Little Runaway

I was Six years old when we moved to Ngaturi grove in Wainuiomata, otherwise known as Wainui, or Nappy Valley, due to the baby boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Wainuiomata is just a ten minute drive south-east of Lower Hutt, with one way in and one way out and sitting 60 metres above Lower Hutt, which means the drive was over a winding hill road. Housing in Wainui was much cheaper than Lower Hutt mainly because of the hill Road you had to climb and with little employment meant workers had no choice but to travel the hill road daily.

Although moving into a new house was quite exciting, that excitement quickly disappeared as the beatings and torture continued. I was to learn quickly that no matter where we lived, Calvin and Sharon’s hatred and anger towards me would not change. After I had turned Six years old, a simple slap around the face or ears was not enough for Sharon, so she replaced the slap with a wooden spoon, Calvin’s choice of weapon would still be his leather belt.

It was summer of 1978. Cory was about five years old. We were both playing in the backyard for some time, later that afternoon we became bored and decided to climb the fence that separated our section from a creek. This was the first time we had been to the creek by ourselves, I was a curious kid and I like to explore. We had been playing at the creek for a few minutes when Cory began placing piles of dry grass from the creek behind our neighbour’s garage wall, which bordered their fence line. He must have picked up a box of matches from inside the house, Sharon was famous for leaving matches lying around, and I had learned not to ever touch matches after the trip to the Hospital in 1976.

As I was making my way up the creek bank I saw him striking a handful of matches, I became worried realising what he was up to, the memories of the massive beating I got for playing with matches when I was four years old were stuck in my head. ‘No Cory!’ I shouted as I scrambled up the creek bank towards him, ‘But I want to see the Fire Engines,’ he replied, as the dry grass caught light, he then proceeded to feed the small fire with another hand fill of dry grass. I stood there watching as he threw the remainder of the matches onto the burning grass, the flames were not very high, but there was a lot of smoke. We both quickly climbed back over the fence and ran inside the house. A little while later, we both heard the sirens and went back outside to wait for the fire engines to arrive, we could see the smoke coming from over the back fence. The smile on Cory’s face was incredible he was very excited. After realising the fire was close to home, Sharon automatically assumed that I had started the fire. ‘Wait until your Father gets home!’ she yelled, as she was holding my arm while smacking my backside with her wooden spoon so hard, that it broke in half. Whenever anything went wrong during the day, Sharon would take her frustration out on me. Weather I had upset her, or if it was Lynette or Cory that had upset her. I would get the wooden spoon, and then have to wait until Calvin got home for whatever punishment he had to dish out. I could never understand why I had to be punished twice for the same wrong doing, however it was life, as I knew it.

I heard Calvin’s car drive up the driveway not long after we had gone to bed that night. As soon as he walked in the door, from my bedroom I could hear Sharon winging to him, ‘That fucking little asshole son of yours has been playing with matches again. I gave him the wooden spoon but he just laughed at me, you had better sort him out!’ Sharon demanded. I would never laughed at Sharon when she hit me. Not only I feared, if I did she would be even angrier, and beat me until she exhausted herself, but she would also tell Calvin when he got home from work, ordering him to beat me again. ‘Robert get you fucking ass out here now!’ Calvin yelled from the lounge, the night of the fire. From the tone of his voice, I knew I was in big trouble. Shaking like a leaf, I slowly made my way to the lounge room. ‘Your Mother told me you lit a fire today?’ He asked me, ‘No, It wasn’t me, it was Cory,’ I explained. ‘Don’t fucking lie to me you little asshole! You lit a fire today, didn’t you?’ ‘No Dad, I protested. ‘Give me your hand!’ Calvin ordered. I was terrified, but I had no choice but to do as I was told. I slowly extended my left hand and before I knew it Calvin had hold of it. ‘You won’t fucking learn will you boy, I’m going to teach you a lesson so you wont play with fucking matches ever again!’ Calvin yelled in my face as he firmly held my tiny hand, holding my left forefinger out. He took a lighter from his shirt pocket, at first I was a little confused as to why he needed his lighter, the confusion did not last long as he then lit the lighter holding it so the flame was a couple of centre metres underneath my finger. I started screaming almost straight away as I felt the heat from the flame beginning to burn my left-hand forefinger. I was trying to pull my hand from his grip, and I remember thinking to myself, I would rather get the belt than have to go through this pain. But the more I struggled the tighter Calvin held onto me, the heat from the lighter was becoming unbearable, I dropped to the floor kicking and screaming. ‘Fuck up you little sook!’ Calvin yelled, as he was pulling me back to my feet. Sharon was standing next to Calvin watching as she always would, it was as if she was getting some sort of satisfaction, out of watching her Son being tortured and beaten up by her Husband. Calvin eventually stopped burning my finger when he saw the size of the blister forming. ‘Don’t fucking play with matches again! Do you understand me boy? Now get your fucking ass back to bed!’ he yelled. I did as I was ordered and went straight to bed, crying myself to sleep as I had done so many times before. Twenty-eight years later, I still have the scar on my finger to remind me of that terrifying night. It seemed to be a normal shopping day one evening in early December of 1978. Calvin and Sharon took us to the Wainuiomata Shopping mall so they could go grocery shopping, ‘You three wait in the car and don’t fucking touch anything. Do you understand me?’ Calvin ordered.

