THE TIP OF THE BRIMSTONE - PART 7
TIMELINE OF ABUSE – PART SIX
1988
Year Ten was a nightmare. I don’t even remember who the homeroom teacher
was. I think it was a guy called Mr ‘Craig’. He had ginger hair and suggested
we put rat-poison in our lunches so when they got stolen he’d know who was
doing it because they’d get sick. Theft of lunches and property was a huge
problem at the school. The transitioned from a Private Secondary School to a
Public Technical-High School system was not easy. There was no one-to-two hour
assemblies every Wednesday or Religious Education classes. [DELETED] College
hadn’t taught real shop classes. I had no idea what I was doing. All of my
things were stolen on the first day, and I was set upon and beaten up by the
school bullies every day for the first week. Their favourite attacks were
dead-legs and dead-arms. A kid called ‘Russ’ and two others called ‘Nelson
Wevil’ and ‘Putz’ would pin you in a corner and drive their knee into your
thigh, then the other one, until you could no longer stand, then stomp on your
ribs and head. ‘Shane McMoron’ preferred to just punch you in the arm or crotch
as hard and often as he could, multiple times at once if opportunity presented
itself.
Others would form mobs and shout “stacks-on”. Sometimes there’d be as
many as a dozen kids crushing you into the ground. ‘Bret Charles’, a kid that
lived up the road from ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’s’ farm, was one of the bigger
problems. He’d target kids that had just transitioned to the school and pick
fights with them. I’m pretty sure he was using steroids. He’d appear with two
of his mates and single out a victim. If the victim fought back, he’d get his
mates to help out. The teachers mostly ignored what was happening because they
didn’t want to get involved. I learned to fight back real fast. I got a
reputation for being able to take a beating and keep going, giving as good or
better than I got even though I was smaller than most of the aggressors. They
learned to leave me be. ‘Micha’ and I had to catch a bus from the property. It
was twenty-minutes outside town, but the bus route took almost twice that long
as it wound through the area. ‘Bret Charles’ spent every morning and afternoon
demanding a girl called ‘Lucy Warpost’ “show me ya tits” or “spread ya legs so
I can play with ya pussy” or something similar. It never stopped. Anybody that
told him to cut it out was challenged to a fight at school and beaten up with
the assistance of a couple of his mates. It was a hostile, unpleasant
environment. I struggled to adjust and make friends. A lot of the kids actually
liked me, but I always found it hard to imitate their behaviour and fit in.
The task was made harder by ‘Lilith’ terrorising any girl that spoke to
me. There were a few that worked in town or would see me and say hello while I
was carrying whatever ‘Lilith’ had purchased. “Who’s your little friend?”
‘Lilith’ would condescend, a nasty look in her eye. Then ‘Lilith’ would tell
them I wet the bed until I was five, or sometimes older, and start telling her
stories to belittle me or make me look horrible. Most of them were recycled
from what ‘Micha’ did. While she projected ‘Micha’s’ worst qualities onto me,
she’d build him up by projecting my better qualities onto him. He would copy
this behaviour too, assimilating it into his own warped personality. Whatever
she said to those girls, they’d stop speaking to me. Most of them avoided me
altogether. If they didn’t, ‘Lilith’ would escalate the nastiness and refer to
them as a “little whore!” The only exception was a girl called ‘Sheena’.
‘Lilith’ thought she was lovely and insisted I date her. ‘Sheena’ already had a
boyfriend and I wasn’t interested in her. Her personality and behaviour
reminded me of ‘Lilith’. It is incredibly difficult to fit-in when you lack the
social development and confidence to adapt to new environments, but what
‘Lilith’ did was sabotage me right from the beginning. I never used the phone
to call people I knew. I made the mistake of calling a girl in my class once to
ask what the homework assignment was because I’d lost my copy. A few days
later, that girl stopped talking to me, avoiding me whenever our paths crossed.
