Little Tim, Big Tim Page 4

  The horror ride ends at a stud farm as our car, a Ford Squire station wagon, pulls up next to the black and grey Jaguars and Mercedes. James, loving cars, distracts himself with the phenomenal sight of some of the richest cars on the earth in one place. I hate rich cars and rich people, and this mob is the cream of the crop. Dad is bragging how his friends that we’ll meet tonight are TV personalities, radio announcers, lawyers, judges, advertising executives and all types of business people. He seems proud to be farming his sons out to these sicko’s.

  When it happens it’s just another degradation. If I could change the reality of this I would do it in a heartbeat. The most functional way to deal with the incessant onslaught is to fall asleep when it’s finished. I am bundled into the back of the car to hear some feeble attempt at justifying their sick behaviour; the familiar words, ‘they’re only children, they will forget.’

  James gets in the back and whispers in my ear,

  ‘I spat on all their cars.’

  I smile for a brief moment.

  THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

  LITTLE TIM

  Saturday, Paul’s party; Mum (nice Mum) wakes me up to go shopping for his present. A matchbox car is his gift. I’m wearing my best clothes and I’m allowed to walk the short distance up through the school and down the road to his house. I feel so big when Mum says I could get there by myself. The excitement of the party almost outstrips the shame I am feeling about yesterday.

  It’s one o’clock and I am dressed with a neatly wrapped gift under my arm. Entering the sunlight I make my way towards the party address. The party is to start at one thirty. I am the first one to arrive and am left in the lounge room as the occupants run around trying to finish getting ready. Soon the doorbell rings and three of my classmates enter. We are eating chips and drinking soft drinks. The whole class arrives and I am asked to the kitchen to assist with the food.

  Paul’s mother asks me about my parents and what they do for a living. I confidently explain their names and occupations.

  She whips around and gives a stare that almost knocks me off the stool I’m sitting on, freely swinging my legs, which now freeze as words finally leave her contorted face.

  ‘You’re not a Brant are you?’

  The way she screams it, I know she doesn’t expect an answer, she already knows.

  ‘You must go home now, Tim.’

  I don’t look at her, I know what shame is and I am feeling an abundance of it. I leave the house. As I reach the front gate, Paul runs up to me and snatches the present I’m totally oblivious I’m still carrying, out of my hand. He starts singing a chant.

  ‘Tim’s Mummy and Dad are really sick and bad.

  ‘Tim’s Mummy and Dad are really sick and bad.’

  I run as fast as I can to try and drown out the incessant pitch and rhythm of his taunting. I don’t stop running until I reach the abandoned building across the road from the school. We are warned never to go in there ‘because its dangerous’. The way I am feeling I don’t care about danger. I welcome it.

  To allow entry into the condemned building I boldly push away a pile of broken glass bottles that slightly obscure the hole where bricks have been knocked out of the wall. Walking across broken glass, I look at my Sunday best clothes. They are filthy— more excuses for a flogging. I’m not handling this situation very well.

  As I sit on the ground, surrounded by litter, I think of how much shame has entered my life recently. It’s an unbearable burden from which I don’t know how to relieve myself. I want to crawl up in a ball and die. Instead, I crawl up in a ball and cry, and eventually fall asleep.

  When I wake it’s early evening and I don’t know where I am, who I am, where I’ve been, or even where I live. A voice in my head keeps telling me my name is Troy and I’m a naughty boy.

  ‘Is that my name? Troy?

  As soon as I ask my question, my head answers,

  ‘No, thats my name; I’m Troy the naughty boy.’ We/he picks up a rock and throws it, smashing a four by four foot window that already has holes in the glass pane.

  I have no control. I, or we, definitely he, is picking up rocks and smashing windows in this abandoned building where I have woken. I feel an overwhelming sense of shame flood over me. We stop throwing rocks.

  ‘You got it? Your job is to feel and carry shame: Shane the shame carrier. Little Tim can’t deal with some things, so for us to survive, you have been created.’

  ‘I’m Troy the bad boy, and there’s Peter the pain holder. Little Tim decided not to be bad and has suffered enough pain, so he has friends to help him: Peter and me and now you, Shane. Your job is to experience the shame that Little Tim can’t and won’t handle. I will get you home and be there to give you information as you need it.’

  ‘It could be a bit unsettling ‘cause I usually get into trouble but you will also suffer the consequences. However, I’m the only one that is available to help you out, ’cause Little Tim is in the space of many colours and Peter refuses to come out unless there is real pain. With the trouble I get you into you will get to experience pain, and if it gets really bad you will more than likely meet Peter.’

  ‘Well, are you ready?’ Troy asks.

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ Shane answers. My head is feeling relaxed as somehow the explanation doesn’t seem unusual.

  ‘Well this is how we do it. Go to the end of the building, out through the hole where the glass bottles are piled up, through the gate in the school fence, through the school, to the right. At the end of the school, there’s a set of stairs that lead to a road. Go across the road and at the next street on your right, there is our house; big, with a green roof, number four, second house on the left. Have you got that?’ Troy questions.

