Sawdust

by Deborah Kay

  Little Rebecca’s “miracle”, was, I saw now, no more than about the birth of Dean, perhaps a moment of light for Chris and I, for the two of us together. But no more than that. A moment.

  To me, it was becoming more and more apparent the longer we stayed in Melbourne, the less I felt for Chris. I wanted to disentangle. I was a stronger woman now, an idiot, yes, but no longer a fool at anyone’s beck and call. I had made up my mind, I was not going to let any man bribe me with suicide again.

  The good thing is that by the time Chris and I got to Melbourne our girls were both at school age and I did what I think every parent – not just abuse victims – should do. I threw myself into their schooling. Whether it be husband or wife, I believe strongly – based on my own experience – at least one parent should always be “right in there”, at least in the first few years of a child’s life.

  Despite my lack of education, despite my lack of experience, despite my lack of skills, I helped in the children’s classes, I helped in the tuckshop, I became an active member of the “mothers’ club”, I put both hands up to be on the school council, and when it came to it, without thinking I had any abilities whatsoever, I even put my hand up to be the note-taking secretary at school council meetings.

  Yup, I know, know it only too well, that especially in the position as secretary at school meetings, I could have failed. I could so easily have made a complete and utter fool of myself. But at the time I thought what the hell, who cares, the worst that can happen is they can criticise me, call me stupid, a failure (so, what’s new?) and beg around for someone else to take my place.

  But I discovered something at these meetings and other related school meetings: I had this uncanny knack at quick and accurate note taking. It is something I would never have discovered had I not put my hand up. Something I would never have known about if I had just kept my neck in my shoulders and called myself a victim, an uneducated dysfunctional, and stayed silent, doing nothing. I could easily have let others, the school system, do the work of bringing up my children for me.

  This was not what I wanted. Life, my children’s lives and safety had become too precious for me, and in the event, having stuck my neck out, I actually discovered my experience also counted for something.

  People were actually listening to me. Even relying on me. One day it would also start me on a course of further educating myself, but right then I was happy just to be directly involved in my children’s education and their growing up.

  Not only my actions in being a part of the school community, but my note-taking became such a legend and so appreciated, that the principal would one day write in reference of me, lines to the effect: Deborah Pyke has been an important and active member of our school community. She is a concise and word-perfect note-taker, a great contributor to her and other people’s children’s education. I have always maintained she needed a bed at the school – because she never left it. We do not know how we will ever fill all her voluntary positions.

  That was probably the first open praise – in writing, in black and white – I had ever had in my life. I was already thirty, and I felt a lump in my throat when I read it.

  When I think about it, it could have only come from what I always said, which may sound a little trite now, but at the risk of overstating, it is this: Read and learn about others, take note of their bruises and failings and their tragedies, and remember through it all there are always people much worse off than you.

  Above all, don’t ever feel sorry for yourself. Rather go and read a romance story. It is true, trite or not, we have to get off our butts and do something. The idea of magic wands and knights in shining armour coming to rescue us, as I was slowly but absolutely discovering, has a much better place in movie theatres than it does in our lives.

  Talking of which, my marriage was in pieces, almost a formal vacuum now – and yet, to be totally honest, neither Chris nor I wanted to face it. So, no progress there. Not only that, with all his moods and depression and expectations of me, I found out he had another woman on the side.

  Back to square one.

  I remember him saying that they were only “good friends”. But as we were all going to a RAAF function at the Comedy Club one night, he thought he should warn me to be aware of the talk as everyone in his section thought he was having an affair with her.

  Once again my heart was in my throat – I knew intuitively what “good friends” really meant to him. I could see what he meant by “everybody talking”; I could see the lie quivering on his lips. Yes, his mouth was telling me, he, Chris Pyke, my knight, my mate, my lover, my husband, however hollow those terms may have become, had a real, live, girlfriend staying not that far away from us.

  She would even give him a lift to and from work. He grew really annoyed one afternoon when Sarah and Ruth ran out the front of the house to greet him as he was being dropped home by her. They were jumping up and down and were running around, laughing and giggling.

  They were shouting out to me: ‘Hey Mum, Daddy’s girlfriend has brought him home.’

  As he came inside he became so cranky with the girls for “talking such rot” that he actually swore at them and told them, loud and roughly, to get to their rooms for being “so silly”. What he really meant was for demeaning him and showing him up. He who I had come back for. He who I had stayed with in order to rescue. It was me who was “so silly”.

  Like that first instance of disloyalty, of denying me my day of mourning for Aunty Bev in Malaysia, I had a choice now: I could either curl up and accept it and go on living emptily, using the excuse of the children and the sanctity of marriage as the reason for my choice, or I could get up and do something to change it.

  Unfortunately, it seemed, we had both lapsed into that great Australian, perhaps all-Anglo-Saxon cure: ignore it and it’ll eventually go away.

  I know now that is a very dangerous thing. Taking it on the chin and saying nothing. Avoiding conflict because our children – or our neighbours – may hear us or think less of us if they do. I am not talking here about calling each other idiots and useless pieces of shit; I am talking about really having it out and raising voices when you need to, because there is reason to. Because it is better than holding it in until the heart and the liver and the spleen blow up like children’s inflatables and burst.

