Too Afraid to Cry Read online

  Seven

  For the school summer holidays, Mum would pack the car, and we would travel through Adelaide to a shack at Sellicks Beach. The shack was owned by Pastor Albrecht, who had worked with the Aboriginal people at Hermannsburg Mission Station in Central Australia. He was always kind to Big Brother and me.

  Mum and Dad had other friends too. An old fisherman taught us to spot schools of fish from up on the cliffs. We would race him to the beach, then wait for him to catch up, to pull the fish from the net. He always gave us some to take back to Mum.

  Another old man came to visit us when we were there, and he would invite us to go and raise a flag on a pole outside his shack. It would be early in the day, and all us kids would stand to attention and give a perfect salute. We didn’t understand why we did that.

  Sellicks was a wonderful beach, and one of the few beaches in South Australia that you could drive your car onto. At the shack we would pack the car with food and drink, some towels, and toys, before heading to the beach for the whole day.

  Dad wasn’t working with the cows. He employed a workman to run the farm while he was away. It was the only time of the year that Dad relaxed and had time to play with us kids. He would swim with us in the ocean, wearing the inner tube of a tyre around his chest. He couldn’t swim, but he knew we were excited, so he let us throw ourselves all over him. After lunch we would all walk along the beach looking for crabs in the rock pools. We also played beach cricket and tennis, but we could never beat Dad. He was too good at sports.

  At night-time Big Brother and I would play board games with Mum and Dad. Our favourite games were draughts, memory, and monopoly.

  During those weeks we would do day trips around the Fleurieu Peninsula in our yellow and white Vauxhall car. From the sides of the roads we picked wild blackberries which Mum would later make jam from. We went to the strawberry farm and picked our fill of sweet, ripe strawberries. We drove to Cape Jervis and bought fresh snapper from the fishermen. We would picnic by the lighthouse and stare across the seawater at Kangaroo Island, hoping to make it there one day.

  One year, down at the beach, Grandma was given an HR Holden sedan by her son Wilfred, Mum’s brother from Darwin. He was a teacher and visited Mum every Christmas holidays. They always laughed a lot together. As kids we thought he was a bit bossy, and that he should stop being like a teacher and just enjoy his holidays and let us enjoy ours! His wife, Aunty Margaret, was nicer, and quieter. She was a librarian at Darwin High School. She was happy that I read so many books.

  Uncle Wilf taught Grandma how to drive her new Holden on Sellicks Beach. He hammered in star pickets so she could learn parking. Us kids stayed in the shallows watching. We were glad the beach was so wide that Grandma had heaps of space to practise in. It was all a bit scary: Grandma had just turned seventy years old. Everyone was proud when she got her licence.

  Those were my best childhood days, even if I had to wear the same bathers year in, year out!

  Daisy Chains

  A family of giants live

  At the end of the street

  Down the avenue of trees

  Next to the tennis courts

  Past the empty house where

  A shark circles the sky

  My tongue is small

  I want to say hello

  I weave daisy chains and

  Leave them on the gate

  At dawn strings of sunflowers

  Conceal my front porch

  Through evening fog I glimpse

  Their ambling shadows

  I bathe inside their footprints

  After rain

  The mud darkens my mind

  I don’t go out after dark

  Eight

  The beach holidays went too quickly. We returned to school and sports and church and helping Mum and Dad with the chores around the farm. But it all felt different. My family did not know my secret about my uncle, but I did! I could feel my happiness running away, and sometimes the icy wind would blow in my head for no reason. Mum worked too much and seemed too busy to notice.

  Big Brother and I rebuilt the cubby house from straw bales, and added a tin roof. Dad helped us build it between the two pine trees in the driveway to our house. Every time I felt sad, I sat in the cubby, listening to the wind in the pine trees.

  Sometimes Big Brother and I made up songs that sounded like chanting. We drew circles on the dirt floor, and sung our songs over and over. It made us feel safer and stronger. My big brother told me he saw an old man’s face in the pine trees at night, from his bedroom window. We hoped it was God and that he liked our songs.

  On weekends my brothers and I would walk down to another grove of pine trees, down in the creek paddock. We pretended that one of the low tree branches was our horse. We took turns sitting astride the branch, while the others pulled it to one side before letting go. The quick rush sideways was fun, and it was difficult to hold on. We would play that game for hours, until we heard Mum calling us to pick up the eggs or bring the cows in from the paddock ready for milking. Mum always had a strong voice. We could hear her from anywhere on the farm.

  Another time I built a platform high up in the tallest pine tree. I spent hours up there, sitting in the soft breeze, hidden from sight by the pine needles and branches. I liked making friends with the birds, and sharing my secrets with them. Sometimes it seemed they talked back.

  Nine

  My foster brother had a friend who sometimes stayed overnight on the farm. He was a prefect at our school. I don’t know why Mum let him stay because he didn’t play games with us. He was much older than me, and when Mum and Dad were busy working on the farm he did things to me he wasn’t supposed to do. I knew it was bad what he did to me.

