Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  I nodded. It made sense. It really did. When I thought of Mum, and the look on her face with Hessel – but I stopped myself there. I didn’t want to remember what I’d seen.

  But I also couldn’t help feeling that this was all kind of beside the point right now. Or just another excuse. Because there was no point to me knowing that, no point to her even deciding to get treatment for it now, if she couldn’t be truthful about the other choices she had made around it.

  There was a big fat elephant in the room, getting in the way of everything.

  But then Geraldine said, ‘And she told the psychologist that she’s been abusing alcohol. Does that accord with your experience?’

  Geraldine was watching me, waiting. It had never been spoken about like that. It had never been admitted out loud, so openly. I nodded. And I said, so quietly, ‘Yes.’

  My heart was swelling. This thing. This thing that had always been there, that we all worked so hard to pretend was normal, to accommodate, to excuse, to hide. This thing was in the open.

  ‘So we’re hooking her up with some outpatient services near you,’ Geraldine was saying. ‘At least to begin with, and an AOD specialist counsellor as well as the psych services.’

  ‘AOD?’

  ‘Sorry, yes, Alcohol and Other Drugs. It’s best to tackle both her PTSD and alcohol abuse simultaneously.’

  It was now something that could be talked about. The silence around it was cracked apart, it lay in pieces – if I could I would have stomped all over them. ‘I can’t believe she said that to the psych.’

  ‘It was one of the first things she said to him, apparently. That sort of willingness is a positive sign, but only a first step – giving up an addiction is a very difficult thing, slow going. It’s not something that ever really stops – you should know that, Anna, if you’re planning on being involved in her recovery.’

  I felt hope. And almost at once I wanted to squash it. I’d hoped before. Hope is dangerous. When you hope, the letdown is always so much worse.

  Geraldine said, ‘So she knows you’re here at the hospital, and she’d like to see you. I can get special dispensation for you from the ward, if you’d like.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘But you don’t have to, Anna. It’s up to you.’

  ‘Okay. I’m not sure . . . I’ll have to think about it.’

  Geraldine smiled sympathetically at me. ‘You and your dad must have been carrying this for a long time.’

  Tears came to my eyes and for a moment I couldn’t speak. Images of my mother in various modes of drunkenness and illness scrolled through my mind, but now they were overlaid with other images; an old photo of a little girl with a gorgeous little brother in her arms, an ordinary teenager putting posters on her wall and, most heartbreakingly, the image from inside my own head: the fear and desolation in her eyes as her own father turned on her and attacked her.

  She had kept that from me. All of it. She had kept it all from her own daughter. How awful must that have been for her? It had been awful for me.

  She deserved something different. She deserved a second chance.

  Mum’s voice was croaky. Before I entered the room the ward nurse had explained to me that her vocal cords were bruised. He gave me a hydrating icy pole to take in to her. ‘She’s tolerating those okay,’ he said. ‘See if you can get her to have the whole thing.’

  ‘Anna,’ Mum said, sitting up against the pillows and taking the icy pole as I offered it.

  ‘You’re supposed to have all of that,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, he’s a total icy pole pusher, that one,’ Mum croaked. She crunched the top off it and swallowed painfully and then looked down at the bite mark she had made in it. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said.

  I nodded but I didn’t speak, afraid of something – of either stuffing this up or making everything too easy for her.

  ‘First, I want you to know that I don’t think it was okay. The way I treated Nassim. Of course I don’t. I treated you, both of you, very badly. I was wrong. I couldn’t be more sorry. I let you down. When I saw you, it was Leonie and Danny all over again. When I just couldn’t do anything –’

  I felt the old rise of exasperation. ‘No. You’re making excuses.’

  ‘Anna, I –’

  ‘And you say “of course” like I should know that, Mum. But it’s not the first time you’ve let me down. That one time wasn’t the only problem, it was just the last straw. And it wasn’t the only reason I was leaving. I was leaving because I can’t deal anymore with . . .’ Even now I had to push myself to say it, to speak openly about it. ‘With your drinking.’

