Born to Fight (2 page)

In Samoa I remember meeting up with my sister, Victoria, once a week in church. That was the only time we’d see her, as tradition dictated that the boys lived with Uncle, and Victoria with Auntie, in a different house. Victoria had been sad in Auckland, and when I saw her at church in Samoa, I noticed she had that same sadness. I didn’t figure out why until I was a lot older.

After a year or so we were called back to New Zealand to live with Mum and Dad, this time in a four-bedroom house in Papatoetoe in South Auckland. It may sound like my parents had gotten their shit together, but they hadn’t. The house was bigger than what we were living in before, no doubt, but there wasn’t really any more food, and now there was debt – debt that fuelled the fire of Dad’s anger. Even as a little tacker, I could recognise that.

As soon as we got into that house, the arguments with the neighbours started. Later on I realised that our family,
and our house, had a reputation. Mum was loud, but Dad was physical, very physical. We were isolated on our street, and weren’t even allowed to talk to the other little Samoan kids next door. Victoria used to pass notes to them asking what life was like in their house, but that act of sedition had to be carried out carefully, because if she was caught, she was getting a beating.

Most of the neighbours didn’t like our parents, and they particularly gave Dad a very wide berth. We kids didn’t have that luxury. I used to spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the beatings happened: why they happened in general, or what the cause of any specific beating might have been. It’s only now that I know they didn’t really have much to do with us, they were about something else. That something else I hope never to know about.

Dad would beat us for any little thing, and with any implement. Fists, feet, broom handles, sticks, electrical cords, the hose that went from the washing machine to the tap. That last one really sucked, because it was heavy and it hurt like hell when Dad really got it going, but no matter how hard you got beat with it, it never broke.

With that hose, Dad could just whup until he got tired, and he had energy for that work, man. He loved that hose.

He was big on psychological pain, too, my old man. A beating he seemed to particularly enjoy was forcing us
onto our knees on the floor in the sitting room, facing out the window at the pear tree, where he’d go and spend time carefully selecting a whupping branch. We’d hope for a new, young branch, or an old one ready to break, but he’d usually end up with something hefty and durable.

Another of his favourites was calling one of us over, and when we got there, throwing all his weight into a thigh punch. You’d fall to the ground with a dead leg and then he had you. You couldn’t run, you just had to lie there and wait for him to do whatever he wanted to do to you. Was he going to get the hose? Was he going to get the broom? Were you going to get the boot? Are those his footsteps?

He also used to like making us beat each other, and if ever we cried, he’d jump in with his man fists and feet. All the beatings were worse if we cried. If we cried, the extra strikes were on us. At the end, the blame was usually equally shared. We shouldn’t have been so weak.

When I saw the movie
Wolf Creek
, the cruel bastard of a main character Mick Taylor reminded me of my dad. He would have made a good torturer, the old fella. He really put his heart and soul into his sadism.

I used to think Steve got the worst of it, because he was the oldest boy, and the biggest, and the one most likely to know better than to do whatever it was that we little kids shouldn’t be doing – that’s why he got his head smashed
against the walls and doors. Now I suspect it was just because Dad had had more time to resent him.

I used to think Victoria got off relatively lightly. That didn’t mean she didn’t get beaten; she was in charge of us boys and had to try to keep us clean and in line, and when she didn’t manage it (which was pretty much always) she’d get the crap beaten out of her too. Still, I didn’t think she had it as bad as me, Steve and John.

We all thought Dad was soft on Victoria. He used to take her into a room with him, but inside we wouldn’t hear the crashes and thumps of a beating, nor would there be blood or bruises when she came out. That shit wasn’t fair as far as we knew. We thought something odd was happening in that room, but we didn’t know that something was heinous and sinful.

We used to dare each other to go in. Thank fuck we never did.

We didn’t know shit about shit. When I knew more about what was going on, I realised Victoria by far had the worst of it, but none of us could comprehend any of that at the time.

