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When Mum got home from the butcher shop later that day she asked: ‘Didn’t you go to school today, Tom?’ To my surprise, there was disappointment and irritation in her voice.
I was still at my desk, in my pyjamas, flicking through my A–C shoebox looking for the right card. I never tried to hide my truancy from my mother. She was pretty cool when it came to writing me a note the following day, sometimes enjoying the game of what excuse to come up with.
‘It wasn’t my fault, honest it wasn’t, Mum,’ I said, making my voice sound as infantile as I could.
‘Have you even bathed?’
‘No . . . but I got heaps done, Mum. You bought me all these things for my birthday and, well, I couldn’t sleep last night and then there was just so much for me to do I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate at school, no way.’
‘So I heard you met Steve this morning?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, relieved that her change in tone made everything all right. ‘He farted himself awake.’
‘Thomas Houghton!’
‘Well he did, Mum, I was there. It made me throw cake in the air.’
‘And you had cake for breakfast? Tommy, honestly, what am I going to do with you? You didn’t . . . well . . . you didn’t scare him off, did you?’ She was standing in my doorway wearing her work uniform which made her look, in that moment, like a teenager. A pencil was still stuck behind her left ear and it held back the hair from that side of her face.
‘So you do like him then?’
‘He seems nice enough. Still early days, but.’
‘Is he coming around for dinner?’
‘Ease up, mate! Give me a chance.’
‘I just thought –’
‘You and your Hollywood head, Tom. Honestly. Get out of your pyjamas and come and help me prepare dinner. Pa will be hungry. My shift at the pub starts in under an hour.’
We pottered around the kitchen pulling together the ingredients for chilli con carne. Though it was hot outside and we’d usually have salad, chilli was Pa’s favourite and we made it for him at least once a week. The one time Mum tried to skip it, she’d heard about it for months.
Pa came down from the garage, smelling of grease and oil, his hands and arms thick with muck. He made his way into the laundry and scrubbed away at his flesh with a cake of Solvol. The medicinal scent worked hard to overpower the cooking smells.
‘How was work?’ he said to Mum.
‘You know how it is, Pa, you’ve bagged one steak, you’ve bagged them all.’
‘Still don’t know how you do it,’ he muttered. ‘At least you’re making an honest living and not afraid of a bit of hard work. In my day, hard work was the yardstick everyone was measured by. None of this fancy car rubbish to measure a man’s worth.’
‘I try my best,’ she said, distracted by the cooking.
‘And how was school, Tommy?’ He knew I had wagged it and this was just his way of getting the facts out on the table. He’d lecture me, as usual, and give my mum looks of disapproval, making her promise not to let it happen again, which she would inevitably renege on.
I looked at my mother and squirmed. ‘Mum?’
‘Don’t look at me, buddy, you made your choice.’
‘Not again? Lana, the boy has to go to school, it’s the law. Tom. Tom, listen to me. It’s not natural for you to be inside all day, you need to be out with kids your own age.’
‘Well, you know what Rosie said to Captain Allnut about nature, Pa!’
My mother tried to stifle a laugh but Pa was having none of it.
‘Tom! Your fancy lines don’t work on me. All nonsense. Everything spoken in code is going to drive us all insane. You’re under my roof, boy-o, remember that. As you are, Lana. A man should be able to make some rules in his own home and expect his child and grandchild to follow them. Is that too much to ask?’
‘No,’ Mum and I said in unison, barely audibly.
‘Promise me you’ll go to school.’ It was not a question.
‘I do go to school, Pa. It was just one day.’
Pa shook his head and walked slowly from the room. Over his left shoulder he said: ‘See to it, Lana. For god’s sake, just see to it.’
Mum and I looked at each other and both raised our eyebrows.
‘Make sure you wash your hands after chopping that chilli,’ she said. ‘Tom?’
I stopped what I was doing and turned to look at her, apprehensive about what was to follow.
