A Good Girl?

By C. Pearce

"HE MADE YOU FEEL COMPLICIT ... ASHAMED AND GUILTY, SO THAT YOU WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO TELL ANYONE ..."

Joey, the child, in desperation, had to eventually tell one person.

Joanna, the woman, tells no one until she reaches a turning point in her life.

After many years of recurring nightmares, flashbacks and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781922850706

C. Pearce

Carolyn was born in South Africa and lived in Zimbabwe before emigrating to Australia in the 1980s. She loves the English language and its literature, as well as other languages such as Old English, French, German and Italian. She has taught English and French to high school students for many years. Carolyn now lives in Queensland, where she enjoys being close to the ocean, and going on snorkelling holidays at the Barrier Reef.

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A Good Girl © 2022 C. Pearce.

All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This is a work of nonfiction. The events and conversations in this book have been set down to the best of the author’s ability, although some names and details may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Printed in Australia

First Printing: November 2022

Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

www.shawlinepublishing.com.au

Paperback ISBN 978-1-9228-5065-2

eBook ISBN 978-1-9228-5070-6

Thank you

John: for giving me safety and grace

Antoinette: for your unfailing kindness and support,

and for helping me to transform the narrative

Sandy: for your empathy and for telling me that you

wanted to hear an adult voice

Daniel: for your compassion, and insightful appraisal

Sixty-One

Melbourne, Tuesday 25th October 2016

In exactly four months’ time, I will turn 61. I believe that I am going to die one day or night while I am 61. I know that this sounds odd, especially as I don’t have a diagnosed terminal illness and don’t have a definite plan to kill myself. It’s an irrational belief, with a little root in reality: both my mother and my sister died when they were 61.

My mother had been an alcoholic from the age of 22. She drank gin or vodka every day, along with wine or sake or cocktails when she and my father went out to dinner every Saturday - with friends, by themselves or with my brother, David, and me. My sister, Helen, also died when she was 61. (Helen and my other brother, Graham, were the children from my mother’s first marriage. They never lived with us.) Helen had been an alcoholic until our mother died. Then, she said, she heard God tell her, Helen, stop. She never drank alcohol again, not even the sweet wine of the Eucharist. But she died at 61 anyway because she had smoked and drunk excessively for so long that, under anaesthetic for a hernia operation, her body gave up.

Now, my 61st birthday looms ahead of me. I have never smoked, but my lungs were damaged by tuberculosis and my mother’s smoking when I was a child. I have also had severe asthma since I was three. I don’t drink spirits, but I drink wine – too much of it. It’s my means of self-obliteration when recurring nightmares and what I still childishly call the bad thoughts become too much to bear.

In the past, I have turned to God, gone on health retreats, meditated, had psychotherapy and, worse, psychoanalysis, in my attempt to keep steady in the centre of the path I am walking. A narrow path, along a high ridge, with nothingness on either side. Now that I’m reaching the death age of my mother and sister, the path is more tedious, steeper, more narrow. So, I’m going to try, once again, to find a way to stay away from the edges.

The first step: beginning this journal. I have found in the past that writing often allows me some semblance of control.

The second step: I have made an appointment with Dr Jeremy Davis, a GP who recently joined our local general practice in Canterbury. His wife, Penny, sometimes works at the practice reception. Jeremy is about my age, calm, intelligent and kind. I’ve seen him a few times when I’ve had chest infections. He listened to my breathing without asking me to lie on the examination couch or to take off my top. He also treated two superficial carcinomas on my forearm with liquid nitrogen. When he examined the tumours through a monocular magnifying glass, one hand holding my wrist and his head bent close to my arm, I didn’t feel afraid. I think I can feel safe with him, so that perhaps he will be able to help me.

While I can honestly say, I don’t want to die, there is another voice that says, I don’t care. Fuck it all.

It’s this second voice that I want to silence. I want life, not death. I have three children who are kind, intelligent and compassionate. And I adore my grandchildren. I’m a teacher at a very good independent school; I love teaching English, both the language itself and its literature, and I have deep affection for my students, who fill my working days with delight, energy, humour and joy.

My appointment with Jeremy is on Thursday at 4.45.

Melbourne, Thursday 27th October 2016

I’ve just come back from my appointment with Jeremy. On the way home, I went to the pharmacy in Maling Road to get the medication he prescribed me. I left the prescription there, and went to my favourite café to have a glass of wine while I waited. I always sit at a table by the window, so I can look out past the railway overpass towards the open space and trees of the park. The staff know me so well that I don’t even have to order… except, sometimes, to specify a glass or a carafe when my usual waiter, Will, thinks it may have been a bad day, and asks which I’d prefer.