‘Lilith’ found out from ‘Sheena’ that one of the girls in my class was having a
birthday and made me send a card. ‘Lilith’ posted it and that girl also avoided
me from that moment on. I have no idea why, but I can make an educated guess.
With this kind of behaviour from ‘Lilith’ and never being allowed to socialise
outside school hours, I was being isolated. Back on ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’s’ farm,
life was even worse.
They had another child, a son they named ‘Adam C’. Once again, he
arrived early with complications. ‘Lilith’s’ father sent down stock feed and
helped establish fences. The place was run down and salt in the air from being
so close to the coast caused everything to rust. When it rained, the ground
turned to slush six-to-eighteen inches deep. ‘Bull’ ran up huge debts in that
first year. Instead of working on the farm he’d sneak out a gate onto a road
and head into town to gamble at the TAB. ‘Lilith’ had gone on a spending spree
and purchased new furniture and white goods. Then ‘Lilith’ got a call from the
bank asking her to take control of the farm-loan and finances. ‘Bull’ had lost
eighty-thousand dollars at the TAB. The bank dishonoured his cheques and when
he confronted them, demanding they give him more money, they told him he
wouldn’t get any more until he paid some back. He had tried to write them a
cheque, using the cheque-book the bank had given him, to pay them some money.
They decided a village somewhere was looking for him and contacted ‘Lilith’.
She had been calling him “idiot” for so long that his own children had stopped
calling him ‘Bull’ and now did the same, and now the bank had provided proof.
‘Bull’s’ behaviour became more violent after that. ‘Micha’ and I weren’t there
when that happened. ‘Claud’ had organised for ‘Micha’ and me to visit.
‘Claud’s’ parents paid for the plane tickets and we’d flown to Brisbane.
‘Claud’ picked us up and we stayed with him in his rental property at [DELETED], near [DELETED]. ‘Claud’ didn’t spend much time with us. He kept going
to work or went out “Tom-catting” and left us to entertain ourselves.
Tom-catting was his expression for dating several women at once. He was still
fornicating with a number of women all at the same time, and ‘Micha’ and I were
warned to never mention this in front of whichever one we visited. The rental
property was just the most recent. He moved around a lot. Staying in one place
too long led to “complications” with women who “didn’t get the hint” once he’d
seduced, used and discarded them. He was insatiable. Even on the way to meet one
of his women for lunch he’d be hitting on the poor teenager behind the cash
register of a shop he went into to get things. Some of the girls didn’t look
older than fifteen but he’d still ask them to come out with him for dinner. He
was thirty-five at the time. The visit really didn’t help us bond. ‘Claud’
refused to answer questions about his other children. ‘Lilith’ said he had at
least three others. She had pointed out a woman at the [DELETED] Show and said,
“That’s ‘Karen’ [DELETED]. She and ‘Claud’ have a son called ‘James’. He’s
about your age and looks just like you. She married a man with the last name
‘Morton’, had four kids with him, and then abandoned all of them and ‘James’
with him.” The response I got to my questions was very clear. “That’s none of
your business,” ‘Claud’ snapped, his eyes filled with the threat of impending
violence, “so never speak about it again.”
There was always a feeling of duplicity about ‘Claud’. He always
pretended to be someone he was not, and the glimpses of what he really was were
very disturbing. He had a photo on his desk at the open office of the
Twentieth-Century Real Estate office where he worked. There was ‘Micha’ and me,
in matching clothes when we were about two and four. I asked him why he had it
there. It seemed very odd given he never bothered to even remember us on
birthdays or Christmas. “People trust a man who has kids,” he said, smiling in
a way that was disturbing, “especially if they are young and he appears to be a
devoted and loving father.” The photo had faced out, toward whoever sat down,
rather than in, toward him. I saw why while he spoke to a client. ‘Micha’ and I
had to wait in that office for about an hour while he finished some work.