‘There’s nothing wrong at school, is there? Something you’re not telling me?’
There was a lot wrong at school but I didn’t want her to be sad or worried, so I’d made a pact with myself never to tell. At night I lay in bed crying before she got home from work, forcing my body to get all that sadness and frustration out before Mum would be able to detect that it was in there. Thoughts of her throwing her arms around me to help soothe my pain were pushed violently aside, as I pinched at my folds of fat, often until I bruised my own skin. Lana could not be dragged into this, she had enough problems of her own, and who in the world was I to add to those? Kids were predictable and now it was my turn to be the brunt of their jibes. The first time it happened, I’d been legitimately shocked. Surely they weren’t speaking to me? I must have misheard, or they must be mocking someone else. Is that how the world saw me? My only hope was that, soon enough, they’d move on. I just needed to be strong for a bit. It wasn’t that hard to ignore them if I just pretended to be someone else. An actor in a play, perhaps. They were just saying their lines by memory and none of it was actually about me, Tom Houghton – I was just a character. The real Tom Houghton would be respected, no, revered; everyone admired the real Tom Houghton.
Simon Harlen thought he ran the school. He was one of the biggest kids in my year. His voice was already deep, hair grew thick along his arms and legs and a black caterpillar lay menacingly across his top lip. It wriggled every time he spoke. His parents had taken him out of school for six months to travel around Europe and that never happened to a kid from Seven Hills. The European holiday meant that Simon had repeated a year and he revelled in being more mature than all the other boys. Those legs of his were all hard and wiry with fur, and all the other boys marvelled at them, but I’d asked him whether I could touch them and this had begun the name calling and teasing. He’d let me touch them, though – that was the thing I could not understand. The sensation was foreign, like those boxes at the animal farm you’re asked to stick your hand in, never knowing what you’ll find hidden in the darkness.
Since they all turned against me, I generally liked to keep to myself outside of class. At lunchtime I chose one of my obscure places to pore over a magazine or book, usually taking notes, scribbling away in my torn and tattered notepad, which I made sure I kept secret from the other kids. My favourite spot was behind the wall at the far end of the concreted area. Kids pelted balls against the bricks and tried to catch or hit them back again, or tossed marbles, hoping the hard ground would not conspire to make them roll further than they should. But on the other side of the wall there was a small space between the bricks and a wire fence and if I chose my moment just right, there was enough of a gap for me to squeeze into and disappear for the remainder of the break.
I would go to just about any length to avoid Simon Harlen. I would walk the long way round if I saw his group sitting on the row of wooden seats that connected the infants and primary schools. I’d made that mistake only once. ‘Tom-girl,’ Simon had called relentlessly. ‘You a boy or girl, kid? Coz I wouldn’t know. Hey, Fitz! Check out this kid!’ And all the others in the group had laughed heartily to encourage him to go further, delve deeper into his bottomless barrel of taunts. Their yelling had been so confronting that a small amount of urine had escaped from my penis and I panicked for the rest of the day that I smelled like piss and they’d turn even harsher against me.
During sport, it wasn’t uncommon to have a ball smack me in the back of the head, or
have a strategically placed leg stuck out in front as I ran, so I fell flat on my face. For weeks they’d done the old one-kid-crouches-behind, other-kid-pushes-from-in-front scenario. I just picked myself up, dusted off my hands and the seat of my pants and walked away. What was the point in standing up to them? I couldn’t fight with fists, I knew that. No man was around to teach me how to defend myself and Pa was too old, or else didn’t care enough about it. These kids were stupid, so there was no point in reasoning with them. I had no choice but to walk away, pretend they were not affecting me, and hope desperately they were unable to peer beneath to my truth. In short, every day caused petrification but I knew I just had to be patient.
