppose, it was running away a lot. And always she would take my little sister Marge with her. Never me. I got used to it. I longed for her to take me but I got used to her leaving me behind. I also got used to, as I guess did everybody, including Dad, that it could be anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months and then Mum would be back.

And then it would all start over again. The fights, the arguments, the accusations, the slowly winding one another up until Mum had to leave again.

Each time she ran, I was left to fend for myself, in the “men’s den”, the lair. I was left all alone for Dad. It was open slather. In the background, as he knelt beside me with his fingers stimulating my clitoris, while he rubbed his hammer-like penis against my smooth little girl legs, I would hear the trains rattling and tooting by and the cars on the highway rustling the wind, knowing they were wondering what was going on inside that messy, disorganised, metal-heap place.

I was really starting to resent being left with him and didn’t like what he was doing to me. My body was changing and the sound of screeching wheels on tar would remind me the cars were looking more than they should. Or not enough.

And then, as I said, Mum would be back. But it didn’t make any difference anymore, because Dad had become bolder. It was like he didn’t care anymore. He would just send me up to my room, tell me to wait up there, and then follow calmly behind.

Even with Mum there, he would simply bolt the door and do what he always did. It was always short and quick and yet intensely intimate, and all I knew was that Mum would never understand. Or would she? I was getting older, kids were talking at school, but I never heard even in the ignorant language of children one mention of anything like the love I was getting from Dad.

Around this time Dad called out his usual, and while Mum was downstairs busy with the washing, he told me to go up to their bedroom. For some reason on this day I wanted to do other things, girl things. My own things. I didn’t want to do what he wanted to do.

I said, ‘No, I don’t want to. Not now.’

And he said: ‘Just get in there!’

He smiled thinly and I knew there was no choice. I had to drop what I was doing and go into their bedroom.

As usual, I lay on their double bed and he lifted my dress and then pulled down my knickers. He knelt like a tall bird in front of me, and with my legs open and my feet dangling off the side of the bed, he began rubbing himself on me.

Only it happened again, what had not happened for a long time. I saw a shadow above me. Felt it looking right over Dad’s shoulder. I knew Dad had locked the door, but the shadow was there and this time it followed what was a kind of jangling, at any rate a loud tinging noise at the door. And then the shadow was there. Above me. Above us. This small, overbearing shadow, and Dad immediately, ruthlessly, was up.

He was standing there looking down at me like I was sick and he was in there checking if I was okay. He stood like that still bird when he was ruminating, flicking his front teeth with his tongue.

I sat up on the bed, feeling exposed, ready for I wasn’t sure what. I felt guilty. Deeply culpable. Mum walked up to me. Right up close to me. She had the wild but steady gaze of a flustered old schoolmarm who a child had tried to trick. She glared into my eyes like she was drawing something from them, something that she wanted to see pour, confess, vomit, and when it did not come, she slapped me. And slapped me
again, and I peed myself and then Dad left the room.

I could not define it then, but that look she gave me, I felt denigrated, soiled. I didn’t or rather couldn’t comprehend the depth of her loathing for me.

‘You slut,’ she shouted. ‘You bloody little slut. No wonder stuff happens to you! You bring it on yourself. You’re pathetic!’

She was howling the taunts into the backs of my eyes. I sat there, feeling the pee trickling. I knew, beyond doubt, that whatever I did was my fault. I was to blame. I was the cause of Mum’s anger; I was the one “taking” Dad away from her. It was true. I was a slut. It was the absolute and complete and honest truth; I had created everything, this whole ugly bloody mess.

Still staring into my grotesque throat, Mum turned in a huff and left the room. After a while, hearing little yelping sounds, I came out of the room and went into the lounge. In the lounge, I saw them standing together, Mum and Dad. He was holding her and she was clenched onto his arm. He looked large like an ever-growing silhouette, like the wooden structure that loomed over the house, and she, small like a humming bird, was leaning into him, crying into his chest.

‘Get downstairs and hang up the washing,’ her voice managed to break through the tears. And like the sky was blue and the sun was still as it always was up above, I went downstairs and began to do my chores.

