Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  Some days I would wake up and not have shoes or clean clothes to wear to school. I was once again ashamed of who we were and how little we had.

  Even friends of Mum and Dad’s who had been part of the problem before, drinking and fighting with them, were worried about us. They would bring over food for us to eat or something clean to wear. But Dad never noticed how bad things were and if he did he was so fucked up he couldn’t do anything about it. Life was beyond him.

  I tried to keep away from our house as much as I could, staying at friends’ houses and even friends of Mum’s. I stayed with an older couple who seemed to take a liking to me. Aunty Mary and Uncle Eddie were a sweet old Scottish couple who lived in Broadmeadows, across the paddock from us in Elizabeth Field. I would go over to their house when I was hungry or alone. It was as if they knew what we were going through and wanted to give me a break. I was happy to have a little bit of normality in my life.

  My brother John was my hero in those days. He could play football, he was a boxer and he was a musician. Anything he put his mind to he could do. He was responsible for me hearing most of the good music that was around at that time. He was in bands with lots of other young immigrant kids so new music was always being played around the house.

  But he was always in trouble. In his first year of high school, he didn’t like the way a teacher tried to reprimand him so he knocked him out. Obviously he was expelled from school and he never went back. He didn’t care. His friends all thought it was a great thing to do. I thought that no one, except maybe Dad, was tougher than John.

  John was a wild boy and hard as nails, but home was too wild and frightening even for him. So at the age of thirteen, John ran away from home and joined a band in Melbourne. Not much was said about it, I don’t even remember Dad being worried about him. Now I had no one to look up to.

  In Melbourne John played with some of the top musicians in the country. For a while he forgot about Elizabeth and what he’d escaped from. I don’t think anyone else would have been capable of that after all he’d been through and at such a young age. But something went wrong in Melbourne too. Bad people seemed to follow us wherever we went and he ended up back with us in Elizabeth. We always seemed to end up back there no matter where we ran to.

  My dad tried to make things work out for himself and for John by doing what he did best. He started training him to box. John was ready to fight anyone at any time. He was fast and he was angry. Within a few months John was state boxing champion. At the same time his football team, Elizabeth West Football Club, won the state championships. He was asked to go and try out for an American football scout to play gridiron. He played top-level district football as a goalkeeper. He could sing, he could play guitar, he could play piano, he could fight and everyone who knew him liked him. He was an amazing guy.

  * * *

  I have a problem remembering how old I was or how long this nightmare went on for. It seemed like forever and it still hurts me now like it was yesterday. Mum must have left us when I was maybe nine and didn’t come back until I was eleven – and then only for a short time before she disappeared again. How could both our parents desert us? We needed them, they were supposed to be there for us and they weren’t. Mum had run away from Dad but she left us in the hell she ran from. If it was that bad, why didn’t she take us with her? Why didn’t she even get a message to us or check on us? She couldn’t have really cared that much. And Dad, well, even when he was at the house, he was gone from our lives. He was probably never there, when I think about it. We were alone.

  I used to walk home from school and look into other houses and wish our house looked like theirs did. Some of my friends from school had normal houses and normal families. I wanted to be like them so badly. I thought they were really lucky. Now, looking back, I can see that their parents worked in the same factories as ours, they made the same money as ours; the only difference was their parents were responsible and cared for them.

  I then started to get defensive of my dad and would get into fights at school if anybody said anything about my clothes or shoes or even lack of food. I pretended I didn’t care but I was hurting inside. I became very good at fighting and that carried on for quite a few years. There were some other families in the street that were as badly off as us, in fact, there were some who I thought had it worse. But they were just crazy families, full of neglected kids with stupid parents who abused them. I woke up one day and realised that we were one of those families.

  * * *

  At school I was the class milk monitor, which meant that I got to go to the lunch shed and collect the milk for my class to drink every morning. The government used to supply fresh milk in nice glass bottles for all the kids at primary schools. I think it was to help strengthen our teeth and bones. The best thing about this was that on those days when I was really hungry I could drink a few bottles of milk while I was at the shed. That would be enough to help me concentrate in class and not have to sit with my stomach rumbling while the other kids ate their lunches. During summer the milk would quite often be going off in the sun. But I would drink it anyway.

  I always pretended I didn’t need lunch and didn’t care that everyone else was eating and I wasn’t. But sometimes my friends would have a little more than they needed and I would wolf it down in a second. As a rule, though, I acted tough and didn’t need food. I didn’t need anything or anyone.

  I know that my home life was beginning to show in my schoolwork. I started to get into trouble for things I would never have done before. I had always been the most conscientious student in class and the teachers loved me. But I was getting angry. I got in fights and one afternoon I was sent to the headmaster’s room.

  ‘I’m here to see the headmaster, miss.’

  ‘Is it to do with schoolwork or sport?’

  ‘No, miss, teacher sent me.’

  ‘Oh. Take a seat. The headmaster will see you soon.’

  I sat in the front office, shuffling my feet nervously on the floor. The secretary looked up.

  ‘Can you please sit still?’

  The sound of the telephone constantly ringing only made me more nervous. I’d never been sent up to this office before. I’d been at the school for years and the only time the headmaster had even noticed me was when I sang at assembly.