Now I’m sitting at my desk in my bedroom, with a glass of white wine on a green stone coaster that I bought at the Victoria Falls in April, during a seven week holiday in Southern Africa with my son Nick, who – unlike my daughters and me – was born in Australia, and had never been to Africa. The coaster has a jumping fish carved into it.

It’s still light outside although the sun has set, and cockatoos are screeching somewhere behind the house. Even though I’ve been in Australia for 30 years, I still dislike summer daylight savings. It makes the worst part of the day for me too long, and the mornings too dark.

I waited about twenty minutes before Jeremy came from the passage leading to the consulting rooms, and said my name: Joanna?. As usual, he waited to greet me and let me go ahead of him into his consulting room. I sat down opposite him, wondering how to begin as, this time, there was nothing physically wrong with me.

He smiled at me and asked, How can I help you today?

I’m going to turn 61 in February. My mother and sister died when they were 61. I don’t want to die at the same age.

Jeremy looked through his glasses at me, with a slight frown. His eyes are the blue-green of the sea at the Barrier Reef.

Why do you think you may die? he asked.

I drink too much, I said. My sister and mother both died when they were 61, from the effects of alcoholism. My half-brother was an alcoholic, too. He committed suicide when he was 42. I drink wine most nights so that sleep comes quickly. I wake up at about three in the morning with my heart pounding so loudly that I can’t go back to sleep.

Jeremy asked me some questions about how much and how often I drink. I made myself tell him the truth. How can he help me if I don’t? I tried to redeem some dignity by telling him that there are some nights when I don’t drink: when I have work to do (preparing lessons for my classes, marking essays, or doing freelance translating for the English edition of a French newspaper). But, on these nights, sleep eludes me and, when it finally comes, nightmares seize me so that I wake in the early hours of the day anyway, frightened and nauseated.

Jeremy took my blood pressure: 195 over 85. Too high. He typed, printed and signed prescriptions for Irbesartan and Amlodipine.

I’d like to see you next week, to check your blood pressure, he said as he passed me the prescriptions.

He stood up when I did, and we shook hands before I left. At the reception desk, I made an appointment for next Thursday, at 5.00.

Now I’m going to get another glass of wine and some bocconcini cheese, and slice a mixture of little heritage tomatoes: red, orange, plum-coloured, and round or oval in shape. When I was growing up in South Africa and in what was then Rhodesia, sundowners were a Dad’s-home-and-before-dinner ritual. There were a silver ice-bucket and tongs, crystal glasses, delicate blue and white plates. Gin and tonic or vodka and soda for my mother, whiskey for my father, Cokes or juice for my brother and me, plus snacks like cheese and sliced cucumber or little savoury biscuits with salami or anchovies. I still keep the sundowner habit… an evening falling without wine and a snack is not a real evening to me.

When Nick and I were in the Okavango Delta in Botswana during our trip in April, this sundowner ritual was a magical experience, involving guides unfolding a table in front of the game viewing vehicle, and setting out silver vacuum flasks, cold bottles of wine and beer, biltong, dried wors, pickles and sliced fruit. On different evenings, as the sun sank, we watched a family of elephants walk by - a mother, almost grown-up daughters and babies; two young bull elephants play fighting only a few hundred metres away; silver-backed jackals slink behind bushes; and – one astonishing time – a cheetah slip by with her cubs.

Nick and Adam, his father, have gone out for dinner. I’m going to have my cheese, tomatoes and wine, and then watch the next two or three episodes of Blue Planet on my iPad. (I’m re-watching the whole series, before Blue Planet II comes out some time next year.) I hope that, when I switch off the light, I can hold onto the images of tidal seas, and keep the bad thoughts away.

Nights

Melbourne, Sunday 30th October 2016

It’s just after 3 am. I’ve just had one of the three nightmares that have broken my sleep since I was a child: one about an octopus, one about a rat, and the worst one - about the spider. This was the spider one. I had to get up, go to the bathroom and vomit – bitter, rust-coloured muck.

When I was a child, I used to resort to rituals and habits to try to keep these bad dreams away. Saying the Lord’s Prayer five times. Counting to a hundred forwards and backwards and not moving until I’d done so ten times. Lying on my back and lacing my fingers together in a particular way. Putting the handkerchief one of my nannies had given me under my pillow.

