Sawdust (23 page)

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 earth.

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.

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.

I made mistakes. I made big mistakes too.

The first mistake came while I was still together with Chris – before our third child was born. It came in the midst of those empty years before the moment of that too quick-lasting resurrection of our love when we decided to have our third and last child, Dean. This is no excuse, no excuse whatsoever, but I did what every decent parent would never do, or at any rate would be educated never to do.

I found Sarah, my then four-year-old, playing with this expensive lipstick someone had given to me as a gift – and that I had warned her never to touch. The lipstick was blue but when you smoothed it on your lips it came out red. It was semi-permanent lipstick that took twenty-four hours before it even began to fade. It was almost impossible to wash off.

I walked into her room on this particular afternoon – when she was meant to be having her afternoon nap – and found her standing there, a smile bigger than a clown, the lipstick smeared like oil paint all over her mouth and nose and cheeks and chin. Her face looked so “done-up”, it was obvious she also had some blush and rouge on it.

Caught in a better moment, she would have looked... like a clown. And perhaps that’s the point when I should have stood back, looked at the incident objectively, and laughed. I should have. Instead, I looked at her bed and saw it too had thick lipstick all over the pristine white sheets. The bedspread was painted red.

I snapped. I fully and completely snapped.

I turned around and slapped her and then because it did not seem to mean enough, I slapped her again and again across the face and head until she could no longer cry, could hardly breathe, she was shrieking so loud.

Thank heavens at some point a neighbour called out, ‘Deb, is everything all right over there?’ Else I don’t know that I would have stopped.

The truth was nothing was all right “over there”. I was shaken, shivering and trembling, and when I “came to” I saw faint specks of blood on the side of my daughter’s face. I felt so ashamed I wanted to run from the house forever.

‘What have I done? What have I done?’ I cried to myself. I never thought I could be that person. That monster.

There was – and never can be – any excuse for my behaviour. But now I can see how parents can beat up their children – it happens when their esteem is low, when they feel their lives are out of control, when they are barely holding down jobs, and are in relationships they cannot get out of. When they feel, as I did then, like shit... like an absolute swamp.

That beating made me realise I was trapped in a bog with slippery edges, and I could not climb my way out. I looked inside myself and saw both Mum and Dad; they were coming out in me, Dad with his switchy-stick and Mum with her fists pounding into my back. I was a beast, a brutal ogre, I was my parents.

Yet somehow, in those moments, more than anyone it was Mum I saw standing in front of me, slapping me through my face like I was some kind of dirty washing on the line. If there was one person I did not want to be like – it was her. And my beautiful child was on the receiving end of this moment of being her, of standing up to my madness. Of being beaten for everything I hated and resented – and feared – in my life.

I felt so bad about what happened that I immediately called Lifeline. To tell them what had happened, to ask them if they thought I was on the brink. A strange thing happened, that does not, I don’t think, usually happen with Lifeline. I was asked what had made me call, and when I told them I was told there was no one available I could talk to for the next three weeks.

Three weeks!

I was in despair. But in the end it made me realise something: I had to deal with this episode – with my life – myself. Maybe that was the lesson. If you can’t get help, don’t simply lie back and think of the world caving in around you. Get up out of the gravel and do something yourself.

And so I made up to Sarah for it. I made up for it – not, as would be so easy to do, by offering her lollies and material things, but by saying sorry to her – sorry without begging. Without expectation. And promising never to do it again. That was the only guarantee I could give her. I would not do it again. No matter what she did.

I also told all the people I could trust about it. I felt so embarrassed and ashamed, I felt I could not keep it a secret; I didn’t want secrets in my life any more. Secrets that soiled our property and our upbringing on Perenjora Dam Road.

If I did something wrong – and I had – I wanted others to know about it. I did not feel I should hide it from those I could trust.

I realise now I wanted feedback, I wanted reassurance, I wanted people to know I maybe needed help.

