House of Kwa

by Mimi Kwa

  Today Narelle and I play truant from school to sit in a toilet block at Abbett Park. You can do a lot of graffiti when you have all day. I’m on a scholarship at St Mary’s and am in my uniform, while Narelle is in her public school uniform. We draw anarchy and peace signs on the walls, smoking Alpine cigarettes and talking about our fears. We are misfits.

  We’ve missed school so often lately that the toilet block has become boring and by noon we head to the beach, where men in their twenties and thirties skateboard and lie around, spending their dole money on arcade games – Galaga, Wonder Boy, 1942. They’re notorious for supplying cigarettes and alcohol to underage kids.

  Narelle and I give them our saved lunch money, and they produce a bottle of Southern Comfort and a cask of Fruity Lexia wine, known as goon juice.

  We’re joined by Louis Johnson, a teenager who is wagging school too. When he gets drunk, he inflates a cask-wine bladder like a pillow and pretends to sleep on it. A man shoves straws up Louis’s nose, and everyone laughs.

  Louis is the child of a Luritja and Arrernte family, stolen from his mother in Alice Springs when he was three months old and adopted by a white family in Perth. He is bullied at school and drifts in and out of various social orbits; you never know when he’ll turn up. He is called ‘nigger’. I am still called ‘smackhead’ and ‘dishpan’. The name callers are people we know and people we don’t. They’re people we call friends and people we don’t. Usually no harm is meant – it’s just the way it is, just an ignorant way to make sense of difference. No one, not even me, comprehends the damage being inflicted.

  Louis drifts away again, and Narelle and I take the hard liquor and goon juice from the men and start making our way to the sand dunes. The men call us back. One of them has a house nearby. We can go there.

  It’s a derelict place with no furniture. Narelle and I sit cross-legged on the stained carpet, the men sitting beside us or leaning against a wall. An ashtray is passed around, and we smoke and drink. Someone rolls a joint.

  I’m almost thirteen, and Narelle has just turned twelve. I’m a Gemini and she’s a Taurus; we love to talk about star signs and read Dolly magazine predictions.

  I’ve smoked pot before, just not this strong. One of the men pulls me into a bedroom and takes off my clothes. I’m saying, ‘No, no. Stop. Please no,’ and I feel weightless as he lifts and pushes me, then I feel like lead as I try desperately to move away. He is too strong for me, though, and I lose my virginity to a man at least ten years older than me.

  I sober up and straighten out, struggling to put my school uniform back on. I stagger to the bathroom and vomit. I am bruised and violated and have barely hit puberty.

  Mum picks me up from school. It’s the first time I have seen her since the rape. I am self-absorbed, having spent the past two days curled up crying and grieving my loss of innocence. As usual, Mum says nothing, her eyes fixed on the road.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask how my week has been?’ I ask.

  ‘How has your week been?’

  Then I say the worst, most horrible thing a daughter could ever say to her mother, because I want to punish her for my pain, for not being there for me, for not even being here right now. ‘I was raped! Okay. That’s how my week has been.’

  Mum doesn’t speak.

  I scream the news at her again, but she must be ‘having an episode’ and battling ‘the voices’. I scream at her a third time, ‘I’ve been raped. Can you hear me?’

  Silence.

  I jump out of the moving car. I roll onto the verge and run and run, to bushland along the West Coast Highway where I crouch down and hide.

  Mum comes looking for me. She screams my name. ‘I’m sorry, Mimi. Please come back. I’m sorry.’

  I sit in the bushes, silently sobbing. She searches for me for a few more minutes, then drives off.

  That night, Granddad knocks on the door of Narelle’s house, the only place I would go. He stood outside the window for at least ten minutes before he made his presence known, watching his beloved granddaughter on the other side smoking and listening to death metal music, huddled with tattooed, pierced, dangerous-looking characters – friends of Narelle’s older sister.

  Granddad pounds on the door. ‘Let my granddaughter go, or I shall call the police!’

  He walks to his car down a long driveway snaking between two rows of units, hoping to avoid a confrontation. He has no weapon and just wants me to come home and be safe.