I never told anyone what was happening to me. I am sure my brother Jim knew what was going on, I could see it in his eyes, but I could also see in his little darkening hazel eyes that he was simply too afraid to say anything. Other than that, no one knew, not even my sister or younger brother. Not even my lovely Aunty Bev. In any event, as far as I knew, no one ever even hinted at it.

Inside me there was something biting, an anxiety, and when for my twelfth birthday I received a diary from Aunty Bev, yes, I’m sure it was from Aunty Bev, I took to it like one does to running once you realise you can walk.

Every day I would write on a page my day’s activities. Furiously, I would log it all – well, to be honest, not absolutely all. There was one thing I knew
not
to write in it. But I did occasionally write, ‘He hurt me again today.’ Yes, I used that word “hurt”.

The truth was I was getting older; I was beginning to see things differently. With my diary, somehow, by having to think about things, to frame them, to look for words and
at
the words I used, I felt something in me beginning to wake up.
It was a secret I hid from Mum and Dad; the secret I locked up in my diary and hid in a drawer.

And then Mum found it one day; well actually it was Marge who showed it to Mum. All my secrets. I remember feeling completely betrayed and dishonoured as I sat on my bed and Mum slowly took the little key and unlocked the book in front of me.

After reading a few pages, she began to sniff and then snort and then rub her nose in that fidgety way that was common with her. Suddenly her voice pitched, and then dipped, and she just said: ‘Get out of my sight. I can’t stand looking at you.’

Her voice was colder than metal that has stood out of a night in the winter; it was so cold it was rusted. It made me feel not only unwanted but grimy. Unwashable. Wherever that dirt had come from – I saw it in the pinned look in her eyes – it had nothing to do with her. It came from other sources, other elements. Other genes.

And then, as if having second thoughts, she turned and set upon me. As I sat there, she began shaking and then punching me, yelling into my eyes: ‘Wake up to yourself, Debbie! Don’t be so bloody stupid!’

The strange thing was, despite everything, despite what I well knew, when I thought of the searing ice in Mum’s voice, my mind turned to my father and I felt that by him at least I was protected.

She hurt and knew how to hurt. How to isolate. He hurt, but I felt like he was there for me. There was safety in his shadow. In the shade of his bearing I felt connected. It is a strange thought how those who hurt us the most are often those we feel closest to. It is like, through familiarity, we know them better. We have seen inside them. We know what to expect. We know if there are true feelings there.

But in the end the reality was I was nearly in high school by this time, and not only was I beginning to develop little breasts and menstruate, I was beginning to feel like my body was
my
body. Like it contained mysteries that all belonged to me.

Of its own accord, my body was telling me something was wrong. But it would be Mum who finally did something about it.

And, of course, in the strangest of ways.

Not long after Dad nearly strangled Mum to death and shot all of us
, well in our eyes nearly shot all of us, the imbalances in our home must have shifted right out of control, because for a while we found ourselves in a motel room in Rockhampton. That is
all
of us, except Dad. Even my older brother Jim and I were included this time.

Then the phone call came. Dad could not live without Mum. He needed her. He needed us. We were his life, the people he loved and cherished. And Mum, teary-eyed, gave in and we were trekking back home again.

Things seemed to calm for a long while after that, well what seemed in a young girl’s eyes for a long while, because the reality was after only a few months Mum started with her questions again – well, that’s what I link it to – and things went all curved in the house again.

‘Is Dad touching you?’ she asked one day, and then asked again and again. And again and again, I said no. Emphatically
NO.
There was not a single way in the world I was going to risk being slapped and slandered by her again.

She took it further. One night, with all of us kids sitting at the dining room table, it must have been before Dad got in from work, because he was definitely not there, Mum asked me if Dad was doing things to me. That was a pretty nerve-wracking thing in itself, given that none of us kids even hinted at such behaviour among ourselves.

Now Mum was laying it out bare, for all to see. I remember looking at that solid wooden beam that the dining room table leaned against and going red and flushing. I was so shy and passive at that time in my life, all I could do was sit and feel guilty. That beam... it was lording over me. Once again, rather than being wrapped in Mum’s arms and consoled and reassured, I felt like I was being accused.