Harlen’s father must have worked in some sort of factory, because one time he brought a box full of plastic cups to school. The cups were printed with cartoon characters; most were Smurfs, but there were some Transformers too. All the other kids swarmed around him like piranhas, their hands outstretched, begging. Oh please, Simon! Me too, Simon! Aw c’mon, Simon? Every kid in the class got one except me, even those kids Simon hated. The next day, he walked up to me.
‘Didn’t you want a cup yesterday, Tom-girl?’
‘No,’ I said, trying determinedly not to show fear.
‘Why not?’
‘Why would I want anything from you?’ The more Harlen spoke directly to me, the less of a monster he seemed and the easier it was for me to be calm.
‘How about a punch in the face?’
I ignored that one.
‘You’re a real little freak, aren’t you, Tom-girl? Or maybe just one of them little poofs, eh? Eh, poofter Tom?’
I found enough courage to turn my back on him and walk away, thankful for once that his merry band of men was not by his side to egg him on further.
I had the last laugh when, three days later, all the kids started complaining that their fancy new cups were beginning to fade. Cheap cups from a cheap family.
The worst trick so far (and I knew things could always get worse), was when Fitz came running up to me in the playground. He was out of breath, panicked.
‘Tom, hey, mate . . . you need to get to the principal’s office right away.’
‘Why?’
‘He sent me down here to look for you, he said it’s urgent.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m sorry to tell you, but it’s your mum, Tom. She’s been really hurt at the butcher’s . . . she sliced her hand or something and she’s in hospital. You need to come right away!’
Fitz was hyperactive, the look in his eyes pleading. My stomach sank and my head began to spin. This couldn’t be happening. I shut my eyes for a moment, opened them to see Fitz still standing there, looking anxiously from side to side, bobbing up and down on his feet with nervousness. My composure melted away instantly and my entire body flushed with a sea of tears and trembling.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ I screamed at Fitz. ‘What happened to my mum?’
‘You have to come now, they’re all waiting for you. Come on!’
Fitz ran in the direction of the principal’s office, glancing around occasionally to make sure I was following. I was in a total daze, unable to run; dizzy on my feet, afraid I might fall. I could barely see through the tears, snot dribbled from the end of my nose. All I could think of was poor Mum in some hospital bed, alone without me. What would happen to me if she bled to death?
‘Come on, Tom!’ Fitz urged me on. ‘Your dad’s here to pick you up and take you to the hospital.’
I stopped dead in my tracks. I felt sick to the gut. ‘My dad?’
‘Yeah, I just seen him, in the office. He left work to get you.’
It was then that I knew I was the victim of another of their stupid pranks. There had been no accident. I followed Fitz to the principal’s office and saw, at the corner of my eye, Harlen and his gang hiding around the side of the canteen building, their eyes peeled on the principal’s window. I took a second to compose myself.
‘Thanks, Fitz,’ I said.
‘Principal Gadstone said to go right in.’
‘Okay.’ I wiped the mucus from my face. ‘Thanks again.’
I walked into the office, nodded my head politely to the receptionist, and then kept walking out the other side of the building.
That night in bed, I held on to Mum tightly as I slept, feeling like I never wanted to let her go. I kept seeing the image of Fitz’s shaved head, how convincing he had been. And I couldn’t get Simon Harlen out of my mind. I wanted revenge. I prayed to a god we did not believe in to punish Simon Harlen. To make him die a slow and intolerable death. I remembered the scene in Carrie when, bullied to the point of bursting, she used telekinesis to burn down the whole school, fools and all. What a fitting revenge, I thought. I wouldn’t spare a single one of them. One day, I would get Fitz back. It might take a lifetime but eventually he would see that I wasn’t one to be messed with, I was better than them all.
Now, as Mum stood looking expectantly at me in the kitchen, the evening meal bubbling away on the stove behind her, it was impossible to even hint at these troubles.
‘Well, they could teach us things a bit faster,’ I offered while I chopped the last of the chilli. ‘It can get a bit boring, you know, waiting for the other kids to catch up.’