Eventually he just sent us to look at the shops nearby. The client had seen the
picture and picked it up. He and ‘Claud’ chatted about ‘Claud’s’ sons. He
didn’t point us out. It faced out to get the client to ask the question, to
initiate a relationship based on the trust they gave him based on his
deception. I had always thought ‘Lilith’ had lied about who ‘Claud’ was.
As a child I always hoped he’d come and take me away from ‘Lilith’ one day, so
I could go and live with his parents and be near my cousins. After ‘Micha’ and
I were sent back to Victoria I realised ‘Claud’ was as bad as ‘Lilith’ was; a
vicious, deceitful, self-centred scumbag.
The week ‘Micha’ and I returned, ‘Bull’ shot one of his sheep. It had
broken its leg a few days earlier and he had set the dogs on it. It limped
around for a few days, then just stood there, unable to move or eat. Crows
pecked out its eyes. ‘Bull’ finally put it out of its misery with one of his
many rifles, then went and got it, hung it up in the woolshed and gutted and
skun it. He used it for dog’s meat but never covered it. After that first
night, it was flyblown, rotten and stinking. ‘Bull’ ordered me to give it to
the dogs. I didn’t. It was disgusting and cruel. The next day he caught me as I
cut and carried the firewood for the night. I had to cut and carry twelve
pieces down to the house each night, set and keep the fire burning, and sit by
the door to fetch wood as needed. ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ sat a metre from the fire
and complained they were too hot, so the window at my back had to be open to
let cool air in, every night. The freezing wind from the coast and snow on the
mountains left me shivering while they kept nice and warm. I never saw his
fist. It hit me in the back of the head and I went down, the wood landing on my
ribs. He grabbed me by the back of the neck and drag-marched me to the shed. He
shoved my face into that grey, rotten, stinking meat, inches from the fat
crawling maggots and screamed unintelligible words at me. He was furious
because I hadn’t given that vile meat to the dogs. He watched me carry it
around and drop it into their bowels. The dogs sniffed it and backed off,
looking up at me with accusation in their eyes. Why was I giving them this
filth? ‘Bull’ was building up to something nasty.
His children had ratted him out before ‘Micha’ and I had gone to visit
‘Claud’ in Queensland. ‘Lilith’ had been forced to get work at the [DELETED]
hospital to make money to pay off the debts. ‘Bull’ was meant to look after
their children while ‘Micha’ and I were at school. But when we’d get off the
bus, the three of them would be wandering around on their own. ‘Lara A’ was
four. She was the eldest. When ‘Micha’ and I asked where ‘Bull’ was, they said
he’d gone. He left every morning, after ‘Lilith’ went into town for work. He’d
drive into town the other way when she was out of sight. He’d been going into
the TAB. When we asked who was looking after them, ‘Lara A’ said “You.” ‘Bull’
blamed me for ‘Lara A’ telling ‘Lilith’. She hadn’t told her directly. She had
just said that she and the other kids got scared when ‘Bull’ left them on their
own. She had asked if I could stay with them during the day. They did not like
‘Micha’ that much because he tended to bully them. It made sense though. I had
been the one that looked after them most of the time, and made time to play
with them when I could, but ‘Bull’, ‘Lilith’ and ‘Micha’ either ignored them, bullied
them or treated them as an inconvenience. I didn’t want them growing up like I
did: alone, scared, timid, no self-esteem, hungry, abused, and so socially and
psychologically damaged they never felt like they fit in, or ended up adopting
the same violent and deranged personality traits of their parents, like ‘Micha’
had.