  It’s something I know now and something I should have learnt from the Godbolts – if you talk and argue with thought, with mutual respect, it is possible to love and admonish at the same time.

  I knew one thing: from the lessons I had learnt, from the lessons life kept dishing out to me, it was time to find a way through. I was a woman now, one who had learnt from ample experience and I had to do something.

  In the end, I chose not a fiery path as I easily could have, but what I thought was a sensible way ahead. Nevertheless, it took courage. To be firm rather than fiery. I had to face up to Chris and let him know I was unhappy, that our marriage was not working, that we either had to do something about it or things might happen that would grow beyond both our control.

  Eventually I convinced my knight – even he by now could see through that not so shimmery armour – that our marriage was in breakdown, that we had to at the least go and seek counselling.

  It was probably the best thing I ever did in my life. In our lives.

  43.

  Even as we sat there before the marriage counsellor – empty in our marriage and yet somehow old and ancient friends, holding hands – the counsellor sat on the other side of the room, not looking at appearances, not looking at our tightly-sweating, clasping hands, but reading instead into the tone of our words, the slant of our bodies, the blinking of our eyes.

  And what she heard, once I was able to finally open up – from the bottom of my gut – was how Chris had tried to manipulate me, was continually befooling me, saying that he could not exist or carry on without me. She also eventually saw how I had allowed myself to be deceived, had allowed myself to be lied to.


  Finally, it also came out: how Chris had threatened to kill himself if I left him.

  He sat there shaking his head in the negative, defiant.

  ‘Is that true?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Only it was me replying.

  Chris said nothing.

  I looked across at him.

  He looked down. His eyes dark and upset.

  ‘He’s done it before. You have to believe me.’ I was sounding desperate. ‘You have to believe me. He does this to me all the time with his self-harming and “can’t-live-without-you” threats.’

  That was among our first counselling sessions. But so it went, on and on. At home, we lived like ghosts around one another, but finally, finally, seeing us still holding hands, there was only one conclusion that could be reached: This marriage is over.

  For my part, without actually saying it, the counsellor had in effect given me the power to say to Chris, my husband of almost thirteen years, father of my three children, my once friend and saviour from Mum and Dad, ‘I neither want nor need you anymore. Our marriage is done.’

  For Chris, in his corner, ultimately there was only one piece of advice, and in the end it had to come from the counsellor herself, ‘You have to let this woman go.’

  ‘Okay, Deb,’ he finally acknowledged, ‘if this is what you really want. I won’t harm myself. I won’t even threaten it. I promise. I’ll let you go. I just don’t want to tell people at the base yet.’

  I understood what he meant. I nodded. Accepting his fear of social failure.

  Thinking back on it, strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I had at first resented the counsellor for what she brought out in Chris and me – the ultimate realisation that we were really hanging onto nothing.

  And then, suddenly, at that particular session, knowing it was over, knowing I would soon be free of him, there was this sheer relief like my mind had suddenly opened up and oxygenated like a massive flying air balloon. I had finally managed to internalise it, that this really was what I wanted.

  But the beating pulse, the light-headedness, the sense, or rather the true meaning of that relief in all its more subtle and terrible permutations, would only come in the moments after the session.

  Chris and I had quietly exited the counsellor’s rooms and were going down in the lift. He was standing opposite me, chest throbbing like a frog in that small, confined space. There were tears rolling down his eyes. And the more I looked at him, the more I saw he was not saying goodbye, or even au revoir, or even it was good knowing you; he was standing there reneging on everything he had agreed to in front of the counsellor. He was denying everything he had confessed to.

  He stood there, legs crossed at the ankles, leaning against the wall for support, telling me that I still meant everything to him, that I was still bound and tied in every way to his life. He needed me. Could not live without me. I was his world.

  To me, at that moment, rather than like a man, my friend, my soldier, my once shiny knight, he looked like a little boy, like a little schoolboy whose parents had never allowed him to grow up, a boy in a playground who needed others weaker than him to lean on, who needed others to exert control over by making sure – no matter how darkly and emptily – they will remain weak, and in effect always be there for you. He looked not just sad and tragic, but perfectly selfish.

  I gazed at him, into those intense hazel eyes whose curving arches, like temples, had once stared into my flesh, and saw only eyes now that were red with self-concern, like a little boy’s.

  ‘What! What’s wrong with you now!’ I said it without feeling. And when he did not respond, I told him with firm assuredness to stop the crying, to stop the mewling, and reinforced with my harsh breath that this was it, this was the end of our marriage, whether he could accept it or not. I also told him it was time he grew up. I told him that, irrespective, we were both now going to have to do that – but separately and apart.

  He sobbed on, ‘You’re not going to leave me. You’re not!’

  I stared, feeling my eyes pinching into his chest, feeling every fibre in my body rejecting him, telling him that I didn’t care how much he self-harmed, how much he threatened and manipulated, I was separating from him.

