Almost four decades ago, in an unexpected and shockingly truthful moment, the father I had grown up with told me I was not his child. “That is why”, he added, “I have been punishing your mother all these years.”
In a family that kept many secrets well, this disclosure stunned and confused me. But the acknowledgement of his actions was even more disconcerting. In describing his treatment of my mother as punishment, he positioned himself as both punisher and victim.
“My father never hit my mother or I, but his temper was forever lurking.”Credit: Bea Crespo/illustrationroom.com.au
His admission explained why my mother sometimes fled into the backyard in the middle of the night in search of a hiding place, leaving my father furiously stomping about the house. She told me many years later that she had found his behaviour in the bedroom overbearing and humiliating. This was clearly part of her punishment.
His admission also made sense of the constraint upon her movements, which was unrelenting. Astonishingly, I can’t recall my mother ever venturing any significant distance from our house without being accompanied by my father or me when I was growing up. She never visited friends or relatives alone. Going shopping by herself or heading out with the girls was unthinkable. Whenever she did duck into a neighbour’s house, my father would soon start bellowing: “Where the bloody hell is she?”
Economic disempowerment was also part of my mother’s punishment and containment. Unlike most men at the time, my father did not go out to work. My parents ran a small business from a workshop in our backyard, which meant my father could be at home most of the time, and my mother, all the time. Aside from weekend afternoons and holidays, nearly all of her waking hours were spent looking after her family and labouring in the shed.
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While there was business coming in, there was money to be made. But, of course, my mother’s work was unpaid. My father kept watch over the metal cash box and every lunchtime, the money would be counted. Sometimes, if he wasn’t watching, my mother would slip a $5 note under the kitchen table as a way of supplementing the money he gave her for Christmas shopping. My father attended to everything else, from the grocery shopping to the chemist. He oversaw all our clothes shopping.
Meanwhile, he spent extravagantly. Every year, the family car would be traded in for a newer one, accruing costs the associated tax deduction never met. He bought a colour television as soon as they were available, had an in-ground swimming pool installed, and purchased a caravan longer than most. He gave expensive gifts, most notably to my mother and me. But the whole time, it was she who bore the cost. While he created an impression of affluence, my father’s constant accumulation of debt ensured that my mother remained penniless and enslaved.
My father never hit my mother or I, but his temper was forever lurking. It was unpredictable and explosive and, as consequence, he could be terrifying. The times he threatened to “burn this bloody house down” were countless. My mother and I took to hiding the matches at night, and on occasions, the largest and sharpest knives. A stab wound inflicted on the kitchen table one mealtime, reminded us to be careful, quiet, and obedient.