  I follow him a few minutes later, not wanting trouble for Narelle and knowing I have to go back to my other life eventually. Mum has been crying in her own mother’s arms, and I’m filled with guilt for what I told her. I go home with Granddad, and no one says anything. My twelve-year-old shame is handled much like Mum’s mental illness: we pretend it isn’t there.

  A few of my friends are bulimic, but when I stick my fingers down my throat to gag and throw up, I realise it’s not me, and I wonder how else I can escape this horror I’ve had.

  ‘How could you do this, Dad? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I slam my bedroom door without waiting for an answer, then fling myself onto the bed, burying my tear-streaked face in the duvet.

  Later I sit in the bookshelf nook just outside my room, leafing through old photos. I trace Aunty Mary’s face with my fingers. She is beaming a contagious smile. Her hair is high from the large hot rollers she put in that morning, and she’s wearing a T-shirt and white shorts. I’m standing next to her on Uncle Tony’s work desk, next to his judge’s wig on its stand, against a backdrop of legal journals. We are so happy together.

  Now she is dead.

  Dad crouches beside me, and tears pour down my cheeks again. ‘Mi,’ he says gently, ‘I didn’t know she was going to die when I flew to Hong Kong. I thought she was just sick. She died in my arms. There are no cars on Lantau. She died in my arms.’

  First Uncle Tony died in his sleep, then Benji died, now Aunty Mary’s gone too.

  I can only look at Dad with disbelief. ‘You didn’t even tell me she had cancer. You must have known you would be seeing her for the last time. I was close to her too. I should’ve been there.’

  He straightens himself up. ‘Mi. It is not children’s business. I didn’t know, alright. Anyway, you should be happy. She left you a lot of money.’

  I don’t feel happy at all.

  ‘Buddy hell. I can’t change it, okay! She’s gone.’ He storms off to his office.

  There’s a photo of Aunty Mary with five-year-old me at my grandparents’ house in Bicton. Despite their estrangement from my father, Paw Paw and Granddad welcomed Mary and Theresa into the family. Both Kwa aunties would bring gifts and sunshine to Bicton when they visited, and I loved my two worlds meeting in such a normal, amicable way, without shouting, violence or tension.

  In the photo Aunty Mary is lying on a Persian rug in the living room. She is Cinderella in a glass coffin in the forest, waiting for me, the prince, to wake her. Although I have my fairytales confused, Aunty Mary plays along. I lean down in my dungarees and kiss her lightly on the cheek. ‘Arise, Cinderella. Arise.’

  Cinderella opens her eyes and looks around. ‘Oh, Prince Charming,’ she says, delighted. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  The memory is vivid as I run my fingers over a faded corner of the photo. If only I could awaken my Aunty Mary Cinderella again.

  SOUTHERN COMFORT AND HAIRSPRAY

  BY THE AGE OF THIRTEEN, HIGH SCHOOL IS A HYBRID OF HIGH marks and experimentation: study on the weekdays, alcohol and drugs on the weekends. All the bad behaviour happens at my place, the only house my friends can come for sleepovers then sneak out to beach bonfires.

  It’s a chilly Saturday night, but I’m wearing a short skirt and singlet top with kitten heels and hoop earrings. I cover up with my trusty long black trenchcoat, bringing it in at the waist with a belt. I grab a duffle bag and head out. ‘Bye, Dad, I’m going to the ice-cream parlour. Then I’m staying at Zarn’s house.’

  Dad hands me twenty dol
lars.

  Down at the roundhouse on Scarborough Beach, bottles of Southern Comfort and tequila are already being passed around when I join the circle. We splinter off, collecting sticks as firewood. Sand moulds to our backsides and beers, and a boy called Josh runs into the ocean. We lose sight of him and run screaming his name down to the shoreline. Our feet are wet, and Josh emerges soaking and exhilarated, running circles along the tide’s edge with his arms outstretched. ‘Woo-hoo!’ he cries. We laugh, and the night wears on into drunken deep and meaningfuls that turn into awkward pashes. The days that follow are always a map of teenage heartache for me and my schoolfriends to pore over in the library and at lunch.