I try to remember any light, fun moments we shared as kids, but it’s hard to find anything. If there were any board games, or holidays, or trips to the movies, or the rugby, or the museum, or anything that parents and little kids
do together then I don’t remember them. All I remember about that house is a shitload of beatings and what felt like endless days of hunger.

There was usually some food when Mum was around, but later on she had two jobs, which meant she was never there. Dad cooked sometimes, but when he did it’d be a giant pot of lamb flaps, or something like that, and we’d be eating it for weeks, even after it had gone off.

There was food when someone in the family died, and we couldn’t wait for that to happen. Unlike a lot of Samoans, we didn’t know our extended family, because most of those who lived in New Zealand were on my mother’s side, and Dad forbade us, Mum included, from being in contact with them. We would only see them when someone died, and none of them meant anything to us except a bus ride to a big feed when they finally fucked off from this life. Of course we couldn’t wait for that to happen.

There was also food when the Mormons came around. They were the only people who ever came round to that shithole. Those guys from the church used to get to tuck into all kinds of good stuff that our parents would get for them – cake, Milo, chips, Coke, biscuits, all the stuff I would literally have dreams about. When they came we’d poke our heads through the door, salivating, looking at these missionaries with eyes of hatred and jealousy.

We had to be silent when those dudes came around. This was to be a perfect house in front of the church people, and we were to be perfect children. Sometimes John couldn’t handle that, though. He was the most introverted and introspective of us kids, but if you ever managed to light his fuse, then the explosion would be measured in megatons.

There was more than one occasion when John couldn’t help but scream at the missionaries, telling them to fuck off out of the house. When that happened, Dad would feign surprise and gently tell off my brother, with John fully knowing that each soft word would correlate to strikes from a fist or implement as soon as the Mormons left.

John couldn’t help himself. We were as hungry as street dogs, so it was torture watching someone eat, and in our house of starvation no less. It was almost as bad as when we’d catch Mum and Dad in the car, eating fast food, before coming inside and reeking of delicious chips.

I know it wasn’t the missionaries’ fault we were hungry, and there’s no way they could’ve known they were the only people to get a decent feed at our house. I know that now, anyway.

When they’d leave, we’d jump onto whatever they didn’t eat like animals on the Serengeti, and more than once an almighty brawl erupted over who would get the lion’s share.
We weren’t siblings like you and yours might be, we were desperate competitors, every day fighting a zero-sum game.

Like a lot of Polynesian people in South Auckland, we were born Mormons, and while I did become a man of faith later I really only remember the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as a place where we’d have to sit down for a long time, wearing uncomfortable clothes.

When I became an adult I realised that the Mormon Church didn’t do us right. Those people didn’t do my sister right. They knew what was going on with my dad and my sister – it was an open secret at the church. Our bishop knew exactly what was going on with Victoria because she went to him and asked for help. All he ever did was tell off anyone who spoke of what was going on, and he certainly didn’t try to help.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now I find it weird that no one at the church ever tried to do anything about what was happening to my sister. The church should have been better. Someone should have been stronger. They were meant to be leaders and protectors. They were meant to help their flock when the community needed it – they used to bang on about that. My sister needed it.

Everyone around the neighbourhood knew what my dad was doing, but we boys closest to it only knew vaguely that something rotten was going on, and we certainly didn’t
understand the gravity of it. At seven I was too young to know what was right and what was wrong, and what happened between men and women. I could only sense the wrongness of it, but I couldn’t understand or articulate what was really happening.

Any time I was allowed to leave the house I’d feel an electric unburdening, but there was always a lingering pain when Victoria was left behind. I always got out when I had the chance, though. I’d run from that fucking house.

Sometimes I’d run to the school, or the big tree in the sporting ground, where I could see if Dad was coming to get my ass, but my favourite escape was to the Spaceys, cabinet video games found at most local shops in Auckland at that time.

