by Geena Leigh
That particular afternoon I walked in the door at home and asked Dad why I never got into trouble for coming home late from school. I craved to be loved, so I sought out snippets and relished them whenever I saw them. He stared at me blankly and then took another sip of his beer.
The next day when I came home from school, Dad yelled at me as I walked in the door: ‘Where have you been? Why are you late?’
‘What are you talking about?’ I replied. ‘School finished at three o’clock and I came home straight after.’
‘Well, that’s good then,’ he said as he folded his arms. I put down my schoolbag and smiled, thinking, he does care about me. And also that I might have just blown my freedom by mentioning it to him.
The next day I was out smoking and playing, and got home at about 6 p.m. But Dad didn’t know any different. I walked into the kitchen and Mum was cooking dinner, flipping the lambs fry in the frying pan. The kitchen was warm, so she opened a couple of windows. My father came in to grab another beer out of the fridge and swatted a fly away from his face. He yelled at Mum, ‘Hipless, titless, witless!’ as he pushed past her. He pulled the windows shut and took the Pea Beu out of the cupboard. Mum instinctively grabbed the lid and covered the frying pan as Dad proceeded to empty the can chasing one little fly. Ssssssssstt Ssssssssstt Ssssssssstt. My eyes stung and I squinted, covering my mouth with the sleeve of my school jumper. Then my father went back to watching the news.
I hated it when we had lamb. I used to have a pet lamb called Maisy and we played outside together. She smelt pungent and her woolly coat was coarse, yet I still loved her and would tenderly wrap my arms around her and listen to her joyfully bleat. One Monday afternoon I came home from school and my father said that Maisy had gone away to play with some other sheep on a farm and wouldn’t be coming back. I never got to say goodbye. My mother flipped the meat over in the pan and my eyes got a little glassy. I didn’t believe a word Dad said anymore.
‘Dinner time!’ Everyone raced around the table but I was last and the only chair left was next to Dad. We all knew that it was best to be out of arm’s length from him, especially at dinner. He would always find something to get angry about. ‘The meat is overcooked!’ or ‘The pumpkin is too hard!’ he would yell at my mother. I picked a green bean out of the glass bowl with my fingers, but it dirtied the linen tablecloth when my father slapped it out of my hand. ‘Grace!’ he yelled. At its conclusion, we all chimed in ‘Amen’ and my mother dished out the food. I ate all my dinner like a good girl, except for hiding the lambs fry under the tablecloth. But when I helped my mother put the dirty plates on the bench, I forgot about the lambs fry.
After my father finished his meal, he patted down the peculiar lump under the tablecloth. He pulled it back and his face grew red. ‘What the fuck?!’ He glared at me, scraping his chair across the linoleum as he sprang to his feet. There was no stopping him now. I was trying to figure out how I could get away from him to avoid getting hit. Then he grabbed the wooden spoon that had been used to dish out the potatoes and swotted it repeatedly against my legs until it snapped in two and I was howling. My mother looked sad; I think it was because her wooden spoon was now broken.
When he reached out for a new implement from the china bowl on the bench, I took my chance and ran out of the room, down the hall and of a window to hide on the deck until he calmed down. With his fat belly he couldn’t have climbed out of the narrow window. If he had, I had an exit strategy ready: the house was perched on a hill and, if I needed to climb off the deck, there was only a small drop down to the soft grass in the backyard below.
The next day Dad was in a bad mood again, yelling at Mum in their bedroom. As he stormed out, I crept in through the open door. Mum was ironing one of his shirts. ‘You okay, Mum?’ I asked. ‘You can’t reason with a drunk,’ she said, keeping her head low as she slid the iron from side to side across the pale blue shirt.
My father used to keep accessories to ‘keep us in line’ in his room. He would then move them within easier reach, positioning them on top of the door frame between the kitchen and hallway. Every time we walked into the house, we could see the leather whip and wooden rod loom over us ominously. The whip had a number of tassels that gave a sharp piercing burst of pain when they sliced my skin. The rod sounded like a dull thud whenever it slapped against me.