Dread creeps through me when the light fades and night approaches. The hours stretch and sag. The bad thoughts become relentless, so I obliterate them with wine.

I love the prefix, ob-. Obliterate, oblivion, obstruct, obtuse, obstacle, oblique, obsidian, object, obdurate, obelisk, obscure, obsequent, obstreperous. Strong words that say no, and keep me safe.

After a nightmare, I always wake up, like now, in the early hours of the morning, frightened and nauseated. After going to the bathroom, I get back into bed, with my bedside light on. Sometimes, even at 3 am, birds call so that I don’t feel alone. One is calling now, repeatedly. I count in the intervals between the calls: they always come after I get to six and before I get to ten.

My bedroom is between Adam’s and Nick’s. I often hear them breathing heavily or snoring when I wake up and lie still in my bed. To keep the bad thoughts at bay, I usually count to 100 in English, then Afrikaans, French, Spanish, German, Italian… 600. So I start again, to get to 1000. Then I recall all the poems I know by heart. After that, it’s alphabets: countries, capital cities, holiday destinations, dog breeds, tropical saltwater fish, birds, names of students present and past, famous people – with bonus points for doubles, like Bridget Bardot, Charlie Chaplin, Doris Day. (These ancient celebrities show how old I am but always win me points when I play Scattergories.)

If these 100s and poems and alphabets don’t succeed, I get up, go to the kitchen and switch on the light. I take two oranges and cut them in half. I like the little hemispheres of sweetness after darkness and nightmares. I make orange juice and tea, take the glass and the mug back to my room, and get back into bed.

So now, as usual, I’m back in bed with some orange juice in a glass and tea in a mug on my bedside table. I’m writing this on my iPad, and then I’ll check the weather, Facebook, the news, and watch more of The Blue Planet. I will be glad when the sky lightens. I’ll know as soon as it does, because I never close my curtains at night.

At last, the sky is becoming grey. I can get up, get ready for the day and then enter its busyness, which usually pushes the bad thoughts back down into the dark muck inside me. There, they writhe, waiting to re-emerge. I’m afraid that one day Jeremy will notice them, leaking out of my eyes. But I also want him to see them, so that he can help me.

My Feet

Melbourne, Monday 31st October 2016

I’m appalled. When I put on my shoes this morning, I noticed that my ankles are soft and swollen: the flesh lips over the edges of my shoes. Now, after a day of classes, during which I stood or walked around most of the time, my ankles and feet are more swollen. I’m at my desk at school, and my feet are bare beneath it. I think that this swelling must have something to do with the medication Jeremy prescribed for my hypertension. During lunch time, I called the practice and changed my appointment with him from Thursday to tomorrow.

Melbourne, Tuesday 1st November 2016

I didn’t have to wait long before Jeremy came to the waiting room and, seeing me, said my name.

As soon as we had sat down, I said, My ankles and feet are swollen.

He stood up and came around his desk to look at my feet. I had put on sandals so that I wouldn’t have to take off my shoes.

My feet are the only part of me that I like, I told him, stupidly. I can’t have them swollen and disfigured like this.

Jeremy went back to his chair and looked at me. I sat there, thinking that he must be thinking he’s dealing with a mad woman. I felt ashamed, and embarrassed by my distress.

It’s probably the Amlodipine, he said. Just take half a tablet, and we’ll see if that helps.

He took my blood pressure again: still high.

I didn’t explain why I am so upset about my feet being swollen, although I know that I should have and that I do want him to know. I just can’t say the words out loud.

My feet are the only part of me that are not soiled and disgusting because they are the only part of me not touched by my grandfather when I was a child.

Avoiding this, I told him instead that there are three parts of me.

The mother and grandmother who wants to be here for my children and grandchildren; the teacher who loves my students and what I teach.

The ugly, worthless part of me who doesn’t care about anything, whose motto is Fuck it all.

And there is the observer, the little cold, black frog, safe in the damp space under an overhanging rock, who notes and records, and feels nothing.

It is this third, cold, dispassionate part of me that, in the past, recited to him a brief summary of my medical history. As I sat opposite him today, it helped me to also tell him about the anorexia and bulimia that I used to have. Bulimia resulted in Barretts oesophagus, treated by a fundoplication when I was forty-three. I explained that, after this procedure, I began drinking to excess. After this operation, vomiting was painful and difficult, if not impossible. So it was good for the health of my oesophagus, but it meant that I had to find another way of getting rid of the bad thoughts. And it did nothing to keep away the nausea itself.