1989
My Year Eleven home-room teacher was Mr ‘Rolls’. About half of the kids
from Year Ten had dropped out by then, and by the following year there’d only
be thirty-two of us left, seven guys and twenty-five girls. My life went to
hell pretty quick that year. ‘Lilith’ had purchased a six-thousand dollar four
wheeler for ‘Micha’, for when he “checked on the animals”. That was his duty on
the farm. He got to race around on that thing after school and on the weekends
while I did all the manual tasks. I wasn’t allowed near it. In addition to all
the usual jobs, ‘Lilith’ had me plant rows of trees to form a series of
windbreaks, then carry buckets of water back and forward along the two-hundred
meter runs every second day to make sure they didn’t die. It was hard work, and
in the cold I would shiver so hard my teeth would chatter. My hands would cramp
and go numb after stinging with the cold, and the ice-cold wind would make my
bones ache. The others would all be inside, by the fire while I worked. In the
summer I’d have to mow the lawn, even if it was just dirt. ‘Lilith’ would watch
me or check to see if there were tracks and footprints from the mover wheels as
I’d pushed it around the yard. The actual lawn cutting wasn’t important, only
the control.
The year had started well. I’d organised to go and visit ‘Claud’s’
parents in the last two weeks of the Christmas holidays before school started
again. ‘Micha’ didn’t go over. He and I often worked during the holidays,
working in the yards, paddocks and sheds, carting hay, ploughing
paddocks, moving, raking and baling hay, making fences, and doing all the jobs
that needed to be done. ‘Edward’ would pay us wages, albeit half of what other
workers got, but pay all the same. He’d put the money into our bank accounts so
we’d have some spending money or, in my case, something when we turned eighteen
and got given access to the account. The actual wages were the money he always
put into the account. Over the years, he had put about a thousand dollars every
year, on average. When we were smaller, it was only a few hundred dollars, but
as inflation changed the value of money, he put more in. ‘Micha’ told me that
year that he wanted to stay because someone down the road had asked him to do
some tractor work. “Money’s more important than family,” he said. It always
stuck with me that comment. “But tell everyone I really wanted to be there but
couldn’t get out of work.” I wasn’t going to lie for him. When they asked, I
just told them what he said. I didn’t like liars, or any kind of hypocrisy. If
I enabled that kind of thing, I was no better than them who lied or behaved in
a hypocritical manner. ‘Micha’ was there and ‘Lorenzo’ brought his girls over
to stay. ‘Myshell’s’ sisters, ‘Dara’ and ‘Jas’ hadn’t visited for years. ‘Dara’
had taken off by then. From what I heard, she didn’t speak to anybody in her
family, very often, sometimes not for months at a time, and ‘Jas’ was involved
with a Baptist religious group and spent most of her time with them.
One day, when my cousins were all still sleeping, I asked ‘Elisa’ if we
could throw a surprise party for ‘Myshell’. She would be fourteen in a couple
of weeks and I had never been able to celebrate a birthday with any of my
cousins. Grandma thought that was a great idea and secretly organised it with
‘Lorenzo’. What I didn’t know was that ‘Myshell’ had spoken with Grandma and
our cousins to organise a birthday for me. My birthday was only a few days
after ‘Myshell’s’. I had never had a party before. It was the best birthday I
have ever had. Actually, it was the best day of my life. It really felt like I
was part of a family, like people wanted me in their lives. ‘Lorenzo’ and his
wife ‘Wanda’ came over with their girls, and ‘Myshell’s’ mother arrived with
‘Jas’. Grandma and Grandpa seemed really happy. But, of course, I had to go
back to ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’s’ for school, and when ‘Lilith’ found out I’d gone
over there and my grandparents had thrown a birthday party for me, she was
furious. ‘Lilith’ seemed to get even worse, her spitefulness escalating and
building-up through the year until it all blew-up into the worst acts of
violence and defamatory vindictiveness she had ever carried out.
‘Bull’ did a number of stupid things that year. He painted the inside of
the tank that provided water to the house with black paint that smelled like
bitumen. It was meant to stop leaks. He didn’t wait for it to dry though. The
water stank and tasted of the stuff for weeks, as did we all after showering.