  Friends are my life rafts. When I’m not with them, I write a diary. It begins as a bit of fun, decorating pages with doodles and poems, but eventually it turns into full-scale typical teenage angst. Then something else altogether, something dark. On some pages I’m brutally candid, and on others I outright lie, even to myself. If I die tomorrow, I want to impress the reader with a normal, perhaps even enviable teenage life, so I write about crushes and parties to keep things light. But then all of a sudden my real feelings break through.

  One afternoon, I come home from school, throw my backpack on my neatly made bed, and then I see it: my diary is wide open on a page describing an intimate moment, and on the opposite page I’ve scrawled, I hate Angela. My stepmother has found my book of innermost thoughts, the pages where I rewrite and try to make sense of my life in order to save it. There’s a cigarette and matches on top of the open diary – Angela is letting me know she found those too.

  I call my best friend, Fee, looping the spiral cord of my pink phone around my hand. After a minute or two we both hear a click, indicating that whoever has been listening in as usual has hung up. We lower our voices. I had intended to have a whinge about my stepmother, but Fee is crying. She’s hiding under a desk. This happens sometimes – Fee’s dad on a rampage. She’s frightened and I try to comfort her but then he storms in and rips the phone away and all I hear is ‘Please, Dad’ before the line goes dead. Fee hides her bruises and the police are never called, no matter how heavy handed he is with them all. Whenever I suggest that I will call them, Fee is horrified. When I hug her inside the school gates, we have a knowing between us that no galaxy of words can begin to express.

  When I complain to Dad that Angela has been going through my things, he says it doesn’t matter, ‘she can do what she likes’. And with that, whatever little corner of the universe I felt was mine, instantly isn’t.

  Then one day Dad catches me smoking and strikes me so hard across the face I fall backwards down the stairs, just managing to catch myself on the rail. So I run away to Paw Paw and Granddad’s place, just like Mum always did, and stand in front of the mirror, hitting myself in the face with the hairspray can in the hope the bruising will be so deep I won’t ever be sent back. As I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror I wonder when it’ll be my turn, when the Kwa madness will strike or, worse still, whatever illness my mum has. The girl in the looking-glass gazes back at me with tears in her eyes.

  When things get tough I head to the beach. Louis Johnson and I spend hours locked in philosophical discussions while we sit on a wall overlooking the surf. We aren’t remarkably close, but we are friends.

  One night, years later, Louis is bashed by four people on his birthday. He’s heading home from a party on a train when they lay into him with fists and boots, dragging him onto a road where one of them runs him over with a car. A passing cyclist calls triple zero, and an ambulance officer takes Louis home to ‘sleep it off’. But Louis is dead by morning. The killers are caught, one telling police he only wanted to break Louis’s legs and that he drove into Louis ‘because he was black’. The ambulance officer tells police he thought Louis was ‘drunk and high from glue or petrol sniffing’. His death will become a significant case, and one day there will be scholarships in Louis Johnson’s name.

  But for now, in the moment, life is simple: Louis and I just sit and talk and look out at the sea.

  SWORDS AND FLANNELETTE

  THE HEADMISTRESS, AUDREY JACKSON, IS HAVING A QUIET word to my teacher at the front of our Year Nine classroom before asking me to accompany her outside. I’m frequently in trouble, but I sense this is different and follow my headmistress to her office in silence. She doesn’t know what to say, and I’m not sure what to ask.

  As soon as they see me enter, Paw Paw and Granddad jump up from their seats, stilted and awkward as they nod their thanks to my headmistress. In the car, they give the impression I am about to see my mother for the last time, to say goodbye.

  ‘What happened to her?’ I scream. ‘What’s going on?’

  My grandparents maintain their composure and say nothing more, even though I shout at them all the way to Fremantle Hospital.

  At home, Granddad has half a dozen swords on display alongside muskets, shotguns, sabres, arrows and shields – war memorabilia and artefacts, reminders of time served. Mela took a sword down from the wall and drew it from its sheath. She carried it to her old upstairs room. Standing to face the neighbour’s house, she sliced her wrists then stabbed herself through the chest and stomach seven times. ‘She would never hurt a fly,’ Paw Paw always says, ‘but there is no stopping her from hurting herself.’