I especially liked the stand-up fighting games, where my character would punch and kick his way further and further into the story, dependent on my skill. Up, down, left, right, button A, button B – you press the buttons at the right time, move the stick at the right time, you could win. It fed a part of my brain that I’d be shovelling money into for the rest of my life.

How did I get the money to play Spaceys? Sometimes I’d steal other kids’ money to play; sometimes – and these were the best times – I’d get to play because John had managed to jury-rig a machine to give us endless free credits.

I remember an instance when John had fixed up Kung Fu Master. Man, the joy of not having to worry about a missed button press, or an errant joystick tilt ending the game was something I’ll never forget.

There were no mistakes that couldn’t be fixed. I could play that game for the rest of my life. Only John didn’t see it that way – eventually he got sick of me buzzing around him, pestering for my turn.

He told me to go home, and if I didn’t, he was going to beat my ass. That was no idle threat either. He’d done it before, he’d do it again.

I had to go back home, back to Dad and Victoria and the smell of Dettol. I hated the smell of Dettol before I even knew that Dad was using it to wash himself after his sinful acts. I still can’t stand the smell of it now.

Dad was abusing Victoria pretty much from when I was born, so I guess I knew about incest before I knew about sex. It was happening when we were first in New Zealand, it was happening in Samoa – with Dad’s brother taking over that fucked-up duty – and it was happening when we came back.

It was always happening and everyone knew. Mum knew, but she’d just laugh about it. They were ‘busy’, she’d say if I asked where Dad or Victoria were.

‘Go to the park for a bit, Mark.’ I’d always go. We all would.

When Victoria was twelve or thirteen she developed a little bit of a belly, and rumours started flying around school. They were saying Vic was pregnant. They were saying it was Dad’s baby.

There were too many stories, too much chatter. It was all too open now. Everyone had always known but, until then, they’d known about it in whispers and soft gossip, quiet enough for it to be ignored after a muted chat. Now it was out on the streets.

I wasn’t relieved when Dad was taken to prison – I was too young to understand the whole situation. I just knew he was going away and that there’d be even less food in the house. I also knew he was going away because of Victoria, and I’m sorry to say I was angry with her because of that. We all were, but we didn’t know any better. Except Mum, she knew better, or she should have anyway, but her concern at the time was keeping Victoria from telling the cops the whole story.

They were the leanest of days, when the old man was in prison, and we got to the point of delirium. I remember all of us in the front room shouting ‘HUNGRY’ at people while they walked down the street. When they saw us, we’d giggle like hyenas. I guess we were laughing about the contrast between the orderly, peaceful world outside, and the tumult of crap that was going down in our house.
The weird thing is that Mum used to laugh along with us, screaming at the people on the street. That was some crazy shit.

We didn’t know what was happening to us was bad. We were kids, and had only ever lived in a household where up was down and wrong was right. All we knew was that Dad was away and there wasn’t any food.

Dad came back pretty quickly, after Mum offered Victoria a new bicycle to shut up about the whole thing. I remember we all piled into the car to go and pick him up from the bus stop down at the shops.

We all wanted to see the old man, except Victoria of course. When I first saw him, I felt sorry for him. He had hollow eyes, and a lonely, sad way about him. I’d never seen him like that before.

As soon as he got into the car, though, he slowly started to become himself again, and after a few weeks life pretty much went back to how it had been before, except that Dad lost his job and there was even less food.

Although we were usually in a state of friction, there were some rare moments of fraternity in that house. Steve and John, older and bigger than me, wanted to protect me and especially my sister, even though they didn’t really have the capacity. I think that’s what fucked them up, and broke something inside their heads.

The old man was God in that house, with a wrath that could equal any ancient, vengeful deity. As little kids there was no defying that. John disappeared into himself and became a quiet, brooding, sometimes morose and often dangerous teenager. Steve started showing signs of being mental. That was what it was called then, ‘mental’. Mental wasn’t a disease, and there weren’t different types of mental, it was just a binary that you’d better fucking try to avoid being on the wrong side of, like being gay, or being dead.