‘Yes we all replied.’ They took two-month old Simon with them and headed for the shops. After sitting in the car for forty minutes or so, we were all becoming very board and tired of playing, “I spy with my little eyes,” so we started timing each other, to see how long it takes to jump out of the car, run around it and jump back in. Lynette went first as always, she had just finished her turn when we noticed Calvin and Sharon making their way back to the car, so Cory and I missed out on our turn. As we were heading home, Calvin made a left turn at a round-about, not knowing the car door wasn’t closed properly, Lynette’s door swung open and she fell out of the moving car, ‘Oh no,’ Sharon screamed when she realised what had just happened. Cory and I looked out of the back window seeing Lynette roll on the road behind us. One car had to swerve to miss Lynette as she was lying on the road. After realising what just happened, Calvin quickly pulled over and helped Lynette back into the car. Amazingly, she was ok with only a couple of small scratches to her knee and elbows, she was more in shock than worried about any injuries. ‘How did that happen?’ Calvin questioned, once Lynette had calmed down, ‘Robert and Cory got out of the car at the mall and were running around’ Lynette said, ‘no it was you,’ I said, protesting my innocence. ‘Wait until we get home you fucking lying little asshole!’ Calvin yelled, referring to me. I knew what I was in for, but what I didn’t know, was this time there would be a little twist to the punishment. After I got a hiding I was sent to bed with no dinner. Lynette came into my room not long after they had all eaten, ‘Here Robert I got you some bread, and Mum said you have to come out to do the dishes.’ Lynette informed me. I was quite upset that Lynette had to lie and get me into trouble earlier on that day, so I refused the bread she had offered me although I was starving.

Calvin would always expect the impossible, whenever he told me to do something, he would expect me to know how to do what ever it was, with out questions, and if I ever did ask questions he would say, ‘You fucking thick cunt! Work it out for yourself.’ I think now looking back, he must have forgotten I was only 7 years old.

One Saturday afternoon Sharon sent Lynette and myself to the shop for a loaf of bread. We had had a water fight earlier on that day, so I was still wearing my swimming togs. We learnt from a very young age, if Sharon or Calvin said to do something, we would do it with out delay or questions. So when we were sent to the shop, we dropped what ever it was we were doing, and obeyed the order. The shop was a twenty-minute walk each way and just after we arrived, I felt the urge to go to the toilet. There were no public toilets on the journey, so I had no choice but to hold on. I told Lynette about my little problem, she advised, that we sit on the gutter for a few minutes. As I was sitting down I could no longer hold myself and I soiled my togs. It felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t stand up, so we sat there for a good half an hour. Because we had taken so long, Calvin must have got a little worried and came looking for us in the car, he found us sitting in the gutter only a couple of metres from the shop. ‘What are you kid’s doing?’ he questioned, as we were hopping in the car, ‘Robert did a poo in his pants, Lynette replied, she thought that it was quite funny. ‘You dirty little cunt, wait till we get home Boy!’ Calvin yelled, ‘But Dad, I couldn’t hold on, and it was a long walk.’ I replied in my defence. Once we had arrived home, Calvin ordered me into the laundry, ‘Get in there and take your shitty pants off!’ he said. He was standing there watching me while I was removing my soiled togs. I was about to put my dirty pants in the laundry tub, ‘No give them to me,’ Calvin ordered. I couldn’t understand what he would want with my dirty togs. Maybe he was going to show Sharon, I thought to myself. I handed my togs to Calvin, and as soon as I did he grabbed hold of my hair and pulled my head back, he then rubbed the soiled togs in my face, I literally had my own shit in my mouth, up my nose and in my eyes. I was retching, wanting to vomit as Calvin was trying to rub every last bit of shit in my face. I tried hard not to vomit, just incase he made me eat that too. ‘Now clean this fucking mess up you little Shithead.’ he said as he left the Laundry. I washed my face in the basin before running for the toilet to vomit. The smell and taste in my mouth was unbearable, it was disgusting, I wished I could have held on, I now hated the man who called himself my Father even more. I was ordered to run a bath in order to clean myself up, it was good to finally have a bath in clean water. Through out my childhood I was made to bath once a week. Sharon would tell me to go and run the bath, Lynette would always bath first, followed by the other boys, I was finally allowed to have my bath once they had all finished. By the time I would make it into the bath, the water would be stone cold and almost the same colour as mud. I remember going to bed that night wishing some nice family would just come and take me away.