I saw also I would rather be a serial confessor than keep things hidden like black holes in my chest. Ever since I witnessed that little girl, Grace, getting beaten by her mum for eating the Devon sausage I had so hungrily munched into as an eight year old, I wanted to confess, to tell people the truth, to let them know what I had done when I had done anything wrong. I swore to keep confessing, but never to snap again.

And yet... and yet... I did it again. Only it happened much later, when Chris and I were living in Melbourne, and not with Sarah this time but with my now little two year-old. With my cute, adorable son, Dean that I had promised a safe and loving environment to, an environment filled with reasonable discipline and masses of open space and oxygen.

Again, I don’t know if it is an excuse, and I don’t want to use it as one, but I was lying half asleep on the couch in our lounge room, one pretend eye on the kids, the other in dreamland, when Dean walked up to me and blew a trumpet in my ear. The little devil. I don’t know if he realised what that does to a giant sleeping eardrum? To any eardrum? To the daughter of beasts?

I sprung up and walloped him hard all over his nappy covered bottom... Mum, Mum, Mum, Dad, Dad, Dad, coming out all over in me again, until something, probably the yelping tears and the sound of a child, my own child Sarah pleading, begging me to stop, brought me to a halt.

I looked at both of them, Sarah and Dean, and felt guilty. Guilty before her as well as before my little boy that I had damaged. Back to my senses, once again I had to apologise – and once again I did it without material or sweet-tasting things. Once again, I did it without begging. Or expectation. And once more I gave that guarantee: I would never do it again.

This time I kept my word. This isn’t to say they didn’t continue to get the odd hiding. But not like that. Nowhere ever near like that. And they only got it when I had judged, after the best judgement I could make in the time allowed, that it was necessary.

That firm discipline – combined with the effort and time I put into their school and schooling – seemed to bring off a pretty well rounded upbringing.

In the end, my eldest daughter, Sarah, aced her classes most of the time – was at any rate totally an “A-plus” student, worked obsessively, and eventually graduated from The University of Queensland with physiotherapy – honours. It seemed the harder the birth the saner or at least the cleverer they came out.

My second daughter, Ruth, although also a diligent student fell into some difficulties in her Senior year – her grades went right down in the last half of the year – but she immediately got a job and came back to her education soon after her days of trauma. She is happily married now and firmly Christian and religious. Even today it saddens her that I haven’t taken the Lord as my Saviour.

She believes, as a result, I won’t go to Heaven. But I believe I will be fine. Belief in myself is what I have learnt. That is what I need, and with that belief the Universe will take care of me.

My daughter works as an administrator for the government – ironically, in their child safety section – keeping meticulous notes and files on the many aspects of child abuse cases. Talk about coming full circle.

Another full circle: Dean, my son, a mostly “A” student, followed his dad into the Air Force. He studied exactly the same course as Chris had done all those years ago, becoming an avionics technician. He loves it. His moods are softer than his dad’s.

But also, not only encouraging them but encouraged by my three children in turn, especially my eldest, Sarah, giving me the confidence to push myself, I began to study, to further my own education. I started with short certificate courses and then slowly built my studies and training up. I finally qualified as a skilled and efficient (or so I like to think) teacher aide, a job that has kept me going to this day, even though my children are no longer at school.

To get to where they were, however, my children still had to live their lives, much of it with me as a single mum. And seeing my relationship with my parents, with my own family, they intuited there was more to my own growing up and becoming their mother than, to put it mildly and blandly, met even a child’s egocentric eye.

Particularly Sarah, maybe being the oldest, started being curious fairly early – asking questions. Only they were not the questions that a parent looks up in a dictionary or encyclopaedia, they were the questions I did not ever want to answer. Questions that brought back all the pain, the dirt, the anguish, the unknowing shame.

I had kept it all secret, so, so secret, I did not ever want my children or anyone else to know who did not already know. No one was talking about it any longer, I was happy with that, my secrets were my own.

How could it all suddenly – like a rogue storm cloud – spring into the air above us again?