by Geena Leigh
The company needed a person with strong computer skills, and that wasn’t me, so at the end of my trial period the boss told me they didn’t need me anymore. I smiled, extended my hand to shake his and said, ‘Thank you for the opportunity.’ He shook my hand and I left. I wasn’t upset, because I knew someone else would give me a chance. I had had a snapshot of what working in strata would be like and I knew I could create a career for myself. I believed in myself and my abilities, and I was determined.
22
The C word, age 37
I hadn’t spoken with Dad in years, but talking about him during counselling had made me resolve what he had done to me and want to reconnect with him, so I rang him in New Zealand, where he was now living. Over the next few months we gradually rebuilt our relationship through regular phone calls. I didn’t confront him about the abuse, although I thought about doing so. I thought I might do it at a later point.
One day when I rang, my aunt answered the phone and confided in me that my father had what she called the ‘C word’.
‘Eh? Dad has a cunt?’ I asked, feeling quite confused by this new information.
‘He has cancer,’ she told me. He had been diagnosed three years before. I was shocked by the news. It made me glad that I had been strong enough to make the first move to reconnect with him, before it was too late. He was the only dad I was ever going to have, and I wanted to be there for him.
I then spoke to Dad, and it became clear that he was very ill.
I rang Aiden and shared the news, and he agreed to come with me; I think we felt more comfortable going together—neither of us really wanted to be alone with Dad. I booked our flights and we flew over later that week. When we arrived at his council flat at Whanganui, we saw that he had three empty cups with tea bags hanging expectantly in them, waiting for us to arrive. He smoothed his remaining wisp of dark hair with his palm as he sat opposite us wearing what looked like a new slate-grey dressing gown and slippers.
He told us that his body was riddled with cancer; that his stomach was severely bloated and a nurse came over each week to drain it; that one of his eyes had been removed (he was wearing a patch over it). Cancer had spread to his stomach and bowels.
While we chatted, his dressing gown opened to reveal his penis drooping outside his boxer shorts. Aiden noticed and made a nervous laugh. I wasn’t sure if Dad did it on purpose and was looking for a reaction from me, or if it was an accident. Either way, I’d seen so many of those things by now that there was nothing he could do that could shock me. I ignored his shrivelled-up penis and continued to chat. The fresh autumn breeze from the open window eventually got the better of him and he wrapped his dressing gown around his withered body.
Dad couldn’t reduce me to a scared, compliant little girl anymore. I’d been through so much; this little old man couldn’t frighten me. When I stood up to leave, I gave him a kiss goodbye on the cheek while he stayed sitting in his chair. I looked at him with triumph and compassion. I wasn’t a mental dwarf—I had a double university degree and I was 5 foot 11 inches tall.
He struggled to get up to take the empty tea cups to the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry you’re in pain, Dad,’ I said.
He looked at me and replied, ‘We all have to pay for our sins.’
I was startled. I felt so validated by that one sentence. I wasn’t going crazy—I hadn’t imagined that he had leered at me in the bathroom, groped my breasts when he tickled me, touched me in my bedroom and tried to push his penis inside me.
When I was growing up, I had thought that what was happening to me was normal; I thought that was what dads did. I thought that if I did what I was told to do, I was being a good girl. Kids are conditioned to comply with their parents’ demands; it is expected that what their parents do is the right thing. It may sound strange that I never even contemplated reporting Dad to the police. I was in such a survivor mode for years—I was just trying to deal with my life.
As much as I felt strong now, it was reassuring for me to know that Dad lived in New Zealand and I was in Australia. Dad had mentioned that he’d like to move back to Melbourne so he could go to the Melbourne Cup race again. He could barely walk to the bathroom, though, let alone fly to Melbourne, so Aiden and I were safe in Australia, and that was the most important thing.
After we flew back to Sydney, I called Dad almost every week, hearing him deteriorate with each call. One Friday morning in October 2009, just before breakfast, I rang him and he sounded defeated. He told me that he’d fallen over, his body was sore and he was going to stay in a hospice. I asked him if he’d like me to visit again, and he conceded.
I rang my sister and she was already on her way to the airport to visit him. Aiden couldn’t (or didn’t want to) go. I took a 6.45 p.m. flight to Wellington and then drove to the hospice. I arrived at 2 a.m. and lay down in the other single bed in his room.
In the morning Dad was happy to see me; I stayed in his room for the following week.
Most of the time he was loud and rude to everyone at the hospice, and he swore constantly at the staff. Once when we were talking and a nurse entered the room to take away the breakfast tray, Dad roared at her, ‘Do you mind?! We are having a private fucking conversation!’
She was startled; then she leaned over to me and in a compassionate manner said, ‘It’s just the disease.’ I smiled sweetly, a little amused. Cancer may affect some people like that, but this was how my father had behaved throughout his entire life.
My sister brought in a scrapbook of photographs and newspaper clippings from my father’s successful career in radio. We were seated either side of him on the edge of his bed. She placed the scrapbook on his lap and flicked through a few pages. He slapped the page and pushed it aside as he said, ‘I don’t give a fuck about that!’ Dad had no interest in reminiscing about his career highlights. I’ve heard that people on their deathbed don’t ever wish they spent more time at the office, and this was true in Dad’s case too.