  ‘No, I will need your help!’ I request.

  ‘I can help but the more time I’m around, the more trouble we are going to get into,’ Troy warns.

  ‘Well I better learn quick,’ Shane announces.

  SHANE

  I make it to our house and move to a bedroom I have never slept in. I instinctively know where it’s located. The bedroom is full of packed up boxes. I remember the warning from Troy and ask him to leave me alone to get used to these surroundings. With his voice in my head gone, I wait for something to happen.

  A young boy comes into the bedroom.

  ‘C’mon Tim, let’s go out and play.’

  I look at him stoned faced. The voice that belongs to Troy has told me my name is Shane.

  ‘C’mon Tim, let’s go and play’

  I still give him no response

  ‘Are you sick again? I won’t tell nobody, just come and play,’ he pleads.

  ‘My name is Shane,’ I inform him.

  He laughs.

  ‘You’re always changing your name. Just make sure if Mum and Dad call you Tim, you answer them. You know how mad they get when you don’t answer to your name. Also, we are moving tomorrow in case you forgot.’

  He turns at the doorway and whispers,

  ‘My name is James. In case you forgot.’

  From our conversation I know that I am called Tim by others, and Shane by the voice in my head. Also, we are going to move which will be in my favour; a new place will be strange to all of the family members so I won’t look lost. I guess James is my brother.

  BLACKBERRY BUSH

  SHANE

  The move isn’t too far away, just to the next town. The new house is located at the edge of the bush with the nearest neighbour one hundred metres away. It doesn’t take long to settle in.

  One day I am home alone with our Dad and suffer my first rape at the new address. I don’t know what a rape is, however I know intuitively what I’m experiencing. Peter, who I haven’t met ‘til now, arrives precisely when our Dad inserts his willy inside me. Peter explains to me what is going on and that he will take over now until the pain subsides.

  LITTLE TIM

  Once Peter has arrived, I, Little Tim, want desperately to get out of the place where we a
re being violated. I run outside, down the dirt road about one hundred metres and into a blackberry bush. The thorns don’t slow my progress as I head for the middle of the thicket, collapse and cry until I am exhausted and fall asleep.

  Peter has slipped back into the Dark. Shane will soon realise that he will have to come to the Light. Lying still in the thicket, I spot a bunny rabbit and lizards approaching me, as if to comfort me. The animals are so friendly; this gives me an insight that maybe the God I pray to every night for this abuse to stop has sent some animals to comfort me.

  Once this thought enters my head, I hear the voice of the angel I met at the satanic ritual. She says, ‘Move to the bush to be safe.’The bunny rabbit rests against the side of my body. His fur tickles me. I want to stay with my new friend; however the sensation of shame and pain is overwhelming. I tell Shane as he enters my reality to run to the bush to be safe. I slip back to the space of colours.

  SHANE

  We are lying there in the thicket of the blackberry bush; obviously we have lost time. Little Tim tells us to run to the bush to be safe. Peter is with me as the bunny rabbit that comfortably snuggles into us, moves and hops away towards the denser bush. The shame hits me like a blanket of thorns and the pain subsides now that Peter is back in the Dark.

  I return home to find our house full of activity. The whole family is home. Dad has switched and has no previous accessible knowledge of what he has done to me. This is obvious when he asks,

  ‘Have you been playing in the bush?’

  He actually expects an answer because he truly has no knowledge of how he attacked me, or maybe that’s what I need to believe.

  ‘Yeah Dad, I’ve been in the bush,’ I assure him because I’m too weak to confront him.

  James looks at me. This type of communication is done with a simple glance between us. That small interchange confirms to him that Dad has switched and has raped me. His little face contorts with a painful look. It was my turn this time though, which explains why relief then enters his eyes. I know he knows, and we know the incident will never be discussed.

  The reason for this is that James has lost trust in me. My capacity to instantly forget the attacks leaves James feeling betrayed, James is robbed of confirmation about the attacks we experience together as an element of survival; another way our Dad isolates and separates us. His activities force us to become estranged.

  DARUKE

  SHANE

  ‘Tomorrow, you and James are going to a function at the boy’s home.’

  As Shane, I listen to the new orders; my face shows confusion and James raises his pointed finger to his lips.

  ‘Daruke,’one word sends chills over my body.

  Daruke—a delinquent boys’ home. I know it is the place where Dad works; in fact I have heard a conversation between Mum and Dad just last week about it. He came home with a bandage on his shoulder that dressed a knife wound, courtesy of one of the boys.

  The little bastard got what he deserved before and after,’ he had proudly proclaimed to Mum.

  I couldn’t sleep through the night, fearing the inevitable. I decide to sleep on the journey down the mountains to relieve some anxiety and to lessen the time I have to wait until we drive into the front gate of the boy’s home.

  A BBQ is the function we are invited to. The media is present; they’re there to promote the concept of goodwill between the rich, powerful hosts and the delinquent boys. The men from the TV station are there too and James’ face goes white when he recognises them. He mumbles,

  ‘TV station!’