  Mum fiddled with the plastic wrapper of the icy pole where she held it resting on the white sheet folded primly across her lap. ‘I know, Anna.’

  ‘And I feel cheated, Mum. Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother? That I had an uncle? That I had a cousin! Not knowing these things about you means there were things I didn’t know about me. It was selfish.’

  ‘I should have told you, I know I should have, but I just –’ She shook her head. The icy pole was melting onto her fingers.

  ‘I really do feel like I don’t even know you. I feel like you’re a stranger.’

  ‘I just didn’t really know how to tell you, once it had gone so far. Obviously I have really messed things up.’ She waved her hand in my direction. ‘I’ve messed you up. And now you’re pregnant.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. And it’s okay, Mum. I’m taking care of it. I just told you because . . . I just wanted –’ but I couldn’t finish my sentence as the tears sprang and my throat tightened and Mum said, ‘Oh my darling,’ and that was just about the last thing I wanted from her right then.

  I managed to choke out, ‘I’ve got the prescription for it, I was just about to . . .’

  ‘Does Nassim know? Is he here with you?’

  My eyes stung. ‘I couldn’t tell him, I just left, and then –’ And I hiccupped and then without warning I began to sob. I didn’t know what Mum was thinking. I couldn’t read it, or her. It was all too much. She was still her, after all, still a stranger, and I didn’t know if I could trust her.

  Mum didn’t reach out or try to speak over the top of my crying, and I appreciated that: for once I felt like she was just waiting me out, letting me be, seeing me, just a little.

  Finally she said, ‘I want to tell you something.’ I wiped my eyes and my nose with the back of my hand and she passed me a tissue box from the side of her bed. ‘I don’t want you to feel like that anymore, Anna. Like you don’t know me.’ And she took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I want to tell you the hardest, most awful thing about me.’

  I blew my nose and nodded to her, and then she said, ‘I want to tell you how I killed my brother.’

  ‘Killed . . .?’

  ‘As good as.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘In the blink of an eye he was gone. It was my fault, Anna. All my fault. I’d talked down the danger. I promised him it would be alright. I promised him, and then it wasn’t. I killed him. I killed him, Anna.’

  ‘No, Mum, don’t say that –’

  She looked at me then, a starkness to her face I had never seen before. A vulnerability. It terrified me. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I should leave her, walk away. I didn’t owe her this. I didn’t have to know this. I didn’t have to know her.

  But then what, really, would ever change?

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  17 January 1996

  That day

  Cathy had watched Danny pause on the road as Hessel stood leaning against his ute waiting for him. And then, while Cathy willed him to behave differently, she watched as he resumed his normal pace again, picked up his walking, heading for home with that defiant Danny-nonchalance. Cathy didn’t move, she just watched as he walked evenly across the gravel towards Hessel, his small thin frame not missing a step as he walked steadily towards the broad and stocky form of his father. She did
n’t move. Why didn’t she move? Why wasn’t she moving?

  She was too far away to hear what they said, Danny and her father, but she saw Hessel speak without looking at Danny, and then she saw Danny reply, standing straight and looking directly at Hessel with his chin held up, and then he turned to walk away.

  She could have walked then. Could have gone to them. Got herself in between them. But she didn’t. She watched as Hessel drew himself up and reached after Danny. She watched as Danny began to run. She watched Hessel chase him down – he had longer legs than her brother and he got hold of Danny’s arm within two strides.

  And still she didn’t move. Still she stood rooted to the spot as Hessel spun Danny around – Danny’s thin frame, skinny arms whirling like a windmill – and she saw, as though she was moving it herself, Hessel’s solid fist sweep up from below, catching Danny’s chin and lifting him off the ground. Danny fell, instantly, and limply. Cathy heard the sound of his head hitting the gravel, a louder thump than a head should make. She cried out, a primal howl buried deep inside her, felt, not heard.