One evening Dad was engrossed watching the news; his can of beer was full. The older kids were out. Aiden was in his room playing Donkey Kong. Mum was outside, unpegging the clothes from the Hills Hoist and dropping them into the white plastic basket. I slowly and quietly dragged a dining-room chair across the linoleum, noticing the lime-green palm-frond design on the individual squares. I stood on the chair, reached for the whip and rod, then stuffed them down the front of my tracksuit pants; with the elastic holding them firmly in place, I pulled my T-shirt over my pants. I quietly moved the chair back to its original position and slipped out the front door and ran to the garden.
My heart pounded as I wondered if anyone had seen me. I shoved the whip and rod down into the middle of the dense fronds of a toetoe bush. Then, feeling safe, I skipped over to my mother, who was picking up some stray pegs that were on the grass and placing them in the peg basket. My father never mentioned that the whip and rod were missing; he soon improvised with a leather belt and shoe.
No matter how quiet I was or how quickly I tidied my room, there was no pleasing him. No-one could please him. He was only happy when he was getting drunk, then he got angry again. So, I gave up trying to be a good girl, because I knew I would be punished anyway. I began to swig his beer when he left the room. I would also peel all the coloured pink, green and yellow squares off his Liquorice Allsorts and eat them, putting all the plain black liquorice bits back in the jar. Once I opened a packet of his Old Port cigars and broke all the plastic tips off them. I figured that if I was going to get hit, I may as well deserve it.
Dad hated us to waste food. ‘Eat your dinner—there are people starving in Africa!’ he told me. ‘What’s their address? I’ll post it to them!’ I replied, closing my eyes and tensing my muscles even before his hand lifted from the table. I gently rubbed the back of my head to soothe the pain. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself: ‘I’m serious—what’s the address? I’ll send it to them. Mum, do you have any stamps?’ He reached over and repeatedly flicked my ear, like he was flicking crumbs off the table. I pulled away and covered my ears. He began to flick my hands and then he pried my hands off my ears so he could flick them again. I kept swivelling in my chair and shaking my elbows to dodge his grip.
Flicks weren’t as hard as slaps. Either way, my ears would still go bright red and sting for some time afterwards. I would go into my room and slip under my covers, cuddling a soft teddy bear until I fell asleep.
5
Time to say prayers, age 13
The sweet aroma of my mother’s meatball soup was soon overpowered by the stench of my father’s cigar. He sat on the sofa with his socks resting on the mahogany coffee table. We’d carted that table along with most of the other furniture house to house, country to country, so many times. It was hardly scratched, except for some teeth marks on one corner from when I was little.
We were now living in New Zealand again. Dad was puffing on a cigar, swigging on a beer and sporadically yelling passionately at an afternoon rugby game on television. He always went for New Zealand in sports. I always wanted Australia to win. An ad came on TV2 for Miss Universe 1985. ‘Tits, bums and arse! Tits, bums and arse!’ Dad began to chant. I sang along: ‘Tits, bums and arse!’ ‘Shut up, mental dwarf!’ he said.
I lay on the shaggy carpet and became immersed in colouring a picture of a girl riding a horse. Her voluminous hair spilled over the lines. I coloured her eyes with a vivid blue eye-shadow to match her T-shirt. The horse was a rich chestnut brown with patches of white for contrast. My seventeen-year-old sister sat in the wicker chair by the window reading a romance novel. I could feel the warm summer warm air b
lowing in from the open window. ‘You bloody idiot—run! Run, ya bastards!’ my father yelled.
My sister asked Dad to turn down the television. ‘Shut ya bloody trap!’ he told her. I didn’t hear what she said next, but in an instant my father was out of his chair; he rolled up the chunky weekend-edition newspaper and frantically hit my sister about the head and torso. She held her legs and arms up defensively and hit him back with her book. I started to scream and tug at his dressing gown to pull him off her. It worked. Unfortunately, he then turned his attention to me.