  Mela’s sister, Zora, found her lying in a pool of blood while it rushed from her veins and soaked into the carpet. Zora, who once worked as a nurse’s aid, knew how to stem her sister’s haemorrhaging. When Zora screamed, Granddad ran down the hall. He immediately recalled his military first-aid drills and kept his daughter alive long enough for paramedics to arrive.

  Mum is in the operating theatre for ten hours. When I’m finally allowed to see her, she’s on life support, her chest rising and falling to the rhythm of machines. Doctors tell us the marathon surgery went well, so Mela’s desire to leave life has been thwarted again. Again I’ve been sitting in a hospital, wondering if my mother will pull through.

  Now Mum lies in a coma. I visit her each day. When I travel to see her, I like to be alone. When I’m with her, I like to be alone as well. I refuse my grandparents’ offers to drive me: I’m not up for company, and especially not for being around anyone I love.

  They never answer my questions about Mum’s state of mind. If anyone knows what’s wrong they’re not telling me. It’s excruciating to be ignored and to live in this vacuum of pretending everything is fine. I find it much easier to isolate myself. I discover the truth on hospital clipboards and in folders, anyway – more information than any adult ever gives me.

  Two weeks into Mum’s hospital stay, I again catch a bus in to see her. I cut across the carpark on the hospital’s east side; this way I can bypass the rigmarole of reception, front desks, lifts and corridors. I think I’m clever to have found this route.

  There’s a small alcove to pass through before I enter a side stairwell, but today a bearded man in a flannelette shirt seems to be following me across the carpark. I look at him, behind me. I must be imagining it. He’s bound to stop or go another way. I walk faster. The man walks faster. He casts a long shadow in the afternoon sunlight, catching up to me just as I enter the dark alcove.

  I panic. ‘What do you want?’ My trembling voice betrays me. I am yelling but my screams are inaudible. I am mute and this is a horrible nightmare.

  The man moves towards my frozen body, groping me and forcing me up against the wall under the staircase.

  Finally, my scream breaks through the glass, and he panics. I keep screaming. I’ve found my voice, and the man runs.

  He’s caught by police an hour and a half later, humping on top of a nine-year-old girl in the middle of a school crosswalk. I give a statement at Fremantle Police Station. In movies, lineups take place behind one-way mirrors; real life is a girl hiding behind a filing cabinet as a policeman holds an accused man by the neck, parading him up and down until I say, ‘Yes, that’s him.’ The man can’t move his head, of c
ourse, but he moves his eyes and looks right at me. Me, in my school uniform, crouched by a doorway as police type details into computers.

  Finally I’m allowed to go home. The police have my details and will be in touch.

  Weeks later, they call to tell me I’m not required to appear as a witness. The man has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of molestation and rape.

  The police don’t consult my parents or grandparents, and I am not offered counselling. I don’t talk to Paw Paw and Granddad about it, and I don’t tell Mum. She’s in a stable condition, but I know this news would do her no good. So I stay quiet and wonder if the police ever spoke to my grandparents; if they did, Paw Paw and Granddad never mention it.

  I can’t sleep at night. I still feel the tightening of my throat, the panic, when I tried to scream and nothing came out.

  After Mum pulls through, we enter a new cycle of schizophrenic episodes and worry. I can barely keep up the facades of my friendships, let alone relationships at home. I decide to follow my mum’s example and try to die. I don’t want any pain, so I resort to pills and rifle through the drawers in Mum’s bathroom. It’s a fancy bathroom, beautifully decorated and designed by Paw Paw; the pink shellac finish is cutting edge, along with shag-pile bathmats and quintessential Ponds soap garnish.

  I bolt the door and window, then swallow pill upon pill – I don’t care what they are, the more colourful their exterior and the less decipherable their ingredients the better – and, in a stupor, fall to the floor. I can vaguely hear the desperate banging of my grandparents on the glass door, but I certainly cannot respond.

  Granddad smashes the bathroom window and climbs though. Ambulance officers lift me onto a stretcher, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in Emergency. The demeanour of the doctors and nurses is condescending, as if I’m some rich, attention-seeking kid who doesn’t deserve the bed.