As I expected, Jeremy asked me about these thoughts. And, as I have answered doctors and psychologists before, I merely said, Just thoughts and memories of all the bad things I have done.

This is how I always hide the fourth part of me: a small, broken thing, stained with shame and self-loathing. I can’t tell him about this part yet.

In the consultation notes made by Angela, the GP I used to see before Jeremy, there is the brief statement: History of abuse by a relative as a child. While I have sometimes felt compelled to mention this to doctors and psychotherapists, the cold little frog has always ensured that I skip over it as if it hasn’t mattered.

With friends, I usually make it part of an entertaining story that I have the opportunity to tell when spirits and the afterlife come into the conversation. I’m going to write the story here, as I usually tell it – omitting, for now (I can’t bear to even think of having to find the words), the horror that followed.

***

When I was nineteen, I went to have a consultation with a diviner – also known as a witchdoctor – just for fun, when I was on the Wild Coast in the Transkei, camping with some university friends.

I had to take off my shoes and bend low to enter the hut, which was dark and smelled of wood smoke. I sat cross-legged opposite the diviner, who was wearing the traditional costume: white bead necklace, animal tail skirt (over black shorts), a head-dress…

He had a bag filled with bones. He shook the bag, muttering, and then threw the contents on to the packed earth floor between us.

You have a bad illness of the chest, he said, gesturing with both hands over his own chest and appearing to struggle to breathe.

True. Asthma.

You will go far away, over the sea. But you will always miss this place.’

True, again.

He looked down at the bones, poked at some with his forefinger.

Your ancestor – he asks that you forgive him. You must put flowers on his grave…

Who is this ancestor? I asked.

An old man. Your father’s father.

***

My grandfather came to live with us when I was seven. My grandmother had died and he wasn’t coping. My parents said he was senile. He used to put marmalade on his fried eggs, and sit in his armchair, scratching his head in a slow rhythm.

Every Wednesday, because it was the cook’s night off, we’d go out for dinner. So, now, my grandfather came, too. That first Wednesday after Grandpa came to live with us, we were driving home from the restaurant. My brother was sitting behind our father, as usual. I was in the middle and Grandpa was behind my mother, on my left. As we drove through the darkness, I thought, Poor Grandpa. He must be sad and lonely without Granny.

So I took his hand. I could feel the bones beneath the flesh.

He shifted his hand, so that it was over mine, and pulled my hand over to him. He put it on the place where his penis was.

South Africa in the 1960s was very prudish. Censorship was stringent and repressive. Playboy was banned. Even the mini-skirt was banned. There was no television until the late 1960s – television was the instrument of the devil. I’d never seen anyone naked. So I wasn’t sure what was happening - but I was frightened.

I pulled my hand back and asked David, Please may we change places?

No, I always sit behind Dad.

I leaned forward and asked my mother, Please may I come and sit in the front?

No, we’re almost home.

I stayed leaning forward. Grandpa rubbed my back.

***

If anyone listening to my story asks, Did you put flowers on his grave? I say, Of course not. He wrecked my life. I’ll never forgive him.

Uncomfortable laughter usually follows.

I never tell anyone what happened afterwards.

To doctors and psychotherapists, now including Jeremy, I’ve always told a much abbreviated version of the story, dismissively, and have declined to say any more.

Writing

Melbourne, Friday 9th December 2016

The last day of term – and the school year - for students was on Wednesday. Many of my students gave me gifts and cards. Their thoughtfulness and gratitude reminded me again how much I appreciate knowing them and journeying with them as they explore language and literature. One of my Year 7 students, James, gave me a notebook of fine paper, especially made for use with a fountain pen. I was very touched that he noticed my preference for fountain pens. I’m going to use this notebook to write down all my most loved poems. Today, the staff Christmas lunch was held in the Quadrangle, surrounded by ivy-covered cloisters. It was a warm, sunny day and a happy, relaxed celebration with champagne, weird hats (mine was a Viking helmet) and lots of laughter.

Melbourne, Monday 12th December 2016

I’m sitting at my desk, a glass of wine on my stone coaster and sliced tomatoes on a blue and white plate beside it.

I saw Jeremy this afternoon. I told him that Adam has decided to drive to Adelaide to visit friends for a few weeks, and won’t be back until after Christmas. Soon after Nick was born, Adam and I stopped sharing a bedroom and we aren’t close. I didn’t mind when he told me he was going away.