Shrinking, Part 2

Shrinking, Part 2

I have taken a long time to purge this second instalment. Writing about this stuff makes me wonder if I am being too negative and then I get coy. But, I thought about it, and figured my plan was to get my stories out there before they became too blurry. A lot of them just happen to be, er, not great.

I think our brains have a fairly good filing system. Archive bad data and move on. But the files still lurk back there and cast a shadow over day to day life that you may not be aware of. Until recently, I had underestimated the reach of that shadow. I have this idea tugging away at the back of my mind, that if I write the nasty bits down, my archives can be genuinely purged of a lot of that negativity, with me safe in the knowledge that there is a hard drive in some server out there storing them, unperturbed by the nature of content. And perhaps then I will feel more liberated. It seems to be working so far.

So back to the not so delightful Jill...

Jill could be quite pleasant when she chose to be. Despite that, Dad's work colleagues heaved a sigh of relief when she left him. Jill fancied herself as something of a vixen and her sexual overtures at work functions had earned her a reputation. One colleague told me that Dad was asked to get her to tone it down. They split in July of the last year of my Master's degree. Dad asked that no one tell me of the split until November - he didn't want to distract or upset me so close to the end of my studies. But while he believed the news was too bad to share, my well meaning older sister felt the news was too good not to share, and divulged the secret in August. Jill, on the other hand, with typically impeccable timing, called me with the news the day before an exam. I feigned surprise in November when I finally got the call from my father.

Jill married my father in April 1992, on the day of my mother's birthday. I am not sure whether the significance of the date occurred to my father when they booked the reception venue. Even if it did, I think it is unlikely he intended any slight. Venues can be hard to secure on a Saturday, so you can't be too picky. Rae had remarried the previous year, and clearly despised my father. That he should marry on her birthday should cause no hurt. At least, that would be true for a normal, functional human being.

Rae, on the other hand, is deeply narcissistic, so of course she believed the choice of date was all about her - a deliberate swipe. She and Rob threatened to crash the party, she even found out the location of the nuptials. The threats were credible enough for Dad and Jill to hire a security guard for the wedding. As cruel as Jill could be, no-one should fear for their own safety on their wedding day. I cannot recall whether or not Rae turned up. In fact, the wedding was largely unremarkable, aside from the dance I had with an uncle who kept on standing on my feet, and the dance I had with my sister's fiance who took the formal dancing part very seriously, and pressed me close to his chest. I blushed with utter embarrassment. I played a lullaby on the flute as Jill walked up the aisle. I duffed many notes - more blushing.

Leading up to the wedding, a radio station was giving away 91 return flights for two to Honolulu. Every letterbox in Auckland had a card put in it that had an individual number. On weekdays, the morning DJs would read out a range of numbers. The first person to call with a card that had a number within that range, won a trip. I checked with Dad and Jill whether they wanted the card and planned to participate in the competition. No, and no. So I asked if I could. Yes.

Each morning I turned the radio on during breakfast and listened for the numbers. One morning, as I walked to the radio to turn it on, Jill called out "Don't forget to turn on the radio!" When the numbers were called, the number on my card was in the range. I called up the station, got through, and passed the phone to my father with a whisper, "Have the trip for your honeymoon." I can't remember whether it was planned on my part, or impulse. Jill and Dad had planned not to honeymoon because of the cost, so it seemed like the nice thing to do. Jill did not make it feel that way at all.

I didn't look for gratitude, I was just quietly chuffed that I, a young girl of little means, could do something wonderful for my Dad. But Jill took the wind out of my sails. First it was "We never would have won that trip if I had not reminded you to turn on the radio that morning." Then it was, "This house belongs to your father and I, so that card belongs to us, not you. We are entitled to this holiday." And later, "This honeymoon has become a bit of a hassle - accommodation is expensive, and we had no plans to spend the money." Then, "Your father and I have already been to Honolulu before - it would have been much better to go somewhere else, but now we feel obliged to spend our money on a place we don't really want to go to." When they got back, she had this to offer: "The honeymoon was OK, but we would have preferred to have gone somewhere else."

Without having opened my mouth, I was berated bit by annoying bit for what I did. She really was a complete nutter. The worst part was Jill describing to me how the low point of her holiday was when she was giving my father a blow job and room service barged into the room. She had his ejaculate in her mouth at the time. She then added that it tasted like alfalfa sprouts. Like I said, a complete nutter.

A year after they wed, I became a finalist for a scholarship to a United World College for a year to complete an International Baccalaureate. Up until that year, the government had annually funded two scholarships, but the country was in a midst of a recession, and everything was getting cut, so I was vying for a single placement. I went to Wellington to be interviewed, and made it to the final two. The decision board could not decide between me and a lovely girl from Thames, so apparently they flipped a coin, and the other girl was chosen. She was sent to New Mexico for the year. I was told that if they could twist the government's arm, they would send me to Wales.