She walked over and hugged me tightly. ‘You’re such a great kid, you know that? You’re gonna amount to something big one day, just you wait and see. Don’t worry about Pa, Tom, he doesn’t understand . . . he doesn’t see you the way I see you. You’re my knight in shining armour. He’s just a bit set in his ways, that’s all.’
An hour later, Mum went to the bar where she worked, leaving the lingering scent of her perfume. That was my mother. Not the blood from fresh meat at the butchers, not the stale smoke and booze – her perfume. Without her in the house each evening, I’d often go to her dresser and sniff the lid of the carved glass bottle.
Pa was grumpy and in no mood to talk, so I chose to spend the remainder of the evening in my room. I’d cleared away the dinner dishes, scrubbed down the kitchen and closed up the house. Pa sat watching television and did not respond when I said goodnight to him. I went back into the kitchen and poured him a small glass of port from the over-sized bottle he kept in the laundry.
‘Thought you might like this,’ I said, setting it on the side table next to him as quietly as possible, careful not to interrupt his favourite show.
‘Off to your magazines, are you?’ Pa asked without looking in my direction.
‘I thought I might read a book tonight. One of my birthday ones.’
‘Jesus H! That’s reminded me, Tommy, I haven’t given you my present yet!’
‘No – no you haven’t, Pa.’ Naturally, I had thought of the present several times throughout the day, too scared to let my grandfather know I wasn’t at school and not wanting to disturb him at his tinkering.
‘Why didn’t you ask me for it?’
‘Because that’s not polite.’ I found it odd that he should be encouraging me to break one of the rules he’d tried to instil.
‘Well, it’s up in my garage – how about you go up there and see for yourself?’
I made my way up the back lawn to the fibro garage in the far right-hand corner of the yard. The narrow chicken pen stretched around it on two sides as though holding it partly together, keeping its innards intact. Pa always left the roller door open but still I was generally forbidden from entering. The rafters were exposed for extra storage space. Boxes of clothes and books, odd pieces of furniture and keepsakes from Pa’s life were lined up like awkward schoolboys. He’d left a light burning, its dull yellow globe casting shadows over the tools and benches, making the small canvas-covered boat in the back corner take on sinister tones. An old fridge sat in the opposite corner to the boat, its large metal handle almost daring me to open it but I wouldn’t, not tonight. The space smelled like Pa: sweat, engines, sullied tools and stale booze. Mum had barred me from ever talking about it
after I’d once queried that omnipresent smell. She explained it matter of fact, said old age brings with it a certain measure of despair, or else boredom, and somewhere between the two, Pa was just looking for a way to escape the predictability of his days. I suppose I understood this, recognised that even adults didn’t want to face up to certain things, but if Pa loved it up there so much, why would he want to make it smell bad?
As I crept closer to the buzz of the bulb, my present was gradually revealed. Pa had tied a red bow on it, crudely fashioned from an old rag. There was no card, no wrapping paper. It was three metal bars set into pairs of old coffee tins that had been filled with concrete. I can’t begin to describe the despair and hopelessness I felt. Pa wanted me to be a man, wanted me to be something other than myself. He’d never once mentioned weightlifting to me before, never suggested that my muscles were something to invest in.
I didn’t want to speak to Pa then, couldn’t acknowledge my disappointment at such a barbarian, meathead gift. I would have rather swallowed razorblades than spend my time lifting a heavy metal rod over and over. Wasn’t it my brain that needed the most exercise and deserved the most attention? After turning off the light in the garage, I let myself back in the house as quietly as possible and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth hurriedly before climbing into bed. I figured my grandfather wouldn’t even notice I was back in the house but that night of all nights we ran into each other in the hallway.
‘I knew you wouldn’t exactly love them,’ Pa said with a shrug. ‘But in time I think they may become very good friends of yours.’
‘You spent a lot of time making them,’ I said, scrounging around for some measure of positivity. ‘I appreciate that.’
Tom Houghton Page 4