go and risking further embarrassment.
‘You must go,’ she said, exasperated. Joy upset her, and now I was upsetting her, too. It was impolite to turn down invitations.
‘I’ll run away if you don’t go,’ she threatened. Sometimes when my sister was rude, Mum ran out the back gate, slipped through the house paddock’s wire fence and disappeared up the gully. She always returned after a few hours, but I worried and silently resented my sister for being horrid. My sister back-answered, shouted, swore and poked her tongue at Mum. I didn’t understand why, preferring to avoid the house so I didn’t have to listen to the noise. I tried to be good so as not to cause sadness. But now Mum was threatening to run away because I didn’t want to go out for lunch.
Somehow finding the courage to override the urge to stay at home, I said: ‘Yes, I’ll play with Louise and stay for dinner.’
I rode my bike the three kilometres to Louise’s house, the last 400 metres comprising a dirt laneway bordered by a cypress hedge. We had time for a play before lunch so we climbed the hedge, trying to get all the way through, from branch to branch, without putting our feet on the ground. By the time the lunch gong sounded, we looked and smelt like little cypress trees ourselves, with sticky green bits in our hair, inside our blouses and over our woollen jumpers. Exercise was good, but my day was about to deteriorate fast.
The Morrison family, one of the region’s earliest settlers, had a big dairy farm and employed a share-farmer to help milk their cows. Louise and her two older sisters and parents lived in a big cream-brick house surrounded by a rambling cottage garden.
Every child in the district loved going to birthday parties at Louise’s house. We played games like ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ and ‘Drop the Hanky’ before sitting down to a brightly decorated table laden with party food. There would be jelly set in orange quarters, macaroons so light they almost floated away, hundreds and thousands sprinkled on quarters of buttered bread, dainty squares of hedgehog, marshmallow in ice-cream cones and hot sausage rolls. All were homemade.
Until now I’d felt special, being invited to birthday parties and Sunday dinners as well. That was before anorexia developed in my mind. Now, I was filled with dread. Sunday dinner loomed like a heavy black cloud and there was nowhere to take cover.
Louise’s mother was a great cook but to me appeared a stout and scary, no-nonsense woman. Louise had confided several times how she’d had her mouth washed out with something that tasted horrible for telling fibs. Now I sat at the kitchen table with the family, a plate loaded with slices of roast beef, baked potatoes and pumpkin and boiled peas, drenched with rich gravy, before me. I felt I was before the firing line.
Fearful as I was of Mrs Morrison, I could eat only the peas; terrified, I ate them slowly, one at a time, trying to avoid the gravy. There was no opportunity to shift food into my pocket. So I shifted it around on my plate, and pretended to eat, but I was fooling nobody. Looking downward, sensing everyone was staring at me, my face turned bright red. I wanted to disappear under the table.
‘This is the worst meal in my life,’ I thought. ‘Everyone has finished eating and is waiting for me.’ At last Louise’s mother removed my plate. ‘What a wasteful child,’ I knew she was thinking.
Without a word, she served dessert. Big bowls of jelly, custard and preserved peaches, topped with a blob of thick cream fresh from the dairy, were passed around the table. Normally I would love this but now studied my bowl with a sinking heart. The jelly and custard had been sweetened. The peaches were submerged in syrup. Louise’s dad and her big sister cleaned their bowls and left the table. Her mother was clearing the table and washing the dishes.
I sat, too scared to move, apart from my swinging legs, out of sight under the tablecloth. Louise sat loyally beside me. At last we were shooed outside. Relieved, I didn’t want to stay a moment longer and said I had to pedal home.
‘Got to help Dad with the cows and calves,’ I said.
I feared that Louise’s mother would telephone Mum and tattle. Sure enough, as soon as I entered our back door Mum lectured me on my pig-headedness and poor manners. ‘Blow Louise’s mother,’ I thought. She had phoned to ask if I was sick, but I’m sure both mothers considered my behaviour just plain rude. I couldn’t wait to get outside to start my jobs and to be alone with the bossy thoughts in my head. Mum did not make me go for meals at anyone’s house again.
There was one social event I could not avoid. One evening during the week before Christmas, everyone in the Glenaladale, Woodglen and Iguana Creek district gathered for our primary school’s annual concert in the ‘Glen’ Hall. Gum tips, colourful paper streamers and bunches of balloons camouflaged the unlined timber walls. The Christmas tree was a big cypress branch, standing in a 44-gallon drum covered in red and green crepe paper. Our mothers helped us to decorate the foliage with balloons and paper chains, angels and Chinese lanterns that we had made with small squares of coloured paper at school. Set in the corner beside our little performance area, the tree evoked much excitement as the mothers’ club members placed gifts around its base. ‘Which one is mine?’ the children looked at each other and giggled. Anticipation mounted as we presented our carols, skits and nativity play. Our parents laughed and clapped.
Normally I would be as excited as everyone else, but tonight I stood in the back row, trying to hide in the shadows of the tree. The concert over, a bell clanged and the children clambered to sit on the front wooden bench, as big, jolly Santa entered the hall door, waving his bell and singing ‘Ho, ho, ho’. He called to us, one by one, asked us what we wanted for Christmas and gave us our gift from the tree. Over the years I had asked for a pony, a gun, and a cowgirl suit. I didn’t know what to ask for this year and didn’t care. I could not laugh or smile. Santa gave me a pen, commemorating completion of Grade Six, and I hurried back to my seat.
I wanted to go home. I felt removed from my friends and sensed their parents were looking at me.
My chest was flat and my periods were sporadic; my mind was full of thoughts of food and exercise. Anorexia had dominated my final year of primary school.
Christmas Day was not happy for my family that year. My city cousins, who gave me an excuse to sleep on the verandah, didn’t visit because they had moved from Melbourne to Portland, on the western side of Victoria,
too far to travel to our farm.
So there was just Mum and Dad, Joy, me, Grandpa and a few old family friends for Christmas dinner. For a gift, my parents gave me a beautiful, solid timber, locally made desk. Complete with pencil tray and drawers, it was an encouraging acknowledgement of my budding writing passion. I’d won my first essay competition at the age of nine; I wrote about rice and the prize was a fountain pen. More recently I had been writing adventure stories, sometimes reading them at school, and some were published in the Australian Children’s Newspaper.
For Christmas dinner I tried to impress Mum by eating a boiled chicken leg, my first meat in months, and a big serve of boiled cabbage. Lately I’d been eating a tomato for dinner so this was a feast. By now Mum had accepted that putting food on my plate was a waste if I said I would not eat it. There was no point giving me roast beef, lamb or pork, roast potato, pumpkin, and thick, brown gravy, or any of the plum pudding, served with warm custard sauce and cream. Mum did not need to hide any threepences or sixpences in a pudding serve for me that year.
She was pleased I ate the chicken but afterwards I ran up the hill behind our house, to work that chicken leg off while bringing the cows home to be milked. We were in a drought, and the cows had to walk a long way from the dairy to feed on pasture between milkings. Now that I was on holiday, I happily herded the cows to the