With the prospect of escaping my home so tantalisingly within reach, it was hard to focus on my studies that year. The night I returned from the Wellington interview, Dad and Jill took me out to dinner and said they had something to announce. "You're having a baby!" I blurted out. Jill gave my father daggers "You told her!" I thought it was all rather obvious - two people, wed just a year, have an important announcement to make. What else could it be? I suppose it could have been a divorce...

Soon after, either that same night or some other day, I cannot remember, they dropped a bombshell - as soon as I had completed my end of year school exams I had to move out. Jill did not think that the house was big enough for our family, and despite the fact that she had agitated to move house up until that point, she had decided she no longer wanted to move. So I had to leave to make room.

I spent the rest of that year in a state of deep anxiety. At seventeen, when I was about to embark upon my university studies, I had to find a new home and a means to support myself. Jill and my father made it clear that they would provide no financial assistance. Nor was I allowed to take my bed with me. I was earning a very small part time wage and there was no way that by the end of the year I would have enough money to purchase a bed and join a flat. In fact there was no way that anyone in their right mind would take on a seventeen year old girl as a flatmate. The scholarship fell through which was, perhaps, a small mercy as I would have not been given any assistance to buy toothpaste, let alone a change of underwear by my parents if I was in another country.

I was shamed by my predicament, but as the school year came to a close, I must have opened up to some friends. Fortunately, I received an offer from parents of two friends (twin sisters) to stay with them for a year. The twins were heading to Otago University to study, so there was plenty of room for a boarder at their place. The board they charged probably did not cover the cost of having me there. They were angels.

Weeks later, my sister moved out after Jill held her up against her bedroom wall by the neck. While she was being choked, Jill told her that she was a little bitch and that she had what was coming to her (or words to that effect). Moments after it ended, my father entered the room. My sister told him what happened, Jill denied it, and demanded that my sister take it back, or leave. She left, sent back to the instability of a life with our mother. My father called me in tears, unsure of his decision.

Meanwhile, I was having a glorious taste of normality living the year with my friends' parents, with all the freedom that comes from being a university student. That year turned into two and, feeling that it was time to move on, I rented a room at another friend's house. That year, for reasons beyond my control and too boring and bureaucratic to go into, I could not have a regular income until the end of semester one. I was the most skint I have ever been and became stressed and ill. Out of desperation, behind in rent and with two dollars left to go in my overdraft, I asked my father for a two-week loan of two hundred dollars. I had never asked for a loan from anyone before and I was deeply embarrassed to go cap in hand to him. He said he would have to run it past Jill.

At this point, I need to take you back six months, to the phone ringing in our flat on a balmy Sunday afternoon. The voice on the other end was that of a friend, inviting our small household to a spontaneous party. These were the days when liquor sales on Sundays were prohibited, so we needed to think creatively about our refreshments. I called Jill and Dad, who lived around the corner. In a small cupboard dwelled a bottle of sparkling that they had no intention of drinking. It had been a Christmas gift and I could have it if I paid them $10 - its retail price. I had no cash on me, but went around anyway and picked it up, saying that I would drop the money off that week. I dropped an envelope containing $10 in their letterbox the following Friday.

On Saturday, they summonsed me. Jill then lectured me on how I was unreliable and had taken advantage of them, by taking the bottle, and then not paying for it right away the following day. Up until this point in my life I had been the very picture of reliability and trustworthiness. I had been a good student who did her homework, never got into trouble, never rebelled, did chores, studied hard, and was a free baby sitting service (for their new baby). And now I was being lectured like a child, more than two years after being kicked out of home, on how I was unreliable and how that was "unacceptable". It occurred to me that as a non-resident I no longer had to put up with bullying in the form of a "family meeting" (We used to have regular "family meetings" to air concerns, but the children were not allowed to have concerns. It was, in reality, an opportunity for Jill to nitpick over minor indiscretions, such as when she suspected we were using more than two sections of toilet paper (our allowance) each time we peed). I stood up left, but not before announcing "I don't have to put up with this shit any more, so fuck this and fuck you." Wow, that felt good.

And that story is the reason that was produced when my father reported back with a "No" from Jill - they would not lend me $200. I had committed the crime of paying them on a Friday instead of a Monday, market price for a bottle of wine they got for free and had no intention of drinking. I was unreliable. A friend lent me the money, and I paid it back two weeks later. I was able to buy food and I recovered from the flu.

Jill left my father and very quickly established a relationship with another man. It happened so fast, we suspected that relationship was already in motion prior to the split. The man she hooked up with was a comedian well known in New Zealand. He also proved to be a bit of a wife beater, which was somewhat ironic. That relationship ended, and was replaced by a series of connections that appeared less than functional. Over subsequent years, she bounced from home to home, car to car, job to job. I don't know that she will ever have tranquility, nor will the people whose lives she touches. But boy, am I glad she is no longer a part of mine.