Shrinking, Part 1

Shrinking, Part 1

When my mother kicked me out of home at 14, I moved in with my father. He then took steps to gain custody of my 6 year old sister. If my memory is correct, he swooped in and took her from school one day, like a knight riding in on his white steed (which is a generous metaphor for a moustachioed accountant in a 1986 blue Mitsubishi Super Saloon).

I remember that summer was idyllic. Even though I was a long way from my friends, and from the beach, I was safe and secure. The house was peaceful, I wasn't afraid, there was routine, and no-one was drunkenly railing at me. No-one tried to hurt me, at least for a time.

Early in the New Year we moved in with Dad's girlfriend, who I will call Jill. She seemed nice, and I was glad that they were happy together. I don't really remember when the weirdness started, but I do know it happened early on. It is a big call to have your partner and his two children move in with you less than a year into a relationship, and I can appreciate that there would have been some speed wobbles. But Jill was something else.

Jill was 17 years younger than my father, but undeniably wore the pants in the relationship. She had a legion of rules and regulations that we had to comply with, overseeing the house like the commandant of a Nazi war camp - capricious and vicious. She was especially hard on the 6 year old who had hitherto lived with little discipline.

Her level of clean was something I have not encountered since - and I know my fair share of clean freaks. Most of all, she was very hard to please, and if she had decided she was going to be angry at you, she would find something to be angry about, or would create an impossible situation.

I once accidentally broke a glass jar before school. She flew into a rage and declared that I must return home that evening with an exact replacement, or not return at all. Dad was forbidden from giving me any money, and all I had was my bus fare home, a paltry amount. All day at school I fretted. I either walked or got a lift to my sister's school that afternoon (I picked her up each day) and we walked to the local supermarket. We only found plastic jars, which was just as well as that was all I could afford. I returned home with some trepidation and waited for her to return. She flew into another rage. Not only had I not bought an exact replacement, I had insulted her by buying plastic, not glass. She knew that it was beyond my means to provide her with what she wanted. Even if I had the money, I would have also needed a license and a car in order to drive about town to find the same jar, which for all I knew was no longer manufactured. She also knew that I had to return home as I had my sister in my care. Perhaps she simply couldn't see past her rage.

There were shades of "Mommy Dearest" in her ways. On another occasion she flew into a rage because Jane and I made toast for afternoon tea. She decreed that toast was breakfast food, therefore forbidden in the afternoon. We were, however, allowed to eat un-toasted bread. "Why not toast?", I asked. "Because toast makes a mess." "But we cleaned up the mess before you got home." "But I could smell the toast." That was the best explanation she could give for the blanket ban on toasted food in the afternoon. Perhaps slightly more bizarre was that she flew off the handle even though she had not yet established the toast rule. As odd as it was, if we had willfully flouted an actual rule, I could at least rationalise her reaction.

I had come from a freaky environment, and initially I coped with Jill's weirdness by telling myself that life with Rae would be much worse. And it would have been. With no palatable alternative, I quietly accepted my lot.

Something that people still find hard to believe is that under Jill's regime I was not allowed to know my phone number. The official reason was that if the unlisted number was known to me, my mother may trick it out of me and resume her crank calling and midnight phone threats. Implicit in this was that I was not to be trusted. Embarrassingly, even the school was given instructions to not let me know the number. Can you imagine what affect this had on the social life of a teenager? I lived a long way from my friends at my new school (I had to change schools when I moved in with Dad, and for odd reasons I was sent to a school out of zone even though it had a poor reputation) and if friends wanted to get hold of me, they had to drive around to my house (if they dared).

All that taken into account, perhaps I don't even need to mention that I was not permitted to call my friends - Jill did not want me tying up the phone line. Making calls only happened in the holidays when I was sure that Jill was not going to pop home from work. Even then the activity was fraught with danger. If Jill phoned to find the line engaged, she would be angry. Inevitably there would be some important call that she was expecting. With no answer phone, goodness knows what she expected would happen if I was not home! It is probably also needless for me to say that my friends had a hard time believing this story, and a couple of them thought I was simply being a snob, withholding my number on purpose. As the new girl at school, it didn't help my social standing.

I challenged Dad and Jill about it once when I was 16. I wanted to know what would happen if I got stuck somewhere and needed their help but had no number to call. Dad's response was "Dial 111" (NZ's emergency services number). That night, indignant, I went out to town with a friend, going into bars underage, and staying out late - things that were out of character for me, and that I knew put me at risk. At some point in the night, we strayed behind a building and a couple of guys chased after us while reaching into their jackets. We ran to safety, what little rebellion I had in me quelled. I arrived home in the wee hours, breaking one of the golden rules of our home - if you were out late, you were to return no sooner than breakfast time. There was no concern for where I might end up, just so long as home was not my destination any time after 11pm. This was because Jill's sleep might get disturbed. Inevitably, the next morning I was in trouble for the interruption.

I was not allowed to socialise on Friday nights as they were set aside for cleaning. I was also responsible for ironing to Jill's exacting standards. Between my father's business, attire, Jill's nurses uniform, and my school uniforms, I spent hours ironing every week. If the pile started to get too big for Jill's liking, she would get angry.

Jane understandably had some behavioural issues and by the time I had collected her after school and then cajoled her into the 20 minute walk home (which took significantly longer most of the time as she was reluctant), it was often 5pm when we walked through the door. Jill expected two things when she came home - that the washing had been brought in and that our bags were put away upstairs. On the days that we got home late, it was a race to accomplish these two tasks. If I heard Jill come down the driveway as we stepped into the house, I would have to decide which would make her more angry - washing on the line, or bags in the lounge as there was not time to attend to both.

Life in the house was fraught with anxiety. Anxiety that we would make a mess, not complete a task on time, not attend to a mess quickly enough, not complete a task to standard, say the wrong thing, or break some unspoken rule. One of those unspoken rules was that I was not allowed to converse directly with my father when Jill was in the house. If she heard us having a conversation, she would intervene, or get angry and inflict some kind of punishment, ostensibly unrelated to my conversation with Dad, but I got the message. I gave up trying to talk to him in the end.

At the time, Jill was charge nurse of the Ear Nose and Throat ward at Greenlane Hospital. Sometimes she would bring home videos of nose job procedures, and play them over dinner. The images were gruesome and confronting, but we knew better than to complain, or let her see that the images disturbed us. She also habitually fondled my father's genitals. Every evening she would thrust her hands down his pants, and would stare at us, willing us to look at her. I used to think it was a weird territorial display, but now I am not so sure - maybe she took some sadistic pleasure in creating unease. I learned to look away, but like the toddler who is ignored, she would escalate until she got attention - trying to lure me into conversation while she carried on her foreplay. On good days, she would just give up.

She sucked her thumb and threw tantrums. I later learned that during some of those tantrums, she physically assaulted my father. She also sneakily assaulted my younger sister in private. I guess I was lucky in some respects. The worst I had from her was a request, via my father, that when I returned from my after school job at night, that I squat and pee outside as the tinkle of my urination disturbed Jill's sleep.

I think that is enough for one blog post. Stay tuned for part two ...