The Family Law (15 page)

‘Let us pray to God,' Pastor Foster said. And for the first time in Devotion, every single one of us did.

 

*

 

Most of the camp was pleasant enough. We got up at six o'clock every morning, woken by a clanging bell, and raised the Australian flag in the middle of a dark paddock. We were like the Amish: baking bread, feeding chickens, showering naked with corrugated iron sheets between us for privacy. We hand-washed our laundry in metal drums with giant levers, then squeezed it through two giant rolling pins stuck together. Out in the stables, we'd throw fresh, steamy horse-turds at one another, giggling. It was very wholesome.

But as the weeks went on, the mood became glum. For ‘fun,' we would be separated into groups for lantana-culling competitions, given blunt machetes and told to hack into a massive cluster of weeds and branches. The winning team's reward was a single Mars Bar, to be shared among us. The girls were becoming lazy. Exhausted by the long walk to burn their tampons and pads in the furnaces, they started using their kitchen stoves instead.

Something also seemed to be wrong with my lungs: I couldn't breathe without hearing a jagged rumbling. On every hike, my friend Chantelle and I would be last in line. Together, we struggled up hills and lost sight of the others.

‘Hurry up, slow-pokes!' Miss Phillips said. ‘What's taking you so long?'

Chantelle gasped for air, her mouth opening and closing desperately.

‘Ben?' she said. ‘I can't breathe.'

I laughed. ‘That's funny, Chantelle,' I said. ‘I can't breathe either.'

‘No, I mean it: I really can't breathe.'

Less than a minute later, Chantelle was on the ground, unconscious, her limbs seizing up and spasming. Her feet were rigid and pigeon-toed. Her hands were contorted, like she was possessed.

‘What do we do,
what-do-we-do
?' someone asked. ‘Is she going to die?'

‘Chantelle, has this happened before?' Miss Phillips said, panicked but still stiffly smiling, slapping Chantelle's face repeatedly. ‘Stay awake, talk to us.'

Chantelle's eyes were open, but we couldn't see her pupils – just the whites. It gave me the creeps.

‘Here,' someone said, passing over a Ventolin inhaler. ‘Give her this.'

‘Was anyone around her when she fell over?' Miss Phillips said. ‘Ben, you were with her. Did she say anything?'

Guiltily, I drew a circle in the dirt with my shoe. ‘I don't know.'

Chantelle eventually recovered, but the rattle in my own chest turned out to be a lung infection. One of the staff members drove me into ‘town,' where a doctor prescribed me penicillin. Drugged up and half-asleep on the drive back to camp, my anxiety attacks came back. I had the sinking feeling something terrible was going to happen.

 

*

 

When I got back to camp, girls were screaming. Boys sat on their porches, captivated by the show that had just begun. In the middle of the quadrangle, Pastor Foster was having a showdown with one of my classmates, Rosie. Of all of us, Rosie had been having the most trouble adjusting to camp life, and had become moody and difficult with the staff.

I sat down with a group of boys, who explained that Rosie had been out on a hike that morning when a stray dog started following her, sniffing around in a friendly manner. Rosie was charmed, and christened him Digger. It was the first time anyone had seen her smile at camp. She had brought him back to the cabins with her, and now Digger stood behind her on a makeshift leash. He looked lean and ratty: part dog, part dingo. Behind Pastor Foster, his puff-ball huskies growled at the newcomer menacingly. Both parties had to struggle to hold the dogs back.

‘
I hate you!
' Rosie screamed at Pastor Foster. ‘Just fucking
die
!'

‘You get that mongrel away from my dogs,' Pastor Foster said, ‘or I'll shoot it. My rifle is close by, and I'd have no hesitation killing the mongrel.'

‘He's not a mongrel!' Rosie said. ‘Look at your stupid gay dogs!'

Everyone nodded silently to one another. They were pretty gay.

‘Rosie, we won't tolerate that sort of language here.'

‘Go ahead and shoot him then! Let everyone see you for the monster you are!'

Pastor Foster glared at her, and gave a single nod: he was getting his rifle. Everyone tensed up. Mrs Barry started blinking more rapidly. Miss Phillips's eyes darted, and she smiled wider and wider in panic. Crying, Rosie took Digger by the lead and tied him to a nearby post. Purple in the face, tears streaming down her cheeks, she stormed around the camp's tool sheds, until she finally emerged with what she wanted: a massive metal lance, at least six feet long, with a hook on the end.