  That was one of the valuable things I had learnt through the counselling. I was not responsible for anything he wanted to do to himself. Even to this day it holds no weight with me if you threaten to self-harm. I can’t abide by anyone trying to hold on to someone by doing that – it is not a way to prove love. Only deceit.

  Finally, finally, half looking into my eyes, still whimpering, he nodded as though he had heard. The weight and strength pouring off my shoulders in those moments was enormous. I didn’t have to think twice about it, it was just there, I think now, had actually always been there, but being the snail and pacifist avoider of conflict that I was, I had to wait for a marriage counsellor on a defence force base to allow me to express it: this inner strength, this independence of thought; to allow it to finally exhale from me.

  I was not responsible for any other adult person, and standing in that lift I told him so. With my words, my unsympathetic words, I let him know it. The bubble of pride that I felt when I slapped Dad as a fifteen year-old and he walked away, was back, even bigger and shinier in my breasts than before. I was glowing. I didn’t even know why.

  And yet there was another thing that was to come up through counselling, counselling this time that I went to alone, that I went to towards the end of the marriage counselling – mainly because my school, that is the school my children went to, saw that there was something wrong with me. Saw how it leaked on my face and caught in my thick, shameful forest of hair.

  44.

  Actually, it was Sarah’s teacher who noticed something was amiss with me. Mainly, she noticed it because she found out I wouldn’t let my girls play at any of their friends’ houses; I only ever allowed their friends to come to our place. The teacher, Theresa Rose, was the first person ever to tell me, face to face, that it was a normal and healthy part of growing up for children to go to their friends’ places. I was surprised. Of course, I know I shouldn’t have been.

  Not only that, with a sense of urgency, it was she who put the school counsellor on to me rather than the other way round. And while I could have taken it as a threat, I saw, reading the honesty in her mouth, reading the pressing body language of that teacher, that there were only the best of intentions there. I knew what it was, I knew I needed it. Perhaps for my children too.

  In the end, I buckled and accepted the help.

  Again, like the marriage counselling, this proved the best thing I ever did in my life. Admit to an outside source with the professional background what I had kept secret and hidden in the darkest corners of my soul.

  Once again it was not long before I was given “the permission” to breathe. To exhale my real power, to breathe it through my larynx and chest and gut and right up into Mum’s snorting nostrils and Dad’s hard bird nose. Yes, tell them to their faces the truth. Tell them the way I saw that thing in me that distinctly reeked of reality’s shame.

  First came Mum’s turn.

  Chris and I and the three kids were up in Brisbane, visiting my sister Marge. Mum and her new husband were there too. I don’t know how it happened, but as it does so often in families, only perhaps that little bit easier in my malfunctioning one, an argument developed, and like a typical Queensland storm it grew from grey to black to purple and then a ghostly dark green before anyone could do anything about it. Soon it was hailing big emotional rocks, with Mum doing her usual, packing her bags. My sister Marge was standing behind me, encouraging me to stop her.

  So, eventually I trudged heavily into Mum’s bedroom, and said, ‘Mum, what are you doing? Why do you have to do this? Maybe we need to talk? Why do you have to go?’

  Only if it sounded like a plea, it wasn’t. It was merely questions from stiff, cut lips. I was not being sympathetic, I was only doing what anyone would
do. What my sister was urging me to do.

  And Mum, sobbing, turned around but like I was begging, like I was that little girl asking forgiveness, and she yelled at me, at my sister, at everyone: ‘What have I done? All I’ve ever done is stuck up for you kids. All I’ve ever done is help you!’

  It hit me like I had seen kangaroos punch, brutally, with cruel beating might, and it connected right in the nose like one of those mighty kangaroo fists had got through my guard. My eyes went foggy, my lips drooped, only I was not going down to the dirt. Oh no, no, no longer. Counselling had given me that much;

  I looked into her eyes and hit back: ‘Oh my God, no you didn’t!’ And then glaring I repeated it. ‘Oh no, you did not!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her eyes heaved. ‘I always tried to protect you. I always stood up for you kids.’

  My cheeks, I could feel were red and bursting. ‘Oh no, you did not. You did not protect me. Did not ever protect me!’ I was so angry, so tired of the lies, so tired of the self-deceptions, I could feel the bones in my chest bursting out into her lips. ‘You never ever protected me.’

  And still she persisted: ‘I did. I always protected you.’

  ‘No, you did not. Oh no, you did not. You were not there when I needed you. You never were. You never protected me from Dad!’

  That seemed to startle her, actually bring her to a halt, quieten her. Her nose was sniffing, she was rubbing at it with a fist, in that way she always did under duress. I could feel the hairs on my head digging into my skull just as hers must have been stabbing into her head. I saw myself standing before her: a little girl, unprotected, set among miswired adults, groping through a darkness that they explained away as normal light of day.

  Horrified, unable to talk, she stormed off, crying: ‘How can you say that? How can you say that?’

  But I knew she understood. I knew she did. If anything, it was like she was crying those words to herself. Only she couldn’t make it sound that way. She did not like to be defeated.