Girl on the Edge

by Kim Hodges

  Two more months of beauty treatments passed; my timely responses keeping up my reputation as the perfect model. “Shaun just wants to be friends,” Kathy shared with me.

  “Are you okay?” I hoped that I had located an appropriate response.

  “I’m a bit sad, but I’ll be okay,” she said.

  To acknowledge her sadness, I nodded. Selfishly, all that I wanted was for my hair treatment to continue. I could not find the words to comment further on her situation. I had never experienced a relationship.

  Kathy shared with me that other lads were coming around to hang out with her at Margo’s house. Shaun was not her boyfriend anymore, so she had slept with one of Shaun’s friends in Margo’s bed. Again, words eluded me, but my timely nods supported Kathy. I still liked Kathy even if she was having sex. I rode home on my bike, stunned about Kathy’s account of her latest sexual encounter, but again I kept her trust. Kathy told me more about the various lads she ended up with in Margo’s bed. Kathy liked having sex and felt comfortable talking about it with me. I lent an ear but my knowledge was purely factual—limited to what had been presented to me in two sex education sessions at school—and some girly whispers. Without any experience of sex, or feelings of sexual desire, Kathy’s babysitting romps neither excited nor disgusted me.

  “What do you think about me sleeping with different guys?” she asked one week.

  “It’s up to you,” I had no advice to offer. I was without opinions or views about sex. Instead I chose not to judge her.

  Four months of beauty treatments passed by. Kathy continued to share her sexual encounters with me—a captive audience as she swivelled her chair around me. She occasionally shared actual sexual details with me so I sat simply listening to hear experiences about sex. I disguised my lack of knowledge on this subject by concentrating on knowing when to nod at the appropriate times. Her sexual encounters extended from one lad a night, to two lads or even three. I imagined the hopeful townie lads, both virgins and non-virgins, sitting in Margo’s small lounge room, drinking, waiting and hoping. The television volume would be up loud enough to drown out bedroom sounds. Mates wouldn’t want to hear each other with Kathy. Kathy held the power, she chose the lad who she’d sleep with. That choice caused the moral dilemma for Kathy, not the sex, as it turns out.

  “Kim, I’ve been thinking. I could charge these guys for having sex with me and make some money. What do you think?” Kathy asked me casually.

  “It’s entirely up to you.” I was being non-judgemental in my approach towards Kathy and also hoped to keep the beauty treatments going.

  “I was thinking of charging about ten, or twenty dollars, for the guys to have sex with me. I know they have money—they can afford beer. Besides it would be a good way for me to make some pocket money,” Kathy stated, waiting for a response.

  “I’m not really sure. I suppose maybe ten dollars sounds good,” I was way out of my depth. I could see that she was still thinking, so I added, “It’s entirely up to you. It’s your decision.”

  She nodded “I think I’ll charge twenty dollars.” I nodded my head in support.

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  As I rode home I felt apprehension about Kathy asking money for sex. Something about it just didn’t seem right. Kathy never asked me if I had had sex, pushed me for information, or hassled me to divulge if I liked anyone in particular. I felt relief each day as I got on my bike, that she never quizzed me in that way. Our chats were always about her. I just loved being pampered. In my home, this attention to the self, touch, and nurturing one’s femininity simply didn’t occur. If a family member exposed emotions, these could be spat back in your face, in jest, or maybe for real. All of us guarded any emotional fragility with a shield.