Most of the time I was there, Dad was bedridden and his sentences were illogical. One evening he had a sudden burst of energy, got out of bed and asked me to go for a walk in the garden with him. It was eight degrees Celsius outside and pitch dark. I grabbed my hoodie and we went walking. Once we were past the rose bushes, he loudly whispered, ‘Go get the car, Geena, and bring it around the back. We’ll get out of here!’
‘Dad, we don’t have to break out—this isn’t a prison. If you want to go home, we’ll go. You need someone to look after you full-time, though.’ I don’t know why I said the next sentence, and immediately regretted it as soon as I heard the words still hanging in the air. ‘Do you want me to come and look after you?’
‘That would be nice,’ he said.
‘Okay. I just need to figure out some logistics,’ I said, my mind reeling.
Dammit! I didn’t want to look after him. I could hardly stand being around him for more than three minutes at a time. I didn’t want to leave Sydney. Although I didn’t have a proper job at that time, I was already out of the gate. I knew I would get another job in strata—someone would back me. I was desperately trying to make a new life for myself and I didn’t want to move to New Zealand. My life was in Sydney. Yes, it might have been a crappy life just then, but it could only get better.
But he was my dad. He needed my help. Of course I was going to do it. My career could wait; I wasn’t going to let him down. Who else could even tolerate him?
As I carried on this internal dialogue, suddenly he made me jump as he grabbed my arm and began to yell, ‘Get the car! Get the car! Get me out of here!’
‘Dad, we can go; but not right now. It’s late, we’re both tired. Let’s sleep here tonight and make plans to get you out of here tomorrow.’
Then, just as suddenly, he pushed me and I fell off the concrete path, landing on the damp dewy grass. ‘You’re in on it with them!’ he seethed. ‘I thought you were on my side!’ I got to my feet and noticed the light on in his room. One of the nurses was at th
e window watching us. ‘I am on your side, Dad!’ I said, dusting the loose grass and clusters of fused icicles off my behind and legs.
His face grew redder and redder as a new tirade ignited, and it proceeded to burn brightly for several minutes. I just tuned out and waited for him to run out of steam. The rouge in Dad’s cheeks eventually dispersed as his rampage fizzled; his shoulders drooped and his head sunk to his chest. I held him by the elbow as he slowly shuffled back to his room. I emailed all my siblings and gave them an update on Dad’s situation.
At eleven o’clock the next morning Dad woke. He looked at me and asked, ‘Why is all the furniture on the ceiling?’
I looked up, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t know why.’ He must have been on some really good drugs. I went back to my book, and he lay back down to rest.
About an hour later he asked, ‘Why is everything in black and white?’
He was like a child. ‘It just does that sometimes. It happens to me too, Dad—the colour will come back soon.’ My answers seemed to satisfy him as his eyes dreamily wandered around the room. Those moments were some of the most pleasant we’d ever shared in our life together.
The next day was quite different. His temper became fierce. He was in a wheelchair, waving his arms and legs about as four staff members attempted to persuade him to take his medication. I knelt at his feet. ‘It’s okay, Dad, it’s good for you,’ I said reassuringly.
He looked directly into my eyes and then hissed venomously. ‘You! You! You’re with them!’ he yelled, and walloped me around the head twice with his fist before I blocked the stream of oncoming blows. The four staff members each seized one of his limbs and forced him out of the chair, back into his room and onto the bed. A nurse came with an injection and jabbed it into his backside. His thrashing subsided almost instantly and he fell asleep. We tucked him in, and then I stood back in shock. One of the nurses patted my shoulder as they all left the room. I rang Mum, feeling numb, and she consoled me. She’d seen situations like that many times as a nurse, so she was able to explain it to me in her kind, matter-of-fact way. It calmed me down and eased my pain.
The next day my father again became aggressive as soon as he woke up. The staff made the decision to keep him sedated all the time, and my sister and I agreed with them. After that he just lay curled up in bed, hardly ever moving, not talking. His breathing became fraught and irregular.
My sister and I now understood that Dad wasn’t ever going to go home. We drove to his flat and packed up all his possessions into boxes and planned to take it to a storage facility.
My sister reminisced as she slowly packed up his gear. I, on the other hand, grew agitated and just wanted it done. ‘We’d better choose an outfit for him,’ she said. An outfit? Did she really think that he was going out somewhere? He hadn’t left his bed for two days. She added, ‘For the coffin.’
We pulled out a navy suit, a shirt and a tie. I wasn’t sure if he needed underwear, shoes, socks or a hanky. We added them to the bag of clothes, just in case.
The next morning Dad was moderately sedated from the moment he woke up. My sister arrived and we dressed him in fresh clothes, cleaned his teeth and washed his feet. He looked up, smiling in appreciation. After that morning, he could no longer speak and rarely communicated. My sister went back to her family in Melbourne. Aiden called to check on Dad and I said that he was still deteriorating.
Dad became fixated for about five hours, picking at the decorative wooden border on the wall. I lay in the bed next to his and watched him as he lightly scratched the wall. Then a stream of images engulfed me, as I remembered all the times I had stared at the wall when he came into my room, all the times I had cowered from his blows, all the times I had been forced to hear the names he called me.