He clutched at my T-shirt with those pale, hairy hands. I yanked free. His face tightened and his lips pursed. He chased me down the hallway, aiming a series of vicious kicks at my legs and buttocks. I was crying and screaming; I daren’t stop running. He pursued me around and around the large oval dining table, waving the newspaper menacingly in the air. I was getting dizzy, yet I kept running. I knew he was bound to give up soon enough. He finally threw the paper at me and turned to go back to his cigar, beer and rugby. I felt a thud in the centre of my back. He had a surprisingly good aim for someone who was half tanked.
I rubbed my back and stepped over the abandoned paper, to go and sit in the yard. I wanted to get a sweater from my room—I didn’t know how long I was going to have to stay out of the house until he calmed down, perhaps until it was dark—but I didn’t want to risk Dad finding me and cornering me in my bedroom, so I stayed outside without it.
The next morning I walked to school more slowly than usual, with a slight limp, and met up with my two girlfriends, Keryn and Ana. We didn’t talk much about our home lives. We never went to each other’s houses to play; we would usually meet up at the park or the rollerskating rink. But I was clearly in pain and I showed them the bruises on my butt and the backs of my legs. I thought they would gasp in horror, yet they barely flinched. Ana pulled up the sleeve of her white school blouse to reveal a sizeable red grappling mark, inflicted courtesy of her mother. Keryn lifted her navy skirt to the side, showing us the imprints of an extension cord that had been walloped against her upper thigh more than once. I was now the one gasping in horror.
‘Is it supposed to be like this?’ I asked. They shrugged their shoulders. I was confused. I was angry. I didn’t understand why I had to deal with being hit all the time. I thought about all the other people, growing up in the other houses that we could see etched into the side of the hills around us. ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to be like this!’ I said. They shrugged their shoulders a second time. The ring of the bell lingered in the air. We finished our cigarettes and went to class.
The morning after one of Dad’s big drinking nights, we’d walk on tiptoe through the house. We’d want to watch cartoons before breakfast, but we wouldn’t be allowed to, because any sound that was a decibel higher than a cockroach walking across the carpet would grate on my father’s ears those mornings, and his pain would inevitably become our pain. So, we would read instead.
Dad rarely spoke in a mild tone. When he did, it was only because he had had a lot to drink the night before. His usual tone was a bellow. His work partly contributed to this because he needed to have a boisterous and energetic presence on the air, and he just got used to speaking like that off-air too. It wasn’t just that, though—he liked to be the centre of attention. When he spoke, he demanded that everyone listened. He couldn’t walk into a room quietly to pick up a pen—he would breathe really heavily, making choo-choo sounds, or he would whistle. Either sound would grate on my ears.
Mum was placid and kind. She would bring Aiden and me the metal beaters covered in chocolate to lick whenever she baked a cake.
•
‘I’ll be there to tuck you in soon,’ he said. I lay in bed feeling sick, shutting my eyes tight and trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t sleep. I kept listening for his footsteps down the hall or for the squeak of the door knob. He liked to recite the familiar prayer: ‘God bless Mum, Dad, Nana and Grandad, brothers and sisters, all our friends, pets and relations.’ The whole time I would scream silently, ‘What about me?’
Dad came into my room and said, ‘Time to say prayers.’ He knelt on the carpet beside my bed, his gold teeth gleaming in the moonlight that shone through the partially open curtain. Then he flopped out his penis and began to touch himself as he slid his other hand up my nightie and slid off my underwear. He pulled my legs apart while I tried to clench them together. But he was too strong, even using only one of his hands. He touched my private parts and made them feel tingly and sore.
I could feel his heavy breaths on the side of my neck as he hovered above me. I could hear my mother clattering around in the kitchen washing the dishes while I lay there softly sobbing. I wished Mum could hear me. But I was too scared to yell out to her and I didn’t think she would have heard me anyway over the clanking of dishes. Why doesn’t she make him stop? I cried silently. Why does she care so much about doing the bloody dishes?
I closed my eyes. But that only made it worse, because the sound and smell of him seemed to be amplified. I could smell his stale beer breath. I just turned my head away and stared at the patterned wallpaper until he finished what he was doing.