‘I'll kill Pastor Foster,' she said. ‘I'll ram this through his ugly head.'

After we had calmed Rosie down, Digger the dog finally wandered off, confused and rejected. Rosie sat, slumped and defeated, by the camp gate. Like the blind man in our morning hymns, she sat by the road and she cried.

 

*

 

As time went on, my lung infection got worse, and people started to question whether I'd make it to Solo. Designed to be the culmination of all our previous hikes, Solo involved trekking in an all-male or all-female group. At designated spots, within ‘screaming distance' of one another in case of emergencies, each camper was left to spend the night alone. When the penicillin finally kicked in and my phlegm cleared up, I was deemed fit enough to join the others.

On the big day, as we marched through the sloping mountains, Mr Dane talked us through everything we'd learned on previous hikes: how to make a fire; how to find and chop kindling; how to make a tent with our water-proof mats and string. We nodded uncertainly.

As we hiked on, someone noticed we were missing something. ‘Mr Dane?' he asked, ‘Where are the shovels?' We carried shovels so that we could dig makeshift toilets. Defecating on the side of the road, or next to a tree, where locals might step in it, was considered poor form. ‘Oh, sugar!' Mr Dane said. ‘I knew I forgot something. You men will just have to be careful where you do your business. Cover it with dirt or something.'

When it came my turn to be left alone, I was dropped off near a creek. It had recently rained, which made it close to impossible to start a fire. For dinner, I ate powdered milk straight out of the packet; the dryness caked my mouth like powdered chalk. I ate baked beans and soup unheated, and put the empty cans back in my hiking pack. Because I didn't have a shovel, I took a crap next to a tree. I didn't bother covering it with dirt. Still weak from my lung infection, I was too lazy to construct a shelter, so I crawled into my sleeping bag, pulled my waterproof mat around me and whimpered for the next few hours.

In the middle of the night, I woke up with a start, seized by the idea that the Devil was here, had found my machete and was lurking in the scrub. There was an awful rustling in the trees.
This is real, this is happening
, I thought – no amount of screaming would save me now. Suddenly, there was a rush of violent, noisy flapping above my head, and I could hear myself shrieking. Frightened half to death, it took me ages to realise that a flock of wild geese had flown over and landed in the creek next to me.

Anyone within screaming distance would have heard me.

The next morning, while taking a long, draining piss against a tree, I thought vaguely, ‘This ground is so
squishy
.' I had stepped in my own shit. It was time to go home.

 

*

 

On our last night at Mount Kilmore, we celebrated our survival by killing an animal. The mood was jubilant, and everyone went feral. A whole hog had been brought in to roast, and we'd wrapped it in banana leaves, buried it under hot coals and waited like savages for it to cook. Callie, the only vegetarian, staged an animal rights protest with a sign that proclaimed ‘JESUS DIED: BUT WE DIDN'T EAT HIM.' But we were hungry, and they'd promised us gravy.

The next day, there was a thorough audit and clean-up of the campgrounds. Floorboards were swept, kitchens sterilised. In the girls' cabin, a fire was lit in the kitchen to burn the rest of their garbage. By the time I visited, the girls' enthusiasm for the fire had grown, and they were fuelling it with whatever they could find: plastic bottles, Bibles, sugar. Each substance made the fire react in a new and fascinating way. Finally, they threw in a chair. Not a wooden one, but a chair you might find in a café, with metal legs, foam stuffing and a vinyl seat. The flames crept up, engulfing the legs and finally the seat itself, creating a tower of flame as tall as us. We stared at it in reverent silence.

 

*

 

The purpose of the camp had been to reconnect with God. But after thirty days in the wilderness, none of us needed a pastor to tell us about God and the Devil, or to describe the kingdom of heaven, or tell us what hell was like. Getting off the bus and seeing our parents again, it felt like we'd been to hell and back already. It was a place we knew well. We could have drawn you a map.