  The door swung open. ‘Right. Come in then.’ He didn’t look as happy to see me this time.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What’s the trouble here?’ I got the feeling he already knew but he wanted me to say it out loud.

  ‘Teacher told me to get out of the class and come to your office, sir.’

  ‘Why? What did you do?’

  ‘I punched a boy during recess, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I heard. You’re the young Swan boy aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I saw your brother a lot in here but I wasn’t expecting to see you. I’m very disappointed in you. This boy was bleeding a lot. I saw him in the nurse’s office.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but he was pushing my friend around. That’s why I hit him, sir.’

  ‘Yes but you hit him more than once, didn’t you? You kept hitting him.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I just hit him.’

  By this time, I was getting ready for what I knew was coming. I’d seen the kids come back from the office with welts on their hands and legs. Crying and blowing bubbles out of their noses. I wasn’t going to be like that. I wasn’t going to cry. They couldn’t hurt me.

  ‘Well, we can’t have kids punching each other around the school whenever they like.’

  ‘But he started it, sir.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me, son. This is a very serious situation. You can’t go around taking things into your own hands. Resorting to violence doesn’t solve anything, son,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves. ‘You’re going to have to learn that lesson the hard way it seems.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You are a good student but no one is allowed to g
et away with this sort of behaviour. Do you understand?’

  I grunted to myself and stared at the floor.

  ‘Do you understand, young man?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I never lifted my eyes from the floor. I could feel him shuffling around behind me, getting something out of the cupboard in the corner.

  ‘All right, son, come here and put out your hand.’

  In his hand was a long piece of cane that he flexed back and forth as if he was testing how hard he could swing it. He had a look in his eye like he didn’t care at all. In fact, I thought he was quite enjoying the whole process. He even seemed to be dragging it out for maximum effect.

  ‘Put your hand out, son, and don’t you dare move it.’

  I put my arm out straight and bit my lip.

  Whack!

  He looked me in the eye. I never let out a sound.

  Whack! Whack!

  He hit me twice more. My eyes were watering but I still never let out a sound.

  He became more agitated and swung the cane around and, whoosh, he hit me across the legs.

  I flinched but did not make a sound.

  His face was red with anger and he began stuttering. ‘N-now y-you get out of here and I d-don’t want to see you back in here again. Do you understand?’

  I walked out saying nothing. Tears were running down my face but I just bit my lip and wiped them away. He couldn’t hurt me. No one could hurt me. I headed back to class. My hands were throbbing and I had a huge welt across the back of my legs.

  I walked into class with my eyes down. I couldn’t look at anyone. I didn’t want them to see I was hurting. The teacher said something to me as I passed his desk. I couldn’t hear it. I looked up and scowled. I wasn’t listening. I wouldn’t listen to him anymore. How could he have sent me to get caned like that? I was his best student.

  I wasn’t like the bullies in the class, picking on the small kids. I always did my work and I helped other kids do theirs. The only fights I ever got in were with those kids who picked on me or hit the little ones. He knew that but he still sent me to the office. He didn’t care about me. I hated school now and I hated him.

  One night it got too hot to sleep in the house. We were sweating like dogs, tossing and turning. So we pulled our pillows and blankets out into the front yard and tried to sleep out there under the stars. It was better than the backyard because we could see what was happening in the world outside. It was like camping out without leaving home. But it seemed to annoy some people from our street. One woman walked by and yelled at us, ‘What are you kids doing? Get inside, it’s late. Do your parents know you’re out here?’

  She obviously didn’t know our parents and she hadn’t thought of escaping the heat this way.

  ‘Get lost, missus. This is our yard. We can do what we want,’ I shouted out, knowing full well that our dad was out and not likely to be back any time soon, if at all.

  I could see her thinking to herself, ‘What a bunch of brats . . . hmm, but that’s not a bad idea.’

  It felt like a safe thing to do because we were out in the open and no one could hurt us without the whole neighbourhood seeing, but it probably wasn’t a great idea. We must have looked like a feral family out there on the lawn but we didn’t care. At least it was cooler than inside the house. We woke up to the sun burning hot and shining on our faces. The rest of the world was getting ready for work. Traffic was starting to go by the house. So we dragged everything back inside and got dressed to go to school.

  On my way home from school one afternoon I went to a friend’s house to play. He was from one of the families that I thought were having as hard a time as us. I knocked on the door and no one answered. I knocked again and yelled out, ‘Is anybody home?’

  I heard his big sister call out from the back of the house, ‘Come on in.’

  I walked in and stood in the lounge room expecting him to be there. Once again I heard the voice of his sister. ‘Come in here, I need your help.’

  I walked into the bedroom and his sister, who was about fourteen years old at the time, was standing by the bed with a towel wrapped around her. I thought she had just got out of the shower or something and didn’t think twice about it.

  ‘Come over here a minute,’ she said.

  As I walked towards her she dropped the towel and lay on the bed, naked. I think she wanted me to get on the bed with her. I was only nine years old at this time and didn’t know what to do or where to look for that matter. Well, I knew where to look, but I couldn’t without my face going red. I had never seen a girl this old naked before and she looked beautiful, but I was so scared that I turned and ran out the door.