  He looks at me for validation; do I have an accessible memory that we were at a TV station? But that’s the problem; I have no connection, I am unable to give him the much-needed acknowledgement that events did transpire. I have no memory of the details of activities that the others have suffered but seeing the expression on his face puts the fear of Satan in me. A tear trickles down his face.

  It’s late afternoon. The festivities finish and the nightmare begins. The flesh party is held at a mansion in a North Sydney suburb above the Harbour. The Sydney City lights bounce and blur in my vision as we are violently attacked. Peter takes the pain; I take the shame. When is this going to stop? The arrogance of the men involved is witnessed again as I hear them comment that ‘we are only children, we will forget.’

  When will this stop?

  THE BULLY

  LITTLE TIM

  ‘He should’ve stopped picking on Shane who is too scared to stand up for himself’

  This is the revelation that I, as Little Tim, receive from Troy as I resurface to sort out the mess he has caused. Troy has belted a bully good and proper for calling Shane a poofter.

  He couldn’t possibly realise how much shame Shane carries and how the taunts would only lead to a shut down on Shane’s part. As soon as the shut down happens, so as not to create a situation we aren’t able to control, Troy shoots to the surface and flogs the bully into realising he’s way out of line calling Shane names. As at home, when Troy surfaces, there are always consequences.

  With Troy, Shane and Peter in the Dark, I have to face the music. I’m scared because all my fourth grade mates are now taller, and look different and even smell different from when I last saw them. I instantly think I am in the middle of a satanic ritual, however it doesn’t look as evil as the ones I have been exposed to. The letters on the classroom wall read ‘Halloween’.

  I don’t know what Halloween is, or what the cut-out cardboard witches and pumpkins with candles in them mean. It all seems quite tame compared to the usual rituals. I’m rather concerned though about the whining bully sitting on his bum with a nosebleed, crying,

  ‘Miss, Tim hit me. Miss, Tim hit me!’

  Peter is now with me as we are ordered to go to the principal’s office.

  I’m so confused and lost by my sudden arrival into reality that I have no idea how to get to the principal’s office. I panic and wet my pants. The shame, the emotion I can no longer carry rapidly switches us; I go to the space of many colours, and Shane is reunited with Peter to suffer the consequences of Troy.

  SHANE

  Little Tim has left me in a serious predicament. I am concerned about what Troy has done; did the bully deserve it? Having wet pants and a red face to front the principal, I am sure only ridicule is coming our way. Peter and I knock on the door of the principal’s office.

  The principal opens his office door and tells us to explain our actions in the classroom.

  ‘Well Sir, I hit him because he called me a poofter.’

  ‘That’s not a good reason to hit someone. I think you need to have the cane to learn that lesson. Put out your handfor four whacks.’

  Peter puts our hand out and bravely takes the whack without whimpering. Getting whacked from the cane is nothing compared to what we suffer living under the same roof as our parents.

  With our hand stinging I don’t return to class, I just sit in the playground waiting for school to finish—not a good idea. Just before the end of school all the kids are dressed up as goblins, witches and demons, running around the school grounds. Peter needs to go.

  Although it’s all in fun, the similarity to a real satanic ritual scares him. I run to our old familiar safety spot and climb a familiar tree. I come down the tree in time to meet James and walk the short distance to pick up our younger sister. We return to the primary school and collect our bus, our daily routine. I don’t tell James or Dorothy what happened. Secrecy is my most accessible survival tool.

  CIRCUS

  SHANE

  Dad announces that because James and I have been good, we deserve a treat. When Dad says we have been good, to me that means that Troy and Peter haven’t had to be out much. Peter surfaces though with the word ‘treat’ being mentioned; for us, treat means threat.

  The Circus, the supposed treat, is located at the town showgrounds. The circus owner is the threat and his caravan is to be the place of sleaze. James waits outside while I feel totally
ashamed to be where I am. I am about to be raped again and can’t do anything about it.

  No introductions, I am just pushed against the bed; a big hand on my back pressing me down, my pants ripped down to my ankles, his thing inserted hard. I move to the Dark space, crossing paths with Peter, who always looks miserable.

  As Peter walks out of the caravan, I join him. Peter and I intermix and as I look into James eyes I see tears well up; Dad has two hands on his shoulders, completely in control.

  I know it’s my job to feel shame; however I sense another emotion that I have no control over. Implements such as a lamp, a ball of steel, a wooden stake and a metal torch are all within reach. A quick move to grab one of these and smash it against my attacker’s head can save my brother from the torment and torture I have just suffered.

  The feeling or emotion is guilt. It’s the first time I have experienced it and it over loads my capacity to function. I quickly gain some control of this new emotion only to be overwhelmed by the feeling of shame again as James brushes past me, entering his own particular nightmare.

  I feel shame and guilt intermixed. I don’t know how to interpret what is going on. I run, and run, and keep on running until I’m at the edge of the circus where the animals are tethered, with chain, to stakes in the ground.