The Pretenders

In my first year of primary school, our class stripped down to our underwear, covered ourselves in black body paint and pretended to be Aborigines. We were all scheduled to appear in the annual talent showcase, and because there weren't any actual Aboriginal kids in the class, we opted for blackface instead. Students were split into two groups: the tallest half would play Aboriginal parents; the short kids would be their children. As the tiniest boy in the group, I was given the role of a native infant. It was easy work, and involved pretending I was asleep by laying my head in the lap of my tall friend John, who would play my father. We'd then all sing the lullaby ‘Carra Barra Wirra Canna' – a song we assumed was traditional – written by a man named Rolf Harris – a man we assumed was Aboriginal. On the evening of the showcase, our parents filed into the assembly hall, and students and teachers huddled backstage, running through the choreography one last time.

‘Sing it soothingly,' one of teachers reminded us. ‘Remember, Aborigines sing lullabies to their children too, just like your parents at home.'

Behind the curtains, John and I took our position at the front of the stage, in amongst the cardboard shrubs and fauna. It happened all at once: the curtains opened, Mrs Semmler started playing the piano, and the stage lights shone with an unexpectedly intense heat, which immediately made our body paint sticky and toxic-smelling. ‘There's a lake in South Australia,' the Aboriginal parents sang, ‘little lake with lovely name.' Then the rest of us – the Aboriginal kids – rubbed our eyes, as though we were waking from a long Dreamtime sleep. ‘And the story woven round it,' we sang sleepily, ‘from the piccaninnies came.' Parents cooed.

When we finished, the applause seemed to go on forever. From my prime position at the front of the stage, I lapped it all up. For days afterwards, I was on a high, convinced that show business was my destiny.

Things soured a year later, when my friend Shelley and I were cast as wolves in the school production of
Noah's Ark
. Mum and I made snouts and ears out of cardboard, sewed pantyhose stuffed with cotton onto grey leggings, and added dental floss for a tail. Unlike the other animals, the wolves were fortunate enough to have speaking parts.

‘We're so hungry!' Shelley announced to the crowd.

‘We just want to howl!' I said.

‘Wahhh-ooooh!' we cried out in unison.

Everyone applauded and laughed. That was enough for me to immediately want to do it again, and it was difficult to accept my moment had passed. Because it was a combined year-level performance, all the animals were portrayed by a new set of students after intermission. As I watched them from backstage, reciting their lines, I could barely conceal my contempt for the new wolf in his cheap grey tracksuit get-up, which was clearly a Salvation Army purchase. He didn't care about his speaking role; that much was obvious. He had no respect for his craft, and this just made me sick.
Who did he think he was?
I thought.
And since when did wolves have cotton-wool stumps for tails?

When we got home, I scanned the program frantically, only to find my name had been mistakenly omitted and replaced by the other male wolf. His name appeared twice; mine was nowhere to be seen. The worst thing was, he wouldn't even have cared.

‘What's wrong?' Mum asked me, when she saw my bottom lip trembling.

‘Nothing's wrong,' I said. ‘I said nothing's wrong! Everything's okay! Nothing's wrong! Just shut up!
SHUT UP.

'

Then I threw the program into the corner of the room, started punching the sofa and broke into open and shameless weeping and howling – a reaction that surprised even me.

Clearly, they'd cast me as the right animal.

 

*

 

After a few years, I was set: if I hadn't scored a speaking role on
Home and Away
by the age of fifteen, I would consider myself a failure. Macaulay Culkin had been ten when
Home Alone
was released, so I figured fifteen was a reasonable, realistic sort of goal. Success by the age of twelve would have been ideal, but I lived in a regional area away from television studios and thought it would be wise to allow myself some breathing room, mainly to avoid setting myself up for disappointment. For the next few years, I followed
Home and Away
closely. What was striking was how young the actors were. In fact, they were nearly my age: pregnant Sophie, crying Sally, brooding Jack, doe-eyed Chloe. The fact that none of these actors was Asian didn't seem to register at the time.

At school, I threw myself into drama. We learned everything, from the history of the Greek tragedies, to the parallels between Commedia dell'arte and
Are You Being Served?
Our bearded drama teacher, Mr Mallory Mallory – who had changed his name by deed poll – was a gloriously fat man who always dressed in black. In any other context, he would have resembled a homosexual bondage master, but at school, he was a man of the theatre. When mad at us, he would take off one of his canvas shoes and throw it in our direction, bellowing. ‘You stupid child!' he'd scream. We'd all laugh. Once, a student joked to another about how fat Mr Mallory was, before realising the shadow behind him was not created by a passing cloud, but by Mr Mallory himself. After a moment of silence passed between them, Mr Mallory spoke in a low and dangerous tone.