He purchased a milking cow to save money on milk but it had mastitis and the
milk tasted vile. Nobody would drink it so ‘Lilith’ purchased store milk
anyway. They didn’t want to waste it though, so that’s what I had to use. It
was that or go without breakfast, and since I was only allowed two pieces of
bread for lunch, I lost weight real quick. ‘Micha’ rarely made his lunch. He
usually had tuckshop. He had money. ‘Lilith’ let him access his bank account
and the money our grandparents put into it. Not me. I wasn’t allowed to access
mine. I never had money. ‘Micha’ also got paid for jobs with the neighbours.
Not me though. ‘Lilith’ made it very clear I wasn’t allowed to do that because
any work the neighbours had was for ‘Micha’ only. I wanted to work in town
after school. The pay would be five dollars an hour for two hours each week
night, but ‘Lilith’ said I’d have to pay her and ‘Bull’ twenty dollars for fuel
to come and collect me after work. It was another means to isolate me. No
money, no socialising, no chance to learn independence or escape from them even
for a moment.
But it went beyond that. ‘Lilith’, and ‘Bull’ by his limited intellect
and inability to understand what she was doing, set about dehumanising me. My
‘chores’ required carrying water in buckets for around an hour to water trees
in plantations, then cutting wood and carrying it, by hand to the house. This
had to last the night and ‘Lilith’ liked the fire to roar. When ‘Lilith’s’
father saw me doing that once, he was shocked. I’d make about six trips, the
wood piled in my arms weighing about twenty-five kilograms, walking about a
fifty metres at a time. I weighed twice that. He purchased a wheelbarrow
for me, but a week later ‘Bull’ had destroyed it, smashing the wheel and
telling me not to be lazy. The cold, lack of food and constant physical and
psychological abuse left me malnourished, thin, tired and constantly shivering.
The physical labour I was required to complete every day was exhausting me, but
the psychological abuse was taking a toll too. ‘Bull’ had ruined the dogs for
yard work so he would bellow his unintelligible demands at me to move sheep
around. ‘Micha’ thought he was in charge too. He never worked and, instead,
would stand and shout contrary orders at me. It made life hard. If I didn’t do
what ‘Bull’ wanted, he’d hit me. If I didn’t do what ‘Micha’ wanted, he’d tell
‘Lilith’ and she’d hit me. And all the while there were insults and mockery
about how “stupid”, “lazy” and “useless” I was. How “yer only useful fer
women’s work, an ya can’t even get that right, bookwork hands!” And it didn’t
end there.
The house had an inside bathroom, but it also had an outside toilet too.
You had to walk half-way around the house to reach it and the wind that howled
across the flats was freezing most of the time so you’d be shivering when you
got there. It was like an ice-box in that tiny room. The toilet flushed with
dirty brown water and to get it to do that, you had to turn the tap on. There
was no handle, and ‘Bull’ and ‘Lilith’ refused to get one. You had to use an
old, rusted shifting wrench. The only person who used that toilet was me. I
wasn’t allowed to use the one inside. “You stink,” ‘Lilith’ would say to me.
‘Bull’ and ‘Micha’ would say the same. So rain, hail or shine, I would have to
go outside to use the toilet. It was just another tactic to dehumanise me. I
was less than them. And their attitude to those they considered of less
importance from themselves would become more apparent that year. The only
respite I got that year was a visit from ‘Myshell’. Her mother, ‘Maurisa’, had
tried to organise for me to visit [DELETED] for the mid-year holidays, but
‘Lilith’ made excuses. In the end, ‘Lilith’ agreed to let ‘Myshell’ come and
stay for a week on the farm in [DELETED].
At first, ‘Lilith’ was very friendly toward ‘Myshell’. She set ‘Myshell’
up in the bungalow behind the house and kept a very close eye on her. ‘Micha’
spent the first few days trying to get her to have sex with him. “She wants me
to f**k her,” he kept telling me. “She’s our cousin,” I tried to tell him, “and
I sincerely doubt it.” ‘Micha’ spent most of her time with me. She didn’t like
the way ‘Micha’ kept trying to touch her or the way he’d just walk into her
room. ‘Lilith’ noticed ‘Myshell’s’ responses to ‘Micha’ and started to get
nasty. “I don’t like the way you look at ‘Myshell’,” she snapped at me one day.