Confusion washed over me as I thought about how fucked up I was with men. If Dad hadn’t fondled me as a child, maybe I wouldn’t have believed that it was okay for the tens of thousands of other men to do it. I’d never blamed anyone for the way my life had turned out until now. Suddenly it unleashed aggression I didn’t know I’d had in me. If I had ever felt wanted and loved by my parents, maybe I wouldn’t have needed the validation of having strange men prove that they wanted me by paying money to fuck me. For money or not, no woman wants her body to be groped, prodded and pounded, and then tossed aside again and again. What kind of life is that? If he hadn’t been my father I might have had a chance of success in life or of finding love. I said in a low tone, ‘You cunt!’
My fingers gripped the pillow I was leaning on. I imagined walking to his bed, placing it on his face and pushing down heavily with both hands. I imagined feeling his face through the pillow. I imagined his arms trying to push me away while I pressed harder. I imagined his body thrashing around for a few moments and then lying still. I could walk back to my bed, calmly place the pillow back underneath my head, lie down to read, and most likely no-one would ever know.
A nurse distracted my thoughts as she came into the room to check on my father. My grip loosened on the pillow. I wondered if she sensed what I was thinking, because I was never left alone with him again. His mother, brothers, sisters and all the other relations now gathered around his bedside on a rotating basis. He lay contorted, staring at the wall and struggling to breathe. There was no need for me to kill him—nature was taking its course.
I zipped up my suitcase. ‘I’m going back to Sydney, Dad. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ His face winced. I didn’t kiss him goodbye; instead I patted his bony leg and then walked out the door.
Back in Sydney it was a relief to be home. But the following day my aunt rang and, as soon as I heard her voice, my mind yelled, ‘No!’ As she told me of my father’s death my body crumpled in a heap on the floor. It felt very eerie. Suddenly I was scared that he was now a ghost, and that he’d come into my room in North Sydney and rape me. That fear subsided after a few nights.
I didn’t want Aiden to hear the news over the phone, so I texted him and asked him if I could visit. He was calm when I told him, but he couldn’t sit still; he hung out the laundry, did the dishes and then began to vacuum. I left him to do what he needed to do. He was dealing with grief in his own way, by keeping himself busy.
The first few days I cried myself to sleep and, when I woke, I burst into tears. I arranged the flights for us to go to New Zealand. The funeral was in one week.
•
I held my father’s cool hand as he lay in the coffin. The only memento I wanted to keep of him was a photo of him when he was a young man and his watch. I touched his wrist. He was wearing his watch. This was a little awkward! The funeral director discreetly took it off his wrist and gave it to me.
The latter had no monetary value; it didn’t even keep accurate time—my father had been late for everything. But he’d had that watch for as long as I had known him and he loved it. It had a new stretchy gold band, but it was the same face. I had seen that face hurtling towards me accompanied by a strong bout of pain many a time. I slid it onto my wrist and didn’t take it off for a few days. It gave me great comfort.
Of my father’s five children, only three attended his funeral.
The church was full. My sister, Aiden and I sat in the front row, shedding many tears. Aiden made a speech and told a few jokes, which were a welcome relief. I was so proud of him. I don’t know where he found the strength to stand up and speak; all I could do was cry.
One by one we followed the coffin as it was carried down the church aisle, and I felt like I was going to crumble to the floor. I wanted someone to rush to my side and hold me. No-one did.
Forlorn faces in long black coats followed the coffin to the hearse. We joined the cavalcade to the cemetery. Kids playing in the street stopped to watch. A lady bowed her head, gave the sign of the cross across her chest and kissed her fingers.
My heels sunk into the grass as I walked with everyone towards the empty hole in the ground. Black outfit after black outfit sprinkled dirt into the hole. I walked to the edge of the
hole and felt like throwing a huge rock with both hands and smashing it through the coffin, crushing his skull. Instead I flicked some dirt on it like everyone else did. The preacher said a few words; I didn’t hear what he was saying.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground I suddenly became quite anxious. The pain and confusion of the past few weeks—of my entire life—was closing in on me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Where’s my dad going? I need him, I love him. A bystander walked in front of me, which made me furious, and I stepped to the side to see the coffin for a few more moments. Then it was fully lowered and out of sight. My stomach ached and I felt very lost. Aiden was on his knees and I wanted to take his pain away, but I could barely deal with my own.
The black outfits dispersed, but Aiden and I didn’t want to leave the cemetery. The grave diggers stood nearby, waiting. It was the uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re in a restaurant—you want to stay longer, except the staff are lingering, wanting you to leave so they can go home. We meandered around the graves, visiting a few of our other relatives on the way back to the car. Our family was starting to fill up this place.
•
I flew back to Sydney and was in a haze for days, sleeping with the light on for about a week. After about a month, the sadness lifted. I went to The Club to work for a few nights, mostly as a distraction; I didn’t need the money. I saw a handful of clients, and asked myself why I was even there. For the first time ever, it didn’t have any hold on me. There was nothing keeping me there.