  At the end of four months the beauty treatments ceased. I wanted to study and do well in the year ten School Certificate examinations. Kathy had other interests. So we went back to being playground friends again. We never discussed boys, sex or payment for sex. The following year, we both commenced year eleven. I wanted to do well at school. That was my ticket out, an opportunity for a new life. I had topped my class in year ten. Kathy had not secured her dream beautician job, or any job. Two months into year eleven, she told me that her family were moving to a bigger town, so that her father could get work. Her mother had agreed that Kathy could leave school for good, as she’d be able to secure a job in the bigger town. The Waite family moved on. There was no point in keeping in touch and maintaining a long distance friendship. We both knew that. I didn’t say goodbye to Kathy. I wondered if she became a beautician. Around the time that she left town, the illness started to brew inside my body, and I was soon consumed by it. The illness took control of me without my knowledge or permission and it captured me like a prisoner. Had Kathy still been in Coolah, I wouldn’t have confided in her; our friendship had been about her and what she was up to, not me.

  chapter seventeen

  DEVELOPING A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

  A month after our last and final visit with my father’s relatives at Liverpool, I begged my parents to allow my youngest half-cousin to come and stay for a week in the school holidays. Slender-faced Rodney, with his boyish grin and mousy coloured hair, did not have the thick eyebrows, pimples and hairy legs of his two older brothers. Rodney had a different father to the other two boys, but his biological father had been violent and had shot through like theirs had. I was one year older than Rodney and I saw a sparkle in his eyes. I convinced myself that if he saw a different way of life, beyond the city and the two-bedroom Department of Housing unit, he might choose a better path. I hoped that visiting our home in the bush, eating our home-cooked meals, seeing my father’s vegetable patch and riding a bike around a small town might lead him to be more inquisitive. I wrote to Rodney, telling him that I had the money for a train ticket from Sydney to Coolah and that I just needed my parents’ approval for his visit.

  “No. You’re only asking for trouble,” my mother and father replied in unison.

  I begged, “I can pay for the train ticket with my babysitting savings and I can give you some money for extra food.”

  “He will probably just keep the money you send him,” my father said.

  “How do you know?” I yelled infuriated.

  “Believe me, I know how it works. And I do not want any of my relatives visiting us. I don’t trust any of them. I have my own family now,” he replied sternly.

  “I will take responsibility for Rodney while he is here,” I said, trying another angle.

  “No means no,” he said.

  My emotions got the better of me. I sobbed my heart out and still neither parent budged. I wrote to Rodney to explain the timing wasn’t right. He never wrote back. My resentment again grew towards my parents. A seed was planted. The differences between the blue bloods in Coolah, my family, the Liverpool relatives and the Ethiopian starving children never made any sense to me. Unfair it was. The Ethiopian famine was, at that time, often on the nightly news when I cruised in and out of the lounge room. I noticed the babies’ big heads, attached to small frames, snotty noses with every pointy bone protruding just under the skin. Their enlarged eyes had flies buzzing around and landing in them—mother and child too tired and hands too weak to shoo the flies away. The child’s piercing glare came out of our television and locked eyes with mine. My heart started beating faster. This glare was beyond hunger and the mother had the same piercing glare. It was a glare of terror, one that accepts the inevitable, a slow, looming, dark shadow hovering close by, bringing death that cannot be avoided. I imagine that the mother was going to provide all that she could, right up until the death of her baby. Unconditional love and comfort was all she could give as she held her baby in her arms.

  I went to bed each night, thinking about the piercing glares of both the babies and the mothers. How could the differences between children born into a range of families be so polarised? A child doesn’t choose to be born into extreme poverty in Ethiopia
, or a very poor area of Sydney. It made no sense to me. I felt well looked after and provided for in my own family. I wrestled with my conscience and came to believe that if children from very low income or violent, dysfunctional families are given an opportunity, a different way of seeing and being, then maybe, just maybe, they might create a better life for themselves. If a child is devoid of opportunity, or a helping hand then they will never know any different. All children deserve to have the basics in life and equal opportunities.

  *

  Six months after our visit to my father’s family in Liverpool, two months after I turned fifteen, I was asked to sit down at the dining room table with my three brothers. There was some news. Both parents also sat down. This was a rarity. “Your grandmother has died,” my father told all of us.

  “How?” I asked. It was presented not as bad news, or good news, just news.

  “A heart attack,” he replied.