“You’re disgusting! She’s your cousin! You’re just like ‘Claud’! Keep it in
your pants, you vile little bastard!” ‘Myshell’ had heard what ‘Lilith’ had
said and said, “He’s not the problem! ‘Micha’s’ the one that’s trying to do
that!” ‘Lilith’ had rounded on her and unleashed one of her insane tirades, the
word “whore” being a frequently used phrase in an accusation about ‘Myshell’
leading on “my perfect son” and “mocking him” by pretending she liked someone
“as stupid and pathetic as ‘Lee’!” ‘Myshell’ never visited again after that.
‘Lilith’ had got on the phone and told ‘Maurisa’ to come and get her, the
one-sided conversation including all manner of slanderous accusations about me
and ‘Myshell’. Clearly ‘Lilith’ didn’t realise that ‘Myshell’ wasn’t into guys.
I think that, maybe, I was the only one that knew. I often wonder what it was
that made her decide other girls were better company.
But as unhinged as ‘Lilith’ was, she got worse. Her mood became more
volatile. She didn’t have a lot of contact with others by then. She never had
any real friends. Most people found her unsettling or stopped speaking to her
within years, months or just weeks of meeting her. As a result, she didn’t
switch between real friendly and polite to her psycho setting as much. She just
stayed on her default of generally unpleasant, manipulative, spiteful and
vicious. The stupidity and selfishness of ‘Bull’ didn’t help. With him behaving
the way he did, ‘Lilith’ wasn’t getting what she wanted. She just got nastier.
‘Lara A’ was almost four at the time and desperate for affection from her
parents. ‘Lilith’ treated her the same way she had treated me as a child;
ignored and brutalised the poor wee child if she got in her way. ‘Lara A’ was a
tiny, skinny, half-starved little thing. I tried to make her life happier than
mine had been as much as I could. But one day, ‘Lara A’ had been climbing on
‘Bull’ while he sat in his chair, directly in front of the television, reading
the racing guide in his newspaper. ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ had chairs beside one
another, in front of the fire, divided by the archway into the kitchen. ‘Lara
A’ had wanted to sit with ‘Bull’. ‘Bull’ just screamed his incoherent noise at
her and shoved her off the arm of his chair. ‘Lara A’ had fallen and smashed,
head-first, into the floor. There had been a horrible crack and she just lay
there, then her eyes rolled back and she shook like she was having a fit.
‘Lara A’ had been out of it for about fifteen minutes, then she started
to cry. She was in a lot of pain and had a huge bruise on her head the next
day. ‘Bull’ had just ignored her and continued reading the racing guide in his
newspaper. ‘Lilith’ just sat in her chair and said “You idiot! Look what you
did!” She rarely got up unless she had no other choice. She must have been
about ninety kilograms by then, all packed into about 5’ 9”. Years of
overeating, excessive abuse of alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes, and sleeping
in until noon had taken its toll on her. But when ‘Lara A’ started to convulse,
‘Lilith’ suddenly looked worried. “Now I’m going to have to take her to the
hospital for a check-up!” She snarled at ‘Bull’. “How am I going to explain
this?!” She never did take ‘Lara A’ to the doctor. She seemed more concerned
about the potential the incident would be investigated by some agency dealing
with child abuse than she was about ‘Lara A’s’ health. ‘Bull’s’ gambling losses
and general stupidity were beginning to cause problems in their marriage, and
the fact that ‘Lilith’ had to go back to work didn’t help. She hated having to
work. A few days later, the horror of Tiananmen Square was broadcast across the
news. I made the mistake of saying how horrible it was. “They deserved it!”
‘Bull’ had snarled, that mad gleam in his eye becoming more insane by the day.