I think it had all started when I was about eight, but I don’t know for certain. At first he just touched my vagina on the outside of my clothes, like it was a normal thing to do. I had felt uncomfortable; however, as he did it more frequently, I just got used to it. It was like the first time I saw his penis, when he was walking around the house half-naked, I was shocked; but then I saw it many more times and it didn’t shock me anymore. It gradually escalated to him touching me under my clothes, and then he would touch his penis as well. I don’t think he even knew what he was doing half the time because he was so drunk.
Over time, I learned how not to feel. I learned to shut down my body and just live in my mind as long as I needed to. Later I realised that he was masturbating when he touched me. I knew he was touching his penis, but I didn’t know the term ‘masturbation’ and I didn’t know that men pulled at themselves until they climaxed.
I don’t know why I didn’t tell Mum what he was doing. I didn’t think she would believe me. I wondered if he did the same thing to my sisters but never asked them. (Later I found out that he never touched my sisters.) And he was my dad—I thought that this was what dads did. One time I decided that if I wore three pairs of underwear to bed he would stop, but he just laughed at me when he saw them.
Sometimes Dad would get a glazed look in his eye and I knew that meant he was going to ‘tickle’ me, which meant he would roll me roughly around on the floor while he fondled my breasts and grabbed my behind. He did this to me when we were alone, or when some of our family were away. Also at his parents’ place. I would tell him to stop, that it hurt and that I didn’t like it, but he would just repeat what I said, mocking my voice, and continue.
I knew that he didn’t like to hear me scream. I couldn’t get the sound out as he tickled me, though, because his fingers dug hard into my ribs and it hurt. I couldn’t fight him—I was too little. I just had to endure it until he stopped. To the others, he looked like a playful dad mucking around with his kid. To me, it felt like he was showing me the power he had over me and that it didn’t matter whether we were alone or someone was there—no-one was going to stop him, or help me.
Whenever I sensed what he wanted to do, I ran. If I made it out of the house, he couldn’t catch up with me. He was out of shape and usually drunk. I would climb the large oak that stood at the edge of the yard. Sometimes green-and-yellow rosellas would join me.
I would sneak back into the house when it got too cold or I became tired. By that time my father would have usually passed out on the couch or gone to bed, so I could get to my room unnoticed. Sometimes the others had dinner without me and that was okay with me. Sometimes I felt like I had become the mediator within the family, trying to keep the peace. At these times, when my father sat on the couch drinking, I fetched more beers for him, hoping he would
relax, not hurt anyone and pass out quicker.
•
My father regularly came into the bathroom when I was in there. Once, I was lying in the bath and my father opened the door. ‘I just need to wash my hands,’ he said as he walked to the basin. I tried to cover my body with a face washer, wishing he had knocked on the door instead of just barging in like that. Wishing there was a lock on the door. Wishing he’d get out.
‘Why don’t you use the tap in the kitchen?’ I asked.
‘Your mother’s using it for cooking,’ he said.
It took a very long time for him to wash his hands. He made that familiar choo-choo sound with his breathing and kept staring at my body. It made me feel horrible.
Then, on another occasion, I had just finished my bath and was standing on the bath mat drying myself when Dad burst in the door. I wrapped the towel around me. He went to wash his hands as usual and then leaned over the sink in a strange way. It looked like he was washing his penis in the sink. I didn’t know what was he doing. Then he turned and rushed towards me. He pulled his pyjama pants down to his knees. He was bending his knees and pushing his penis between my legs. He had never touched me before in the bathroom, only watched. I didn’t understand what he was trying to do right now. Was it prayer time? His penis was big and he had his fingers wrapped around it. He was squishing it with his fingers in between my legs. I stood there frozen, my legs locked together tight. My calves were being pressed against the cold enamel tiles and the edge of the tub. He was getting angry. Later, looking back, I realised his penis was either too big for me, or he was too drunk and couldn’t get it hard enough to do what he really wanted to.