But as clear as day, as though trying to protect me, as though knowing and understanding what I never thought he knew or would ever understand, my older brother Jim, his short brown hair neatly side-parted, began to prod me: ‘Well, c’mon Deb. C’mon. Tell her. Tell her the truth.’

Of course I looked the other way, or rather down to the floor, and pinching in my cheeks with all my breath, once again I denied it all. But what is important and sticks out about this event for me, is the realisation that others must have known about me and Dad. It confirmed that my older brother Jim knew. But who else? Who else? We kids never discussed it, never said anything among ourselves.

The word sex was banned in our house. We never even joked about it among ourselves. We were too afraid. Anything to do with sex was dirty, filthy, unmentionable. Afraid that the switchy-stick might come down on us, we never breathed anything to do with that word. And yet there were these people – like Jim and Mum – who knew. For me, it was enough that Mum knew.

She was rubbing her nose, agitated. ‘Well, I’m telling you now,’ her eyes were sharp and hard as pins, ‘tomorrow I’m going to the police.’

It didn’t change my mind about saying anything to her. The police were always a threat – like boarding school – that made us scared and think our world was about to collapse, or that we were going to get severely punished, but personally I would rather take my chances with the unknown than tell Mum anything.

Amazingly, the next day, true to her word, after Dad had gone out bush to do his work, Mum gathered us together and drove us to the police station in Gladstone. And then everything in our house did change.

Whether Mum had had prior conversations with them or not, I don’t know. I just remember some detectives – all of them male – saying to me, ‘Can you tell us what’s going on? Does your dad touch you? Does he interfere with you in any way? In any way at all?’

Feeling pinned and cornered, I was blood-frozen scared , not just of them but also of Mum and Dad, the centre-bolt of our universe, and I said, no, no and no again.

‘It’s all right, you’re not in any trouble,’ they kept repeating to me, but still my answer remained the same.

Then they had a new idea. They took me away from Mum and walked me to a room downstairs.

Cut off from Mum, one of the detectives peered down into the bending eyes that were mine, and I saw something in those police eyes, a moist strength, something I didn’t experience every day, a sense I could trust. It was a kind of fatherliness that said I was safe. My stories mattered.

I blinked, breathed in, looked up, and all of a sudden I was telling them everything.

Strangest thing of all was I was enjoying it. I actually grew excited by my own words. I felt important like I was at the centre of the earth and was actually being appreciated for it. It was like I had just won a running race at school and everyone wanted to hang their arms around me.

At bottom, the honest truth was that telling them all these stories wasn’t like it was a great release off my chest. The facts were still confusing for me. Beyond me. But what was good about it was that there was not the slightest feeling that these people were going to suddenly lash out or slap me or call me a little ratbag bloody liar.

I told them everything honestly and without shame. How Dad undressed me and touched me with his hands; how Dad rubbed his penis against my vagina and how he put his fingers inside me.

I called everything by their proper names, all the secret parts of my body, using words like penis and vagina. They were writing everything down and the “interview” seemed to go on forever. But I never grew tired of it. It was daytime when we went into the station and we were still there by nightfall.

I don’t know where my brothers and sister were kept during this time, but soon after night fell we were all together again, sitting at the entrance to the station.

This very tall man was scuffled into the place with his hands cuffed. He looked like he was resisting, did not want to be there. I was looking right into his rocking eyes and then had to flicker my eyes a couple of times. It was Dad.

Not one of us was happy to see him. We were shocked. We each felt guilty in our own way. I, like I had broken a Holy Commandment. Like I had blasphemed, which in his eyes, I knew, I had done of course. I had taken my dad’s name in vain.

The only thing worse than our shock was seeing the way Dad glared at Mum: it was like a bird choosing its prey, letting it know it was swooping down ready at some time soon to smash with its beak and scrunch with its claws.

I could see Mum sitting there with her heart beating rapidly. It was like she knew she was gone. When we saw those same eyes swoop on us, we shivered too, knowing we were equally done for. All we could do was look away; the colour draining from our faces.