“The government had no choice,” he added, “those students went maaaaad!” His
ranting always trailed off into unintelligible sounds. “Besides,” he had
continued with his tirade, “there’s plenty more gooks where they came from!”
‘Bull’ and ‘Lilith’, and then ‘Micha’ over time, were incredibly racist.
I don’t know what came over me. I thought it was wrong and said as much.
"They just want democracy,” I said, “the right to live without fear and
oppression.” ‘Lilith’ had snarled at me, “Shut-up, you stupid little bastard!”
I was angry. I had been getting angry for years. I was sick of the bullying,
the abuse, being hungry, being tired all the time, being unable to concentrate
at school, just wishing I could live with my grandparents or die. “Why,” I
asked, “what are you gonna do? Beat me up?” Next thing I knew, ‘Bull’ had
launched out of his chair. He leapt up on the couch I was sitting on. He
planted a foot on each side of my legs and just started swinging his fists into
my head. Left, right, left, right, left, right. I counted five blows to each
side of my head, right into each temple before the shock and pain began to fade
into a numb feeling of impacts. Everything began to get foggy and dark. ‘Bull’
was one-hundred and twenty kilos at the time, and 6’4”, but I was only
fifty-eight kilos, 5’9”, and didn’t have any of his strength. I pushed back and
he stepped off the couch, unbalanced, but when I tried to push past, he kept
going. ‘Lara A’ (their eldest child) was screaming, in tears, begging ‘Bull’ to
stop. ‘Micha’ just stood and watched, smirking. ‘Lilith’ came back from the
kitchen, with a rolling pin, and said, “If you fight back again, I’ll hit you
with this, you stupid little shit!” I must have blacked out.
When I looked around again, everything was blurred and sounds were hard
to hear. ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ were arguing about what to do. ‘Lilith’ didn’t
want to take me to the hospital. She was screaming something about not taking
the blame for what ‘Bull’ had done, and he was threatening to tell the docs
what she had been doing. I crawled through the empty frame of the renovated
section of the house that hadn’t been completed at the time to the room I had
been given to use. The next day my face was swollen so much one of my eyes was
puffed closed. I had a massive headache and felt like I was going to vomit. I
didn’t try to find anything for breakfast but ‘Bull’ was waiting. He stood
there and smirked at me. “Mornin,” he said, same as always. Unless you
responded, he’d get aggressive and then violent. I ignored him and walked down
to the front gate to wait for the bus. It was coming around the corner when
‘Bull’ caught up with me. He jammed his fingers into my chest, poking me
repeatedly, and slapped his hand across the side of the head. I nearly passed
out with the pain. “When I greet ya in the mornin’,” he snarled, “you be polite
back or I’ll smack yer one! An if ya try ta tell anyone wot I dun then I’ll
give ya more of the same and make sure ya never tell anyone anyfing else agen!”
As the bus got closer, he stormed off. He was too much of a coward to let
anyone other than ‘Lilith’, ‘Micha’ and his own children see what he did.
At school, I spent most of the day in a daze. My headache was so bad I
just wanted to sleep. ‘Trevor’, one of the kids in my year at the time, said he
heard what had happened and was shocked by the massive lumps around my temples,
and the bruises starting to show. ‘Micha’ had been telling kids at the school
what had happened. They had all laughed about it and joined in with the mockery
‘Micha’ heaped upon me. When I got back to ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’s’ place that
day, ‘Bull’ wasn’t there. ‘Lilith’ bailed me up and said, “When ‘Bull’ gets
home, you better be on your knees begging for our mercy or you’ll get another
beating, and this time we won’t be so lenient!” She was so insane she believed
I had somehow been at fault. I told her I wouldn’t be staying. I was going to
get some clothes and find a way to get to ‘Edward’ and ‘Sharleen’s’ place.
