STEZZA

‘This content contains themes of abuse which some may find distressing’

A train ride and a roast dinner hardly seem like two sides of a big decision. But here we are, sitting at our spot on top of the hill. You know, the spot we would go to when we needed to think and just get away from everything. The wind blows off the sea, and a sense of calm washes over me when I feel its soft touch. This is where you came when Scruff died, and things just didn’t make sense. Yet the wind, the view, and the calm seemed to put things back into perspective, and all was right with the world again. As I sit here across from my two choices, Braidfield Station and The Braidfield Arms Hotel, I want to write this all down and explain how I got here. Maybe this will make my decision make a little more sense to you. So, where do I start?

‘Show us your tits!’ shouted some tradie hanging out of a ute, probably twenty years old. As if I wasn’t already self-conscious about how I looked or how I was, ‘blossoming’ as Mum likes to call it. Blossoming in all the wrong places if you ask me. I wish I could say I was shocked at the whaling idiot in the ute, but I wasn’t, because I had heard it all before. I am becoming increasingly aware of this body, and this is the first thing people see of me now. I used to be called cute and funny, but not anymore. Now, I am looked at in a very different way, looked at by men, grown men. Gross men, with their gross faces, looking like they want to eat me or something. Oh, and the way they stare at the length of my body, their eyes lingering on my chest before a smirk rolls across their faces. Just remembering it makes my skin crawl. I mean, I don’t get what it is that I’m feeling, but what I do know is that it makes me feel naked and vulnerable. Yes, we have talked about all that sex stuff at school, but they never taught us to make sense of this. How do I make sense of uncomfortable feelings? How do I make sense of this weird sense of panic that makes you want to run and freeze simultaneously? No, they never taught us that. I’ve asked Mum four times for a new school uniform so I can get a baggier dress and hide these stupid attention-seeking humps that sprang out of nowhere, but she refuses, complaining that she’s not made of money. Like as if I don’t know that, but she has to remind me every other day. Of course, I know money doesn’t grow on trees, blah, blah, blah. That didn’t stop me from cutting my dress that one day, thinking that Mum would surely have to buy me a new one, only she went and mended it didn’t she, and now I have a weird patch making things all the worse. Besides all that, home has always been the only place I can be me. Run around with my brothers and forget all the noise. My brothers are the last ones left who just see me as me, and I don’t have to deal with ‘you’re a woman now’ and all that crap. We have adventures around the backyard, play handball, and make a game out of hiding from Mum when she is on the warpath. They love hearing my stories at bedtime, so long as they are the main characters. But mainly, we just laugh and laugh and laugh.

It feels like I have been sitting here for ages. Maybe it's been an hour or so, I really don’t know. Mum is at work, Dad took the boys to basketball and my sister is rarely home as it is, so no one knows I am gone. The sky is starting to get that orange and red colour from the setting sun, and right on cue, the woman’s cooking in no. 305 fills the air. Yes, it smells delicious, as it always does. Anyway, where was I? I was finally old enough for a job this year, so I applied at Maccas and started earning my own money. This was my first taste of freedom, so I worked as many shifts as possible. Just two months into working there, I was out the back after ‘close’, cleaning the racks in the sink. I was working with Frank, the one all the girls called ‘creeper Frank’. Frank is in year twelve, and I hadn’t had too much to do with him being so new, but I had heard stories. Frank came out the back and right up to where I was at the sink. He had this weird look on his face, and that weird feeling came over me again when I realised I was cornered and alone with him. Frank moved himself right up close to me without hardly saying a word. He slid in behind me and pretended to help me clean the racks whilst pressing himself into my back and burying his face into my neck. I just froze. I know what I should have done. I should have screamed, shouted, called him a dickhead and told him to fuck off. But I just didn’t. There I stood, unable to respond, frozen in that moment, unable to breathe or move. He seemed to take pleasure out of my fear, and when he was finished tormenting me, he just walked away. I was left feeling dirty, and so angry at myself for letting it happen. When I got home, I ran straight to my room and lay on my bed listening to my brothers play and argue. I was ok again, this was my peace. So I just resolved to make sure that if I worked with Frank again, I would never give him a chance to get me alone. That would have to work for now. 