  And then more: Hessel wasn’t done. He leaned over Danny and punched his sandy blond head twice where it lay on the ground. And still Cathy watched. She no longer felt her own body, her own limbs, her own mind, but still she watched as Hessel stepped away from Danny – she saw the anguish on his face at what he’d done, and the fear, and the despair. Cathy sat perfectly still. Watching, and waiting, just waiting for it to stop; not feeling this moment. She just had to wait. She just had to. And she waited and watched as she saw Hessel’s despair flicker again into rage, a fresh wave, arising from the anguish itself, and Hessel stepped forward to kick Danny’s floppy body where it lay. She watched him kick it again and again, as if punishing it for making him do that in the first place.

  Bette’s car pulled up and Bette got out and ran towards Danny where he lay on the driveway, ran screaming to him. Hessel stepped back as Danny’s mother held him to her. And Cathy could hear Hessel’s words now, even as he bent over and leaned his hands on his knees from the exertion, even as he shook his stinging fists out.

  ‘It was an accident,’ he said. And then, modifying quickly, explaining quickly, letting himself off the hook: ‘He had an accident.’

  34

  My mother told me the history of my family as I had never known it. How my grandfather had tried to murder my uncle, Basil’s teenaged father, long before either of us was even born.

  She told me how she had seen it, and how she felt it had ruined her, even in that moment.

  And she told me that afterwards things got even worse – not the violence, but the decay. She told me how Hessel hadn’t let Danny come home from the hospital, not for one day. How Danny had to go straight into foster care and Hessel wouldn’t let Leonie or Cathy see him or know where he was. How Cathy had had to lie about what she’d seen. And how, over the following years, while Bette started telling everyone that he had in fact died in the accident or at least shortly after, the brain injury was making Danny too erratic and forgetful and angry to stay in foster care. Pretty soon he’d ended up homeless and on drugs and in and out of juvenile detention and then, eventually, he’d just dropped off the radar completely and at that point Hessel told Leonie that he had died of a drug overdose. As if that was what somehow he was hoping for: for Danny to just disappear and never come back.

  Cathy was long gone by then: she had buckled under the weight of the lie she’d had to perform: for the police, for the community, for herself. She had run, escaped – anywhere was good enough, anywhere with enough people that she could get lost. She disappeared into her new life in Sydney. Only Leonie had her number.

  Leonie hadn’t believed Hessel’s story about the drug overdose. She’d searched for Danny and found him alive, if not actually well, in a hostel in St Kilda. She brought Cathy back to see him, leaving a two-year-old me in Sydney, and when they went there together, it was clear to them that Danny didn’t remember what had happened, had no idea what Hessel had done. Somehow he’d been told the accident story and he’d believed it – needed to believe it. He’d clung to the story like a life raft. He was as fragile and innocent and trusting as the little boy they’d both loved. So from then on neither Cathy or Leonie could bear to tell him the painful truth either.

  Leonie and Danny tried to be together when he first came out of the hostel. They tried to salvage what they had lost. They had Basil, something they were both so happy about. But with Danny’s issues it just got more and more difficult, and then it wasn’t quite safe. Cathy came back and she and Leonie found Danny the best place they could in supported accommodation nearby, and tried to make him as happy as possible. And from then on Leonie managed everything while Cathy paid all the bills from Sydney.

  And that was the last time Cathy had seen him, her little brother. Well, the last time until today, when he suddenly strode into the kitchen and pulled Hessel off her; today, when he strode powerfully back into her life, just in time to save it.

  *

  Basil was waiting for me out the front of the hospital. We hugged, standing in splashy puddles still lying on the road from the sudden onslaught of rain. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You okay?’

  ‘No,’ I said, sinking into his hug.

  ‘Still pregnant?’

  ‘Yup. And more pregnant than I thought, actually.’

  ‘Surely you’re either pregnant or you’re not: what’s this more or less?’

  ‘Longer,’ I said. ‘Further along.’

  ‘Right. Shit,’ he said. ‘Serious mindfuck.’

