‘We don’t have a girl like you at school, it’s going to be awesome having you two doors up.’ All the while he groped my boobs with one hand and held me down with the other. Here I was not even unpacked in my new ‘safe haven’ and I was getting felt up without permission again. I wondered if I had a big sexual target on me, because apparently all men who came into contact with me believed that I was sexually available to do with as they saw fit.
Ben wrote to me every week, which was my only solace. Letters from Ben and sweating it out in the gym were the only moments where I felt relaxed and uplifted. As always, men from the gym seemed overly friendly with me, often going out of their way to introduce themselves, and big note themselves by saying things like, ‘I play professional rugby’, ‘I own a real-estate company’. I would always respond with: ‘I’m in year nine.’ One particular man seemed far less sleazy than the rest. He ran a restaurant and catering company. I saw financial independence as my only way out of Grandma and Grandpa’s house, so I told him to call me if he ever needed some additional staff to wait tables.
Sometime later he did call, much to my grandparents’ disappointment. They were furious that I had given my number to a 45-year-old man and they were dubious of his intentions. They were not buying for one second that I was going to work as a waitress, but rather assumed that I had an older man I was meeting after school for sex.
When I arrived home, my grandfather threw me around the house. He screamed at me: ‘You are a liar and a slut and we don’t know what to do with you. Your mother doesn’t want you and your father doesn’t either. We can’t afford the stress and reputation you are bringing on us, so we are sending you home to your mother whether she wants you or not. You will finish this term at school and then you are off.’
Grandma was standing behind me slapping me with a wooden spoon, and with each strike came an insult.
I took my punishment, without offering a defence, without shielding my head, without speaking. All I could think was, yee-hah, I am out of this geriatric shit hole!
I Don’t Own My Body
While I had been living with my grandparents, my parents had divorced. Mum had taken my brothers and moved far, far away from my father. I didn’t know about any of this until I was driven through the main gates of my mother’s new home on the Sunshine Coast. I began school with a new found enthusiasm. I quickly realised that not one of my three brothers had spoken about me. I suppose I expected too much, stupid me for thinking the boys might have boasted about having an older sister. More fool me! I had learned previously that kids would rarely befriend a new girl for no good reason, but if I joined a sports team they would be forced to get to know me. So I joined the swim team, but, of course, I didn’t have to talk to anyone but myself as I chased that black line from one end to the other. For four hours a day I was left alone to my own thoughts. Despite my lack of friends it was heaven.
Mum told me she couldn’t afford to keep me as she was now living hand to mouth on government assistance. If I wanted to stay, I had to get a job. If I wanted to stay? What was my fucking alternative? So dutifully I got a job in a grocery store on Saturdays and Thursday nights; instead of taking $5 per hour, I could take $6 per hour worth of food.
Ben came up for a visit. He’d left Rockhampton in pursuit of furthering his education and now lived an hour away in Brisbane where he went to flight school. The moment I set eyes on him again, I knew the meaning of true love. Ben and I became lovers. I was thirteen.
At this point, I was tired of reinventing myself to fit in. I was over making new friends, and playing typical thirteen year old. I wanted to get on with my own life, a life of income and mutual respect. I saw acting as a way to be someone else even if it was only an hour. A world where you can express emotion, vent, scream, cry or even smile without judgement. I believed that I had a world of emotional history that I could draw on to succeed in the acting profession. Plus I liked the idea of earning three million dollars a film. So when I turned fourteen, I convinced Mum to lie about my age and enrol me into an acting school in Brisbane. I promised her that night school wouldn’t interfere with my schooling or grades, and for a while that was true. I vowed to never miss a shift at the grocery store otherwise Mum would pull the pin on tuition in a heartbeat. With all those conditions agreed to and promises of good behaviour we struck a deal.