  “When?” I queried.

  “Earlier today,” he replied.

  “Where was she?” I asked.

  “The Liverpool shopping centre,” my mother replied.

  “Do we have to go to the funeral?” one of my brothers asked.

  “No, only your father will be going,” my mother responded.

  “Can we go outside and play now?” another brother asked. My mother nodded.

  My grandmother’s death was presented to us as something ordinary; a simple fact of life. Maybe her death was meant to be and not a loss—I couldn’t tell. My parents showed no emotions whatsoever in passing on this piece of information. I found this round-the-table conversation quite odd and was unsure how to respond. I felt nothing; I never really knew my grandmother. I was also unfamiliar with death. My father was not upset at all. They shed no tears and there was no sadness evident. I took the plunge and probed.

  “Do you feel sad?” I asked, looking at my father.

  “No. I don’t feel sad,” he replied.

  “Why?” I had to take it a step further.

  “She was an evil woman when I was growing up,” he said. That was one of those answers that ended the conversation. What more was there to ask him? There really was nothing more he needed to share with me. Well, at least at that point in time.

  “You can go outside and play now,” my mother said.

  I left the table and hid behind my door in the hallway. My mother and father talked about my father going to the funeral in Sydney. Who would pay for the funeral? Phone calls needed to be made to see who could contribute. He was willing to put in some money, but not to pay for it all. The two ex-husbands, substitute fathers, daughter, brother and sister were not able to contribute a cent. In their eyes, our family was well off; our home and car belonged to us and both parents had jobs. My parents felt responsible for paying the entire funeral costs. No other living relative would help. With only two fortnightly modest pay packets, no visa cards, no cash advance, or credit, somehow my mother scraped together the eight hundred dollars necessary. Borrowing some of my savings helped to bury my father’s mother. My mother paid me back over the next month. My father went to the funeral in Sydney, driving down one day and back the next day. After he returned, everything went back to normal in our family.

  “How was the funeral?” I asked him a few days later.

  “Fine. At least I can say I buried my mother,” he replied, matter-of-factly. It was another one of those responses that ended the conversation. I casually prodded my mother for more pieces of the jigsaw of my grandmother. My mother told me that she had suffered from schizophrenia. She had been locked up in Roselle Mental Hospital for months at a time.

  “Did dad visit her?” I asked.

  “Yes. I went with your father and sat in the car waiting for him to come out,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you go in to see her?” I asked my mother.

  “I just didn’t want to. She wasn’t my mother,” she said.

  “What does schizophrenia do?” I innocently asked.

  “Voices talk to you in your head, and it makes you really crazy and you can go mad. She was found naked on Parramatta Road in Sydney, the last time, before they admitted her to the mental hospital. There were many other times too.” My mother’s tone indicated that I was to ask no more questions.

  I walked away thinking about how I had never really known my grandmother. My brothers and I had never referred to her as anything, not even an endearing grandmother name, such as gran, grandma, nanna or nan. If we addressed her, what had we called her? Nothing, I realised. She was nameless. We were never given a name to use and we had never chosen one. I had hugged her, listened to her, examined her and engaged in short conversations with her, but I had never called her anything. My brothers were oblivious to her dying. I was intrigued about her life and felt sadness about not knowing her or naming her. What type of life had she really lived? Who was she? How was her relationship with her son? I would never know. My curiosity about the upbringing of my father grew.

  My father never really spoke about his family. It was as if they didn’t exist. He had left home at fifteen years of age when he secured a traineeship with Telecom. This was his ticket to financial independence, out of his family’s grip and of the very poorest suburbs of Sydney. Occasionally, I asked questions, but I only got only general responses, designed to end the conversation, which always succeeded.

  “I left my family behind so I could make a new life for myself,” he might say, or “I made a new life for myself and this is my family now.”

  To end my queries he might say something like “You don’t need to know what happened in my past. Your mother and you four children are my life now.” I was careful never to intrude too much and get him off side or angry, so I would leave it at that.

