Sawdust

by Deborah Kay

  I did not chase after her. I did not feel sorry for her. I felt I had had my day. And really, taking the whole history of my life that went before, it was just a small moment, a small if powerful blow back to the human being who had constantly punished and neglected me. At last I had done it, had my moment with her. That balloon in my chest bubbled again, just a little, just for a small moment I felt it swell.

  Until my sister Marge came running up to me: ‘You’re nothing but a bitch! How can you be such a bitch to Mum!’

  I was stunned. Gob-smacked frozen. Absolutely stopped in my tracks.

  Marge was fully aware of my counselling sessions, knew very well about our childhood, my childhood, even if she didn’t know how I had put my lips and tongue out to Dad one day in order to save her. She had even agreed to my face, at some stages, that life had been difficult for us growing up. But as they say, life, families, even bad, rotten families...

  All I could think was at least I had given a punch back, at least I had stood up and rattled a nose – so that Mum did not go through the rest of her life without knowing what I thought. Felt. What dwelt like an unkillable worm inside me. Hitting back made me feel that little bit more empowered. And I was proud of that. My sister had her own life, there was nothing I could do about that.

  And then it was Dad’s turn next.

  It may seem a bizarre thing, but through all my relationship problems with Chris in Melbourne, through all my groaning and tears of despair about our continuing financial problems, aside from one or two significant others like my sister and Chris’s older sister Rosita, who I confided in, it would be Dad, yes, Dad with an attentive ear who would phone me of his own accord on a regular basis and listen to my woes.

  It reminded me of when I was younger, even at the height of my abuse, if there was anyone I could somehow talk to, it was not Mum, it was him. He was always there for me. And like then, perhaps even more so now, he sat patiently at the end of the phone and listened to what I was going through. Sometimes he would even offer rather wise fatherly advice.

  But this is what I mean... that man, the beast who had tortured me... who treated me worse than a car rag... had infiltrated my skin, had drilled through the hard bone in my ribcage, had seeped into my very brain cells... and become a part of me. In the end, I believe, he really cared.

  Only with counselling – through counselling – I now had this power, and not even a thick-skinned idiot and fool like me was going to let Dad get away with it.

  One night during one of these calls he was telling me about his own problems, one that was particularly bothering him, how he had sub-leased the mill – Dan Gallagher Enterprises – to my older brother Jim. Only Jim had not made the lease payments in months and it was doing Dad in financially. He was at wit’s end, not sure how to get the money out of Jim, money that he needed to live on, and he was angry.

  ‘I’ve always done the right thing by you kids. I’ve never ever hurt or harmed any of you,’ he groaned.

  Dad groaned that.

  Now a veteran of counselling, I felt my chest thunder and then roll, but with the utmost control into the phone, I said, ‘Oh yes, you did. You hurt me. You sure as bloody hell did.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ his voice blustered back, a badly bent trumpet totally off-key.

  ‘You hurt me, Dad, and you know it. You hurt me like no child should ever have to be hurt.’

  As though seeing him on the other end of the line looking down that long distance of lean, muscly, awkward body of his, I heard a pause, a thick silence, and somehow I kept expecting to hear the line shake, the phone to grab hold of my neck and strangle me to death.

  But in the end I could barely pick up this small voice that cried: ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. I didn’t mean to, Deb. Really. I didn’t mean to. I know what you’re talking about. I know I have hurt you very badly. But... I only ever meant to love you. That’s all. I’m sorry, Debbie. Really, I’m sorry.’ His voice was breaking up, struggling. ‘You have allowed me to stay in your life, Deb. I can see. I know what’s going on. I know what I’ve done. And I don’t know why you have forgiven me. I don’t know why, but you have. I am eternally grateful for that.’

  Dad, my dad, my – You don’t ever mess with Dan Gallagher – giant dad, sounded so shocked and staggered, he almost sounded defeated. Almost.

  But it was too late, all these words, it was too late. Just as it was too late with Mum, so with him, but in my soul, in the circling pulse that was driving through my chest, I knew I had survived, I had come through. And I think it was because of that, inside myself, I could forgive him. He knew, in his bones, in the bones that linked us, he knew, even in his own badly processed head, I had somehow forgiven him.

  The truth is, though, as I have found, a heart forgives, in fact can forgive as much as it likes, and yet still it carries the pain. At best we manage to put distance between ourselves and that thing that is hurting us, even sometimes put up actual walls and geographic miles between us and that haunting thing – something I achieved by living apart from him, in Malaysia, in Newcastle, in Melbourne, in Brisbane, in Ipswich – but still the pain does not simply depart. Just as it does not, like magic, depart with that single most charitable of Christian utterances: I forgive you. No, no, no, it does not.

  Dad thanked me on the phone for forgiving him. But it was clear I didn’t want him anywhere near me, not when I was by myself and definitely I did not want him anywhere near my children. He seemed to accept that – accepted it, I suppose, as part of his “hard-earned” punishment.

  Knowing him, though, right until the very end he probably believed that because he did not intend to hurt or harm or in any other way abuse, but only to love, that somehow he wasn’t altogether crazy or wrong and should not really even have to apologise or be forgiven.