  I started to feel very funny about girls from then on and I wanted to be near them all the time. Whenever I saw her again she looked at me and smiled but I didn’t know what to say to her and I would just get away as quickly as I could. Later on, when I was a little older, I wished she had been around. We could have had some fun. But they had moved away by then.

  * * *

  One particular day I woke with the sun. It beat mercilessly in through my window. The curtains that Mum had put up had been ripped down months before and the window was open.

  As soon as my eyes were open I was out of bed. I didn’t want to be in there any longer than I had to be. The bed was dirty and stained and the blankets were itchy and filthy. There were no sheets and the pillow was torn and uncomfortable. Why would I stay in bed? In fact, I didn’t want to be in that house any longer than I had to. A lot of bad things had happened to me and around me there and the only reason I was still there was that I was too scared to go anywhere else.

  As I walked from the house I looked back and wondered what went wrong. It used to be shiny and new. Now it looked like a condemned building.

  The lawn was now red dirt, covered with rubbish and weeds. The trees Mum planted had died, just a lot like her dreams when I think about it, except for the three candle pines that lined our very short driveway. They just kept growing out of control. Getting tougher as they grew taller. They reminded me of us kids.

  I walked towards the shops dressed only in my bathers. The sun was already blistering hot and I had to run from the shade of one tree to the next to stop my feet from blistering. I was hungry, I hadn’t eaten in ages; there was nothing in the house that wasn’t mouldy. But I couldn’t think about it now. I had to walk about four miles to the centre shops.

  I walked through the shopping centre. The shops were still closed and all the rubbish bins were overflowing. The whole place smelled like a rubbish tip. I carried on past the coffee shop and by the pool hall. Around here there were always broken beer bottles and cigarette butts. I quickened my pace and ran across the car park to the swimming pool, which wasn’t open yet.

  That’s where I was going to spend my day. I got there about half past seven and walked over to find a spot to wait. In the meantime I sat against the wall outside and watched a nest of bull ants attack a beetle. They were small and violent and they tore the bug apart. His worries were well over by the time I started watching. This is where I would wait until the pool opened at nine. By then I hoped to have hustled enough money to get in.

  My plan was to look as pathetic as I could, which wasn’t that hard really, and ask people on their way to work for money. I’d tell them I hadn’t eaten and needed to get some food. Hopefully I would get enough to get me into the pool and still have something to buy a bush biscuit. These were one of the cheapest things on the menu. They were big too. They looked like a large milk arrowroot biscuit. For a little bit of money they could fill the hole in your stomach better than any of the lollies they sold behind the counter.

  By nine-thirty I was in and swimming around in the water. Not a care in the world. The pool area slowly filled up and eventually there were families and gangs of young guys and girls all settling in for a day of fun and getting out of the one hundred-degree heat.

  Elizabeth was a hot and dusty place and no one had
air-conditioning. The houses were like ovens by ten o’clock so I knew I had come to the right place. I was a regular at the pool and some of the people who worked there sort of knew me, which made me feel a little safer than I did at home.

  I spent most of the day there, moving from spot to spot, finding shade and trying to avoid being beaten up by the bigger guys. But I had to go home sooner or later. I wanted to see my brothers and sisters. Maybe Dot had found something for us to eat. I headed back on the same road. I was tired from swimming all day so I decided to hitchhike. I stuck out my thumb and walked along the side of the road. My feet were burning again but I didn’t care by then. I was tough and tired.

  Cars sped by, some people paying no attention to me, others yelling obscenities as they flew past. Finally, a car pulled up. It was a little late slowing down but it stopped about fifty yards down the road. I was happy to get any ride so I ran to the car. I opened up the back door and climbed in. The minute I shut the door I knew I had done the wrong thing.

  The car sped off. The driver was looking at me in the rearview mirror. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Maybe he had just finished work, I told myself. Then the passenger turned around. The smell of his breath almost knocked me out. I knew they had both been drinking a lot. I tried not to panic. I’d been in bad spots before, I’d be all right.

  They drove over the bridge towards my house but instead of turning right towards Elizabeth West, they turned left into the empty roads that surrounded the Weapons Research Establishment. This area was just empty paddocks and dirt roads and I knew I was in trouble.

  ‘A kid your age shouldn’t be running around alone,’ slurred the passenger with a leering smile on his face. The driver laughed.

  The car pulled to a halt and before they could even turn around I pushed the door open and fell out onto the ground. I knew how to survive, I was a fighter. I got that from my mum.

  I ran across the paddock as fast as my feet would carry me. The two guys in the car were still trying to get out of the doors. From where they stopped to my place was about three miles as the crow flies. I knew this whole area like the back of my hand. I ran flat out. I never stopped until I got to the Elizabeth West shops. I looked at my feet and they were bleeding but I was in one piece. I walked home. No one was there so I looked in the fridge to see if any food had turned up. It hadn’t. I went outside and sat on the front step. I never told my dad or my brothers and sisters about my day. They had their own problems.