  *

  My mother had provided clues for me, about my father’s life, before my grandmother’s death. Every three or four months my mother would say, “Stanley, it’s about time you called your mother, isn’t it?” This went on for years. My mother’s requests became more insistent and louder over the weeks until my father eventually picked up the phone to dial the number. He would have a five minute conversation and then report back that everything was fine with his relatives. We were never asked to talk to them. My mother was happy with this until three months later when the pattern was repeated. In a weak moment, my mother told me about my half-cousin’s father: he had boiled alive a pet rabbit that belonged to one of his children to “teach him a lesson.” On hearing this, my ears grew and my eyes popped at the sheer thought of it. I was filled with fear.

  “Don’t tell your brothers,” she said.

  That was one of the few times that my mother had shared some information with me and not my brothers. Her body language suggested that maybe she wished she hadn’t told me. So disturbing was this story that I restrained myself from bragging to my brothers. I felt so relieved I was not in a live-pet-boiling family. I was so lucky, really lucky to have a good family.

  Rodney never did come to visit. Our visits to Liverpool ceased after my grandmother died, but my questioning increased. Why were there so many poor people and so many rich people, right here in Coolah and in Sydney? Why was Ethiopia plagued with famine, civil unrest and a corrupt government, which left babies starving? I watched Live Aid, at Wembley in London, on television. The musicians Bob Geldof and Bono staged a huge concert in order to raise funds and bring attention to the famine in Ethiopia. I realised that other people didn’t agree with these inequalities. Why was Australia a rich country compared to Ethiopia? The seed had been planted for my interest in social justice and equality. It grew stronger inside me.

  *

  Mrs Turner was a person who I saw constantly when I was growing up. I never got to know her beyond an exchange of pleasantries, as with so many other people in Coolah. Mrs Turner delivered all of Coolah’s mail on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Children called her the postie lady. Her means of transport was a postie bike. She worked in the post office building on Thu
rsdays and Fridays, when a male postman delivered the mail. Interestingly, I have no recollection of his face or name; maybe because Mrs Turner’s face stood out, literally, like no other face in Coolah. Mr Turner belted his wife and everyone in the township knew it. The neighbours surrounding the Turner home had heard blood curdling screams, thumps and the sound of a body slamming against a hard wall. They shared this valuable knowledge with other townies, naturally, out of earshot of Mr Turner. Secondly, Mrs Turner’s slender face was often black and blue with bruises, and it was swollen more often than not. In my teenage years, the physical evidence was before me, less than a metre away, as I bought a stamp or collected the mail. There was no escaping it. As I glanced at Mrs Turner’s face, I knew what Mr Turner had been up to. His violence was very confronting, yet unavoidable. It made my blood boil. I not only hated Mr Turner, I feared him.

  If when I arrived home from school the mail was in the mailbox, then I collected it and went inside. If the mail was yet to be delivered, I waited on the front lawn to catch the postie lady. I always snuck a look at her face, as she slowed her motorbike. I tried to see her eyes and see for myself where the injuries were up to. If the injuries were visible on her face, it meant she had received a giant belting, as her large-lens sunglasses gave her great eye coverage. “Thank you,” I would say, as I walked inside hating Mr Turner. At other times when I went to the post office and I knew I would see Mrs Turner, my hands would became sweaty and my body flinched with nervousness. As I purchased a stamp I would check Mrs Turner’s face to see if it was healing, or if Mr Turner had delivered a new injury. If I noticed her face had retreated to a normal size I would feel relieved. If she had sustained a new facial injury, I would try extra hard not to stare at it, but look at her in both eyes, not just one. As she looked down to open the drawer and tear off a stamp, I had a moment, just a moment, to examine any new injuries. One day—oh what a belting she had copped. As she looked back up to complete our transaction, I again concentrated on both eyes, not one.