  I am sure he believed, right to the end, there was still something perfectly reasonable and harmless in his actions. If only others could understand. Would “get it”. I could... and I could not.

  At least I had had my day with him, albeit in separate rooms on the other end of a telephone line. But I had done it. Stood up to him. Not only to him but to him and her. Them. To both Mum and Dad. And although I am an idiot for letting Dad – and Mum – back into my life, maybe even a complete moron for doing so, I cannot be an altogether out and out wombat... because, before anything, I have realised I am a human being and therefore not perfect.

  And that’s the way I believe we should all be given the chance to live... not just as human beings but as imperfect human beings. Idiots, morons, wombats or not, it is true none of us should have to endure abuse by gender, race or sex, yes especially sex, but more than that, we should never have to endure neglect. Not on account of anyone’s beliefs – or imperfections.

  But there is more – and there is a twist. Because on the verge of packing up and leaving Chris, what did I do, I went to see a clairvoyant...

  45.

  I don’t know what it was that drove me there. But something told me I had to seek “other” help, some other form of guidance, some alternative which looked into the stars and the heavens and aligned me with that greater, ever more knowing force that could see even deeper into my soul – and, hopefully, the future. I still seemed to need something, something spiritual to fill the gaps, the gashes and the wounds.

  As a result, just before I was going to split from Chris and take the children with me, I was led by someone whose children I was day-caring, to a spiritual counsellor – a clairvoyant.

  I was a little nervous at first, sceptical, but something had driven me there, was driving me in that direction, and I would not be satisfied until I had entered that “temple”.

  The actual, physical place – the clairvoyant’s room – was dark and warm, and the woman before me sat tall, her back long and erect like the very earth rotated upon it. She looked at me – or was that into me? – with deep brown eyes that were confident, mesmerisingly aloof, and yet somehow down to ea
rth.

  She looked so assured in her seat, it was difficult not to trust that bearing; it made me feel comfortable, at home, and at the same time like I was at the cusp of another realm. Gazing into those infusing eyes, things happened at that visit, things I absolutely believed in. They were the things that had my heart pounding, my shoulders shuddering, and my eyes sobbing with gratitude.

  After only a fairly short process of getting me to breathe deeply, to empty and bare my mind, I felt my entire body beginning to fill with a teary and sad warmth, and then slowly, almost chillingly at first, I was enwrapped by hands, by tepid flesh, flesh so smooth that it startled me at first. After a while I became used to that touch, and as I did so it seemed to invite me into it. It dwelled on me that I knew that touch. I had felt it before. As it warmed, it came to me; it could only be one person. Aunty Bev. Yes, I had been put directly in touch with my Aunty Bev.

  All my life after Aunty Bev’s death, I felt a need to touch her, to somehow feel her close to me, to communicate with her one more time. And maybe therefore I was “open game”. But, whatever, sitting in that clairvoyant temple, I was lifted into a space where I was literally bathed in a sense of Aunty Bev being around me.

  She touched me and I touched her warm hands and arms in turn. Tears welled and dripped from my eyes. Everything around me was an ancient fog clearing into a brilliant crystal realm. At last I was able to be with Aunty Bev again, to thank her for being a part of my life, for being a part of my sordid world; at last I was able to say goodbye to her.

  More than that, I was able to thank Aunty Bev for being! The very idea of it, the idea that I was there with her, even as she lay dead in the ground, had my shoulders and heart quaking with relief and joy.

  Those butter-smooth arms around me, it was like her hands, one last time, without judgement, without criticism, were peering – as they had in life – into my heart and soul.

  I had desperately needed to say goodbye to her – desperately – and finally I was. It gave me a sense of the closure I had always hankered after. Hankered after since Chris turned his back on me and even before that, as she left my side as Dad was brought into that cold and distilled courtroom.

  Believing in this experience, in this feeling of absolute reality in another realm, gave me the faith to listen to the clairvoyant when she said there was someone in my life who needed me. Someone who needed me urgently, who I needed to be with right now, whose life I could literally save.

  And in this way, listening to those words, I was convinced not only about my closure with Aunty Bev, but of this thing also – not to leave Chris, my husband.

  Coming out of that clairvoyant’s dark temple, I knew staying with Chris was the right thing to do. I had to at least give it a go. My knight was burning, his flesh was singing and flaking, and now I had to rescue that melting armour.

  When we experience something so powerful in our lives as touching and farewelling the dead, someone who meant the world to us, it is amazing what else we will listen to. Life and relationships are so complex, yet, with a little prodding, we often do with the ease of ants what we would normally, rationally, shirk and run from.

  So there, obeying the voice of the world beyond, I was back with Chris, giving it another go.

  Maybe, as the clairvoyant had indicated, it is true, this period was for him, just for him? Maybe I was actually saving him? I don’t know. I really don’t.

  The truth is, I tried, I really tried to love Chris again, and in fact we did in many ways reconnect.

  Together, for a while, newly returned to each other, we saw some essence and energy in one another again. Even had moments of plain downright fun, just like in the old days. The beginning days. The days when we camped on beaches and rolled in the waves.