  It was like he knew I already had one secret like that. Suddenly I had two secrets. He told me not to say anything. And I couldn’t tell Mum because I was scared she would yell at me and smack me. I thought Mum and Dad would stop loving me if I told them.

  Our family prayed a lot. We prayed at breakfast time, we prayed before we ate lunch and we prayed around the table at supper-time. Mum and Dad took turns reading devotions after supper. We learnt all the Bible stories.

  Mum also prayed with us before we went to sleep. I shared my bedroom with my baby sister and each night our brothers would sit on our beds in their pyjamas, and Mum would lead our prayers. We said the same prayer every night. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take, and this I ask for Jesus’ sake. I liked it because I could say all the words. And I could tell Mum was happy with me. She always kissed us and tucked us into our beds before turning off the light. We loved those special times, feeling close to her.

  Mum often said that if you prayed a lot, bad things would not happen to you. I wondered what the ‘bad things’ could be. At night-time I slept afraid of the ‘bad things’. Often I dreamt about falling through the sky. I got scared about the things Uncle and the prefect had done to me. I wondered if the bad things they did to me were the same ‘bad things’ Mum talked about.

  I would quickly say another prayer.

  Frozen Tears

  this morning when

  her friends lifted the lid

  of the deep freezer

  Kumanara saw her first dugong

  slabs of red meat

  white fat and grey skin

  its severed head

  with frozen tears

  she took a photo

  later on the verandah

  the image showed

  a human face

  the old man next door

  giggled as he told her

  dugong always cries

  when you kill it

  Kumanara – bereavement name for a deceased family

  member or other family members who share that name.

  Ten

  Every school morning Mum drove us to the bus stop, which was about one mile away, near Hart Church. We caught the bus
with all the other farm kids, and attended Brinkworth Area School. I loved school, especially reading, spelling, and drawing.

  My teacher was really nice, and her daughter was in my class too. I thought my teacher must have been a special mother because she was so young compared to my mum. All the girls in our class played together at recess and lunchtime. The chain swings at the playground was our favourite place to gather and play. I also loved to run, and could run faster than anyone else my age. I don’t think my friends liked losing to me much.

  One day I was near the oval, quietly drinking from the water tank when I overheard some teachers talking about me. I heard them say that ‘my kind’ was very good at sports. It made me feel good. Mum always told us that if we were kind to others, then good things would happen. I felt happy that the teachers noticed that I was such a fast runner, because of ‘my kind’.

  My big brother always said not to hang around the oval, especially over near the sports shed. He told me that the older boys had once forced him into a metal locker, before pushing it over onto the floor and jumping on it. Then they finally let him out. I think they played other jokes on him as well because he didn’t like athletics much. He preferred music and tennis.

  My younger brother and sister were too young for school. I was happy that they were safe, playing at home in the kitchen with Mum looking after them.

  Eleven

  Dad encouraged us to play sport. He built a home-made high jump from iron droppers and bamboo, and stuffed bags with straw to soften our landing. Sometimes he played tennis with us, but we could never beat him. We loved those rare times when he played with us, but far too often he had to work hard around the farm.

  Sometimes I spent lunchtime at school practising for the inter-school sports day. I wanted to be the best at sport. I wanted to win a trophy, and to take it home to show Dad.

  One day I was at the long jump pitch, practising my running and jumping. A group of boys wandered over. Some of the older boys were the same boys who had frightened my big brother, but they were being nice to me, and someone handed me a soft drink. I was thirsty, and the cool drink tasted lovely. The boys were laughing. I wanted to feel happy too, but when I noticed that the prefect was with them I found it difficult. He didn’t say anything. I watched him through scared eyes as I finished the drink and held out the bottle. Then I saw my foster brother hiding at the back. He looked sad.

  I didn’t notice that they had begun to form a circle around me, but I did notice that the icy wind was blowing inside my head and was starting to freeze my guts.

  Someone held me while other hands pulled my underpants down. There was a strange noise in my ears, like a faraway scream, but I could still hear the sounds of those doing the laughing and teasing. They said they wanted to know if I was the same as other girls. Someone laughed, saying they didn’t know if ‘boongs’ were different. I was frozen with the icy wind roaring through my body. I didn’t want to know what a ‘boong’ was.

  When the school bell rang, I walked slowly back to class. My classmates looked at me, wondering why I was late. My teacher told me to hurry up and get back to my desk and to get my books out! My eyes felt funny. The teacher asked me if I felt sick. Grandma always said that we must never talk about ‘down there’, in our underpants. So I said nothing, and tried to do my school work.

  I didn’t like school as much after that. It felt like everyone could read my secrets, and no one really liked me anymore. I started spending more time in the library, and less time in the playground. The librarian made me feel special. She had a big smile, and spoke with an accent, and would put aside the latest editions of Asterix and Tintin for me. I felt safe with her.