‘Don’t worry, it’s all right,’ one of the policemen at last beckoned to us. ‘Really. I promise. You won’t be hurt.’ It was said with such assurance, such authority, and seeing Dad in handcuffs, we felt somewhat better.

But looking back at Dad, I don’t know about the others, there was in me such a strong surge of heat from the back of my neck down to my ankles, such an extreme dizziness in my skull from breaking the family code of never dobbing one another in, that I thought I was going to faint.

When I looked into his face I saw the sharp ice of being double-crossed. I saw in his chest the deflation of being let down. There was one person even more than Mum who had done it: and that person was me. ‘How can you do this to me, Deb?’ His eyes were grunting into my forehead.

Thank heavens Dad was soon tucked away through a door somewhere and we went home. In the car, even in the darkness of it, as we drove, you would think all we could talk about was our experience at the station. Instead we said nothing. Yes, nothing.

Even when we finally got home and unwound, Mum said not a word about Dad or what happened at the station. She didn’t even ask how we felt or what was going through our heads. Not even did she ask that most basic of all questions that a parent is meant to encourage in a troubled child: Do you want to ask any questions?

No, no, and emphatically no again. Incredible as it may seem, not a word about what happened at the police station or even a word about the actual abuse or even what might happen to our dad was said. It was all zipped behind tired eyes and our mystified skulls.

Interestingly, though, on the way home we stopped over for a while at our neighbours, the Groves. Yes, Mr Grove, the man I had kissed so
maturely
, so
differently
. But even there, nothing was said directly to us kids. There was a lot of talk, I remember a lot of talk, but it was not about me or any of my siblings, it was about Mum, about her life, about how everything was affecting her. We kids were left to the side to sit and play and get on with our lives in all the simple ways we did.

The next day, though, something of a newly revived bird was put among the worms, because Mum received a call from the police that they were no longer able to hold Dad. He was on his way home. Their advice: she was to get us out of there as fast as she could.

None of us were breathing easy now.

But Mum obviously had some support. Maybe more than we were ever aware of. Because not long after the call from the police, a man we had never seen, a man almost as tall as Dad, only bristling with a sense of urgency and fear, was getting Mum and us kids together and bustling us into a car.

‘C’mon, let’s get out of here,’ he kept saying as Mum wept her story to him and he looked at her – rather than us – like the world was coming to an end.

Once we were all packed in the car, from memory, my brother Jim – I think it had something to do with school (he was in high school now) – was dropped off at the Groves, while the rest of us were driven up to Rockhampton. There, at some point, we were deposited into the keeping of Aunty Sylvie and Uncle Barney.

Yes, Mum’s older brother, Uncle Barney, the one who had tried to put his dirty, salty penis in my mouth. I still felt the gross taste of it on my tongue and wouldn’t trust him even as far as a child could chuck a sheep.

But in the event, even though we were staying under his roof, he left well away from me and in fact never ever tried anything again. For the time being we were all safe at Uncle Barney and Aunty Sylvie’s.

We must have stayed there for quite a long time because we even went to school there – a little bush school for kids from Year One to Year Ten. I was in Year Seven, which in Ogmore, the town where we were living, was Year Six because there were no Year Seven students at the school.

It’s a bit unclear to me now, and I have never been able to settle the detail with my reluctant family, but after a while we had to leave Ogmore to come back for Dad’s trial. He had been released but he still had charges to face. What really is bizarre in my memory is that when we came back, we came back to our house on Perenjora Dam Road, and stayed in the house
with
Dad.

I still cannot get my head around that, but ahead of us lay the biggest occasion of our lives, definitely of my life and probably Mum’s too. It was Dad’s trial. Just the thought of it was heart-thrashing and spine-breaking, and yet there was something intrinsically exciting about it.

To suit the occasion of going to court, I wore the best dress I had. It was a frock that was blue and white-spotted at the top with a narrow shoulder sleeve that bottomed out into a little yellow skirt. The outfit had specially been bought for me for some big occasion, a wedding, I think.

And that is the way we arrived in court. The scariest day of our lives, all of us dressed like we were going to a huge celebration.