School has been ok this year overall. I am having some trouble in maths, and sometimes I have no idea what I am doing, but no one can help me at home, so what's the use? Mum isn’t the best one to ask for any sort of help. Mum doesn’t seem to see me except to tell me to hang the washing, wipe down the bench, take the bins out or do some other chore. My sister is too busy for me and just generally disinterested in a sister ten years younger. So yeah,  I have gone downhill in maths for sure. But otherwise, school is ok. Well, there was that weird interaction with the PE teacher. He gave me his address and phone number when he asked to speak to me in the staff room after class. I was confused for a long time about what he wanted me to do with his address and phone number. But I figured it out… Gross! Then there was that Thursday, at the start of term three, walking home from school with Matt. Matt’s at a different school and a grade younger than me, but we walked the same way, and we would go by his house on the way to mine. We had sort of struck up a friendship this year because we walked the same way home. We would talk about school, teachers, favourite shows and motorbikes. Well he talked about motorbikes, I just listened. This particular Thursday, a few months ago now,  he said he wanted to show me something cool at his place. When I followed him inside and shut his door, he dropped his pants and jumped on me, pinning me to the ground, and his thing was touching me. I don’t know why I reacted the way I did this time. In a quick motion, I threw Matt off me and halfway across the room, much to his surprise. I grabbed my bag and hightailed it out of there. I couldn’t wait to get home. I remember running inside and looking out the window by the door to see if he had followed me. Mum asked me what I was doing in a bothered tone, so I just grunted at her and went up to my room. I never did walk home with Matt again.

There's the wind again, wrapping itself around me, gentler now than before. The sun is going down, and the wind is starting to ease, as it usually does about now. I like to take in every moment of the soft sounds of the breeze past my ears, but it is getting late, so perhaps I should wrap it up. I wish I were making all this up, these things I am writing. But you know I am not. So here I am, scrawling my stories as I saw them, but how differently do I see them all now. We have come to this, as you know we would, the one final reason I am here. The moment that changed everything, that turned the world upside down and led to this spot across the road from my decision. Once, we would sit here and look down at our home from this spot up high and see it clearly. The one place that we could throw off the ugly world and just be. But that is no more. At this moment when I look down, I don’t see my home anymore. That home is lost to me now. All I see is a brick house with green windows and white shutters, but not my home. I hate to remind you of all this ugly stuff, remind you of his stale breath, his rough hands, his whispers in your ear. We used to look up to him, he was our hero and he was supposed to be safe. Instead, he broke us. Just like all the rest, he took what he wanted and everything changed. Shit, I’m crying when I promised myself I wouldn’t. You know, as I do, something inside of us is broken and I can’t explain it. Mum and Dad would never believe us, they would never understand, just call me a liar, say I make up stories, so what would be the point of telling them? This can’t be fixed. I’m sorry to remind you.  I needed you to remember how we got here and to understand when you are looking back at the decision we make here today. 

The streetlights have just come on, and the station fluorescents are making that buzzing sound that lights do. As if in agreement, the hotel entry lights have lit up as well. It is as though these lights demand a choice from me, each beckoning me their way. So, let's get to it. Here is my thinking. Everything is different now, I am not the same anymore. I can’t giggle with Tara and Beck anymore over the boys on the train. I can’t doodle the last name of my crush as though it were mine. All that just seems so dumb now. There is just no way of going back to the way things were. Who I was, that girl… She’s dead. So what is left for me here? I have to make a plan. And so I have. I know the red light district in Kings Cross, I have seen girls like me, broken girls with broken hearts and the same look in their eyes that I feel in my heart. I'm sure I could join them and get by. I could take the 6:30 pm train and just find someone who could help me get started in my new life. I have seen films that have warned of how easy it is for girls like me to become ‘hookers’ or ‘women of the night’, so I shouldn’t have too much trouble. Well, I can just go looking for the wrong sorts of people I guess. And, well I am young, and I know that’s sorta good in that world right? I wouldn’t have to do drugs and stuff because, aren’t I already broken enough? Look, this is what makes the most sense to me, this is what I am now, this is all I can give. I wanted to write this all down for you so you could remember. At the end of the day you’re the one who will have to pay for whatever decision I make for us here today. You’re the one who will have to live it. 

The sky is truly amazing now, I don’t think I have ever seen it more beautiful. Shades of purple splashed across a darkening blue sky. I hope you always remember this. Remember the setting sun's final salute to your life as you knew it. I have been sitting here a while now contemplating my choice. With my two-dollars of train money in my pocket and my bag packed with just a few things, I think it's time to get moving. It's probably close to 6 p.m., and my stomach is really rumbling now. The Braidfield Arms Hotel has a two-dollar special on a roast dinner tonight: beef, potatoes, and vegetables, and I can smell it from here. Tell me, future me. Should I take my two-dollars and buy a train ticket, or should I get the roast dinner? 

Beef roast is my favourite. Things seem better now on a full stomach. I think I can get through a little longer. Besides, who will make chocolate pudding for my brothers that only I know how to make? That is their favourite, after all.