“They don’t want anything ta do with you!” ‘Lilith’ had snarled. “I called them
and told them what you did!” I’d been stunned. “What I did?!” I said. “You can
tell them what you want,” ‘Lilith’ had smirked, a malicious, vindictive look in
her eyes, “they won’t believe you. I’ve been telling them for the last few
years you have a drug habit, and last night you attacked me and ‘Bull’! And
don’t even think about going to [DELETED]! I called ‘Claud’s’ parents and told
them the same thing! They don’t want you anywhere near them either!” I heard
‘Bull’s’ ute pull in then so I took off and hid in the scrub in the gutter by
the road about a kilometre away. I watched him come out and go into the shed,
then come out with one of his rifles, get in his ute and leave. When I snuck in
to get my bags, ‘Lilith’ was there. “Put them in the car,” she said, “I’ll take
you to the train.” At first I thought she must have organised for me to stay at
‘Edward’ and ‘Sharleen’s’ place, but it was just another ruse. She dumped me at
the [DELETED] caravan park. She’d used my bank account to pay for one week’s
rent of a caravan but didn’t give me any money. I wouldn’t even get access to
my bank account until I was eighteen.
And that’s where I stayed for the week. When Mr ‘Rolls’, the Year Eleven
and Twelve co-ordinator found out I was there, he called me into his office. I
told him everything. He said the most important thing was to get me to go back
to ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’s’ place so I could finish Year Eleven and Twelve. My
protests fell on deaf ears. He promised to get ‘Lilith’ to come in and mediate
a better arrangement to make sure the violence and abuse stopped. He never once
considered calling in the police. When the day came for the meeting, however,
he wasn’t available. He organised for Mr ‘Block’, the [DELETED] High School
Careers Advisor to mediate. It didn’t go well. ‘Lilith’ began by accusing me of
lying, claiming I was violent and aggressive, and I had attacked her and
‘Bull’, that they had only defended themselves. Then Mr ‘Block’ said, “I
completely understand. My son was like that. Sometimes children need to be beaten
to learn their place.” ‘Lilith’ looked as stunned as I felt for the briefest of
moments, then she got a vicious look in her eye as Mr ‘Block’ told us he would
leave us to talk alone for a few minutes. ‘Lilith’ turned to me when he left
and said, “When you come back, we’re going to make your life such a living hell
that what we’ve done so far will be like a picnic, and if you ever try to tell
anyone what we’ve been doing again, I’ll have you arrested and charged with
defamation! We’ll sue you for everything you have and get you thrown into
prison for the next twenty years!” When Mr ‘Block’ came back he said, “So, I
assume everything’s all sorted out now? Good.” And that was it. I got sent back
into that miserable shit-hole existence and the brutality and psychological
abuse got worse.
I failed that year, miserably. My plans to be an engineer vanished with
any hope of escape from ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’. My Physics results for the year
were 33%. My chemistry results were 11%. I got a D for English and failed the
mid-year exam because “you didn’t write about the topic”. I had actually spent
the time writing about what ‘Lilith’ and ‘Bull’ were doing to me and asked
whoever was reading my paper for help. Nobody spoke to me about it. They just
failed me. ‘Lilith’ hadn’t let me spend any of the school holidays with her
parents that year and when I went there for the Christmas break, they were
distant. ‘Sharleen’ had lost her marbles by then as the dementia set in. The
as-yet undiscovered tumour in her brain just kept growing and causing more
damage. She was safe, I suppose, in her own little world of not knowing who or
where she was. ‘Edward’ barely spoke to me. He kept looking at me with what
looked like disappointment. ‘Micha’ milked it all for what he could get. I was
confined to the house, looking after ‘Sharleen’ and doing all the domestic
tasks while ‘Micha’ got to go with our grandfather on whatever tasks needed
doing, learning about farming skills and constantly putting me down in front of
our grandfather and any visitors that came to see ‘Edward’ and ‘Sharleen’. And
ever since that particular beating I’ve suffered unpredictable, excruciating
and often debilitating headaches.
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