  Only when you build with bricks that are second-hand, that have already been well and truly used, it doesn’t last long. The house eventually falls over. Yes, old bricks. They say a leopard never changes it spots, but there is more chance of that happening than resurrecting old bricks. They just eventually crumble and become sand.

  And still I waited. Trying to build with old bricks.

  Chris was posted back to Ipswich in this period but with him came his moods, his depression, his expectations of his loyal wife, and they were to be the most uncomfortable and longest months of my life. Eighteen months that would seem like a double lifetime. A tenfold lifetime.

  Daily, I thought of when the time would be right to finally crawl from his bed and separate from him.

  It is easy to say go back to someone. The reality, in the soft pulp of the human flesh, is that even if it is as a favour, as a rescue mission, it becomes difficult to disentangle from again. I just knew I had to. Somehow I had to. Only now it was like I needed some new reason to pin it on. Some new cause to give effect to what I essentially knew to be true so long ago in that rational counsellor’s rooms.

  Finally, the chance came – when Chris, in a foul, depressed mood, after a night out when he thought I was being too friendly to certain others, ran out into passing traffic. He was trying to hurt himself, obviously trying to say something to me, trying to hurt me, a cry for help?

  But the worst part was that he was doing it in front of our three children – doing it in front of our precious human flesh and blood who were sitting in our car watching from the roadside. Who were sitting there, eyes wide and fearful, trying to understand. Three pairs of little child eyes pondering their father’s death wish.

  For me, having had that taste of empowerment, having had that swill of my own free will, this was the final straw. I was not going to put up with his controlling jealously, his selfish acts, his pure egocentric actions, not one inch further.

  I put my foot down, very hard this time, and as soon as he sobered up brought him around to the inevitable. Exactly two days later, on June 16, 1996, Chris moved onto the base for a couple of days and then moved in with friends. That day in June was to be the final time we actually lived together as husband and wife.

  It would have been obvious even for a mouse living in a dark hole in the wall to see it was over between us, there was no breath there, no oxygen, but it still took, I have to be totally honest here, a massive inner courage, a massive dose of strength and guts to face him – to make him face it.

  The only thing I knew was that I was not stepping back this time, my counselling had got that much through to me; and finally, after nineteen years of being together, fifteen of those years married, we divorced on September 15, 1997. The final cut – the sawing of our once cherished but now tarnished love – had been made.

  How did I hang on for so long? Hanging on to the word of a clairvoyant? All I can say is, aren’t we all suckers sometime? Don’t we all make mistakes? I like to think that maybe, just maybe in its own little way, black as it was, this period did help my once knight in shining armour.

  46.

  I was single again. I should have been happy as a princess, no, happier of course, except I had three children and life ahead of me looked like nothing but a steep hill.

  Once again I had to tell myself to get up off the pavement and surge ahead into that black tar road, doing the best I could. The worst thing I could do was sit on the sidewalk feeling sorry for myself. I knew, and seeing the children around me kept reminding me, I had to throw myself into their lives – their education, their safety, their maturing. I had to make sure my life was worthwhile.

  And that’s exactly what I did. As before, I became involved in their schooling, their growing up and socialising, making sure they had both firm borders as well as plenty of room to breathe, and, more than anything, unconditional support.

  I have to admit, even though I craved the roundness of a relationship, a man around the house to help out, I felt happier now. I felt in control. I felt like my own set of emotions and healing and growth were more than enough to look after for now.

  It was important to me then that I had escaped the dark gloomy cloud that was like some kind
of menacing landlord looking over my shoulder all the time. No longer was I responsible or had to make excuses to the children for that ever shape-changing presence. The presence that was my once lover and knight, a man constantly falling off his horse, needing me yet betraying me, loving me yet denying me, and who I had to keep lifting back like a drunk into the saddle.

  The one thing I also did – immediately after the divorce – was sign over to Chris my share of the Anondale property at Perenjora Dam. In return, Chris relinquished his claim on the loan Dad owed us both. I was now absolutely free of the house where I had grown up, if you could call it free. If you could call it a place where I “grew up”.

  I was only too happy to be rid of that house that had raged and reigned like a hurricane in my head forever. That house that I still see as a black spot that cars and trains ride over and the people passing by peek, rightfully but unhelpfully, through their windows to get a better look at. That place with all the rusted metal, utes and old engines piled up like a massive graveyard of ghosts in the back paddock.

  That grave did not belong to me any longer. No, not in any way.

  What I knew was I adored my children. I loved them. Even before they could walk, I was proud of them. That did not mean I did not impose firmness and restrictions. Ultimately, I believe, as much as we long for freedom and open space, what really we hanker after are borders and boundaries. But within reason. Borders and boundaries that give effectiveness and responsibility to our freedom. Make us see freedom is not just something wild and matter-of-fact. That we have to serve it.

  What we don’t want – a la Mum and Dad – is borders and boundaries so up-close that we can’t breathe or that allows others next to us, literally, to live inside our flesh. More than anything, even within boundaries, we want safety with oxygen. These are the things we should not just want but should demand.