  Mum encouraged me to join the Stamp Collectors Club. I collected stamps, soaking them in water to remove them from the envelopes. Dad even signed me up so I could receive stamps from around the world, and Mum bought me a stamp album. I liked the stamps from the Cocos Islands best, and I wished I could meet the people from there one day.

  I began finding it difficult to concentrate on things like stamp collecting, so I packed my stamp album away in my bedroom cupboard. The icy wind often froze my brain, and it seemed only angry thoughts could thaw my brain.

  Mum had bought us new racquets, with an autographed photo of Evonne Goolagong on the handle. Big Brother and I liked to play tennis in the backyard, and we used to smash the balls back and forth to each other for hours. We played until it was too dark to see the balls.

  Twelve

  Mum said it was wrong to talk back to your parents, but I couldn’t help the anger. I was tired of having to work so hard at home, I was sick of what had happened at school, and I was sick of the ice wind in my brain and guts.

  One afternoon angry words were falling out of my mouth. It sort of felt good talking back. I told Mum, ‘I’m not doing any more stinking chores,’ and then I yelled, ‘I don’t want to live here anymore!’ My brothers giggled in the background. Big Brother stood beside me and told Mum he didn’t want to live there anymore either.

  Mum swung around from the sink suddenly; she didn’t seem to realise she was holding the frying pan that she had just washed. I ducked out of the way as the pan caught Big Brother in the head. Everything and everyone in the room went quiet.

  Thirteen

  The back door slammed as I raced outside to the cubby house. I could hardly breathe. Our family had never had an argument like that before. We had never seen Mum’s face so angry before, and I knew it was my fault. I waited in the cubby for my big brother. He had raced to his bedroom after the frying pan caught him in the head.

  Big Brother showed me the bruise, and I felt the lump. I told him why I had gotten so angry. We both cried a bit. Big Brother said he would help me, and then he gave me his favourite matchbox car to keep. We sang one of our secret songs together. This time it seemed the songs came from the old man who lived in the pine trees.

  Our little brother helped Mum collect the eggs and bring the cows in to the dairy. Big Brother and I sat brooding and stubborn in our cubby house, until the evening shadows grew dark and long. Then we snuck from the cubby to the barn and across to the shed. We waited and watched. We saw Dad working in the dairy and knew he wouldn’t finish there for ages.

  We saw our foster brother coming down the hill in the ute; he must have been taking hay out to the top paddock for the cows. After he drove past us, he stopped the car, to get grain to take to the chooks. He hadn’t seen us, and we saw our chance.

  My big brother and I crept to the ute and hid behind it. We could hear Foster Brother filling the grain bins inside the chook house. I felt excited and strong. I also felt like laughing, so I rolled my lips under my teeth and pressed down hard. We didn’t want him to know we were there.

  He finished his chores and jumped into the driver’s seat. We popped up from our hiding place and yelled through the open window of the passenger side, and I saw the surprise on his face. I don’t know if he could hear what I was saying, I was yelling so loud, but his face showed surprise and fear. I told him what his friends had done to me, and that it was his fault for not looking after me.

  He turned the key in the ignition, and the ute lurched forward. Big Brother and I were caught, half hanging through the window squashed together and trying to hang on. After another lurch forward I slipped and fell flat on the ground. Then before I could get out of the way I felt the tyre run over my leg. The only thing I remember after that is hearing the sound of Big Brother screaming at the top of his voice as he ran to find Mum.

  panic attack

  a lavender bush has died

  in her eyes

  the bitterness of lime

  flavours her tears

  It burns to blink

  wire weed grows where logic

  once lay, breath choked

  bougainvillea thorns her tongue

  a tendril grabs the mobile

  phone, she begs to ring her

  brother

  in the hospital s
he watches

  the child skipping

  through abuse singing

  through the lies poking

  dolls eyes out climbing

  to the top of the tree

  rings her brother now

  he’s crying too

  Fourteen

  I don’t remember how I got from out near the chook shed to our house. I remember that the doctor drove out from Blyth and confirmed my leg was broken, and that I had to go to hospital in the city. Dad seemed very cross. Before we left he had to ring the neighbours to ask them to finish the milking. I didn’t say anything; I didn’t like Dad being cross with me. He rang his brother and arranged some of our older cousins to come and watch the other kids overnight. We loved our cousins, so I felt sad that I would be missing out on being with them.

  Big Brother’s brown eyes were wide open, looking at me, as I lay on cushions in the back seat of the car, ready for the trip to the hospital. I turned my eyes away; I didn’t feel strong anymore. My leg hurt real bad, and I heard Mum arguing with the Doctor. She started crying when he said he wouldn’t give me anything for the pain. I tried not to cry, and I didn’t like hearing Mum cry. I think my brothers and sister and cousins were crying too. Our foster brother was nowhere to be seen.