Painted Faces - the masks people wear

Fires

     We moved to Dunedin in my first year of High School. Arrived from the North Island on the 20th December, forsaking a hot summer's day of 26 degrees for a rainy one of 12. Maybe they're right, and icebergs do float down the harbour here in winter? Friends had teased us before we left, but to my 13-year-old eyes this now seemed a possibility worth considering. The new day broke to splashes of brilliance: blue sky, crisp, sparkling sun over a green, hilly landscape. Beauty of a kind that only Dunedin can produce and at which I gazed in wonder. I was relatively unused to hills on such a scale, and what seemed to be such a big city. Maybe this can be an adventure after all? And Gran will visit often and for lengthy stays, won't she? Can I grow to like it here after all? Despite having to attend a co-ed instead of the girls only High School I was booked into up north? Perhaps that would have been strange anyway, given all I'd ever known was younger brothers.

      About a month later we moved into our new home in Sawyers Bay. Rather exciting at first, I had to catch a bus to school and back unless Mum was able to drop me off. I enjoyed the drive round the bays, the harbour on my left going in, hills and bushes, infrequent communities of houses on my right. I loved the sight of water, the way it could be calm and blue with splashes of sun sparkling off its waves one minute, dark, moody and powerful the next. In winter ice would often cover the road, making driving somewhat hazardous. My best friend Rana's parents slid into the bay on their way home from our place once, my mother did a 180 degree turn as she tried to brake another and frequently cars were being pulled out of the water on cold, wintry mornings. But no icebergs, much to my disgust. Would have made such a tale to tell my cousins back home! I remember they came to stay in the winter school holidays and it snowed. Snow! Unheard of in your very own backyard! I was proud to be the provider of such an experience.

     Then the fires began. Our chimney caught fire and the fire brigade came. Then a curtain at the kitchen window started to smoulder from light reflected off a small vase on the windowsill (quickly put out, that one). Another chimney fire: asbestos was burning and slowly floating up the inside of the as- yet-unfixed wall between laundry and dining room where the wood burner stood. Mum and I left and went across the road to neighbours when the fire engines arrived, completely embarrassed by their appearance yet again.

But nothing prepared us for the day of the big fire.

The day half our house burned down.

The day I ran home from the top of the hill after assuring the girls that taunted me that my house was definitely NOT on fire.

But you see it was. I could see the flames from there. And one of my brothers was home sick from school that day. Was he ok?

      The crowds were 3 people thick gathered round to watch but a fireman called out to me and pulled me to the front when he realized I lived there. Angry flames broke free of the guttering and there was smoke, hoses, noise and panic everywhere. Then Jon appeared. White as the shirt on his back, relieved to see me. Mum had gone out to the pharmacy and the fire had started in my room; sun reflecting off a mirror on my dressing table, my life lay in an ashen heap on the ground outside my bedroom. I couldn't believe that my only clothes were now the uniform I was standing in.

      We sifted through the ashes and recovered some treasured jewellery but that was all. I no longer possessed the beautiful, cream, fur trimmed puffer coat I was so proud of. It was gone forever. For years after that I would lie awake at night, sure that I could hear the rumblings of fire in the walls. I would hop out of bed, place my hands on the walls, just to check they weren't hot. Life was fragile, could change for the worse so suddenly. You could be sure of nothing.

     Now I suspect that the fireman who helped me that day also marked me out. I think he was one of the seven. The men at that house. It was later that year that it all began.

    There seemed to be seven of them: the oldest, two in their forties, two I would guess in their twenties or thirties and the two teenagers I met that first day. Other than Robby I remember no names clearly but have given them names for ease of writing. Maybe they were careful in front of me, maybe I just don't want to remember, I don't know.

    Next time they wait for me they take me to the house. Walking home after school, two of them had sidled up to me, one on each side, demanding, threatening. I try to pull away but to do so makes a scene, increases their grip on my arm, growls of intent. I either go willingly or fight them off here, which I know I can't do. There is no-one nearby to help. "Come with us today then we'll leave you alone. Resist and things will be far worse for you."  How can I know that this is just the beginning of  what my life will become; as their net grows tighter I will do anything to hide my shame from friends and family - to protect them from these mens' very real threats and to create a wall segregating one part of my life from the other in order to survive. Unknowingly I am groomed to compliance. So back to that particular day -  I am afraid, but determined to get through this, get it over with and hopefully then be free. Can't be worse than last time surely? And somehow I'm still here, I didn't die. They open the door and I panic. There's an old man sitting at a table – well he seems old to me anyway. Bald, a bit fat, and probably in his sixties. He stops talking as he sees us: talking to two or three other men standing to his right. I try to make a run for it, but they're behind me and I am cut off at every turn, grabbed and pushed inside. They make me take my clothes off, "helping" me as I resist. By now I'm shaking all over and tears run down my cheeks. Hot shame covers me, I'm so exposed, more exposed than anyone should be, their eyes all over me and smiles on their faces. I watch as if from afar as the older man gets up and pushes me into the room, raping me properly this time before others come and do what happened the first time, egging each other on, impossibly two men raping me at the same time. I kick out, try to get away then just lie there, still, immobile, limp. I watch in horror, is that me – then the screaming in my head drowns out everything. Why don't they hear it? Why doesn't anyone hear it?