  ‘Yeah. Kinda,’ I said. ‘Not the only mindfuck at the moment, though.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘My mum has certainly filled me in on a few things. A few fucked-up things.’

  ‘Yeah, mine too.’ I stood back from him and looked at him. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Cousins.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, wasn’t allowed to tell you.’

  ‘You knew all along.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I kissed you.’

  ‘Yeah, that was a bit strange for me actually.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Basil. That was pretty messed up.’

  Basil shrugged. ‘Families always are,’ he said. ‘And it’s great – you got to experience The Baz before I became forbidden fruit.’

  I punched him on the arm, but he only smiled wanly at me. I looked at him properly, took stock of my friend, my new cousin. And I could see that tears had been there recently – I could tell – and they were threatening to spill over again.

  ‘You alright?’

  Basil nodded slowly. ‘Yes –’ and then he shook his head. ‘No. I fucked some things up pretty royally. Mum says it’s not my fault, but . . . yeah, I dunno.’

  ‘You seemed pretty upset back at the house. I saw you in the car with your mum.’

  ‘I think I’ve pretty much ruined everything. For Dad, I mean. Sure, there were things I didn’t know – but that’s actually just bullshit, that shouldn’t have mattered. I was being an idiot impulsive fuck-up.’ I reached for his arm again but Basil turned suddenly away from me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Mum’s over at the police station with Dad. They should be finishing up soon.’

  At the station we took our seats on the plastic waiting chairs by the police clerk’s desk, and Basil leaned forward, his head in his hands.

  ‘You’re not a fuck-up, Basil. You’re –’

  ‘I didn’t trust Mum. I should have. But she should have told me. She should have told me what Hessel did, not feed me the same bullshit accident story as everyone else.’ He shook his head. ‘But she reckons that the cops gave her such a hard time back then when she went to them.’ Basil threw his hand up on the word ‘cops’ as if slapping it away from himself. ‘They made out like she was the troublemaker, following her around and shit, so she just gave up on talking about it, and then I guess later on she wanted to make sure I was right out of it too. Pisses me off, Anna. Pisses me off that they did that to her. I guess I shouldn’t be
surprised though, seems like the police have always been disgusting and corrupt.’ He stood up and raised his voice as he said that, trying to get the clerk to lift his head, but the clerk ignored him.

  I imagined a world where reporting something to the police, talking to the police, was not necessarily the best option. A world where that could, in fact, invite more problems. It was very different from the world I had been brought up in – a safe world where there was never any question that the police were on my side. And I could see why that might make an otherwise sane person sit across from a policeman in a police station and try to pick a useless fight.

  ‘But I don’t understand how you’ve ruined things for your dad,’ I said, drawing Basil to sit back down on the plastic chairs.

  He sighed as he sat. ‘Because I busted him out, didn’t I? Like a fucking idiot. And I didn’t tell Mum.’ He shook his head again. ‘But Dad hated it there, Anna. What would you have done? He hated it with all the old people, and then there was Hessel at the hospice, out-of-the-blue, and there’s a great father-and-son reunion, and Dad’s all happy about it and Hessel’s saying to me “let’s get him out of here”, “it’ll be a fun secret”, “let’s move the prince back to the manor”, and Dad’s desperate to go and pleading with me to help. What would you have done?’

  I shrugged and shook my head, and Basil shrugged too and went on.

  ‘So I did up the room in Bromley Cairn. I looked after him, brought him groceries. Played cards with him. I tried to make him happy. And I tried to keep him secret so that the nursing home people wouldn’t find out and come and take him back. But I didn’t know – Mum just told me now – I didn’t know he was voluntary. He was always voluntary. They’d never have come looking for him. And Hessel knew it. He wasn’t trying to reunite with him. He was trying to shut him up. And I helped him.’

  I was confused. ‘Shut him up about what? Mum said Danny didn’t know what really happened. She said she and Leonie couldn’t bring themselves to tell him.’