It was mid 1979 when we had to move again. After many years of Calvin working 12-hour shifts they had finally saved enough money for a deposit to buy their own house. I’m 8 years old, and I was about to attend my third Primary School, which meant, it was also time to make new friends once again, making new friends was always challenging for me. I found it hard to make new friends and trust people because of the abuse I received at home, and I had become withdrawn from a very young age.

We moved to McKay Street, in Wainuiomata. McKay Street homeowners were middle-aged and the elderly. On the left of our house were a couple in their fifties with a sixteen year old boy and a fourteen year old girl, and on the right was an old man in his sixties. Our new house was the untidiest in the street, it was in desperate need of a new paint job and the back lawn was almost as tall as I was, but that did not seem to bother Calvin or Sharon. Directly behind our house was Glendale Primary school, and although it was just over the fence, we were not allowed to jump the fence, cross the field to get to our classrooms, we had to walk around to the main gate.

The beatings continued for me in McKay Street. I was at the age when I began wondering, why I was the only child that would get a good hiding whenever Calvin or Sharon would be frustrated, or when things seemed to go wrong. Perhaps it was because they just hated me so much. I remember several major hidings from the hands of Calvin and Sharon in the three painful years from McKay Street. Sharon’s weapon of choice was no longer the wooden spoon, she got sick of breaking them on my backside, so for her the jug cord would replace the wooden spoon. This seemed to be more effective, as far as she was concerned, not only it hurt so badly, It would always bring me to my knees after a couple of strikes.

On one occasion, Sharon had just taken a frozen leg of lamb from the freezer. I had pissed her off somehow before school that morning, so she picked up the frozen meat and threw it at my feet so hard that I wasn’t able to walk to school that day. ‘Go to fucking bed and stay there,’ she yelled. I would have rather gone to school. To me I was safer there, than at home with Sharon, although I didn’t have many friends, at least no one beat me up at school. My foot was sore for the next couple of days I could barely walk. It felt like I had broken a bone somewhere, but Calvin and Sharon wouldn’t bother to take me to the doctors just in case he asked questions, I guess.

The only time I remember Calvin had bothered to take me to the doctors was after Sharon needed to borrow a bucket from the woman next door. She was having a cup of tea with Sharon and I was told to go and fetch the bucket from her laundry. When I got there her old wringer washing machine, where you feed your clothes into two rollers to ring out the water once they were washed, was on at the time. I was mucking around and I placed my fingers on the bottom rollers, I was running my fingers from one side of the rollers to the other, when suddenly both rollers gripped my fingers, and pulled my arm in until it hit my elbow. I screamed so loud, I could be heard from next door, Sharon and Margaret; (the washing machine owner) came running over to see what the screaming was about. This was the first and only time Calvin had taken time off work for an injury.

One morning before school, not long after the washing machine incident, Sharon was at Margaret’s having a cup of tea. Cory was cutting out pictures of lawnmowers for his school project. He had pissed me off somehow so I picked up one of his cut out lawnmower pictures and ripped it in half. He was so upset he chucked the pair of scissors he was holding at me and they hit my head, just a few centimetres from my left eye. Blood was pouring out from my forehead so I went running next door to where Sharon was. She didn’t really seem to care at all and told me to put a Band-Aid on it and go to school. When I got to school, blood was still running down my face from my wound, so my teacher sent me to the sick bay to get my head bandaged up before sending me back home to Sharon for the day.

The only good memory I have from 11 McKay Street was when on my 9th birthday in September 1980. I woke up early and found out Sharon had gone into labour overnight and early in the morning she gave birth to my sister Sally. It was great having my little sister born on my birthday, but the joy and excitement wouldn’t last for long. Sally was only one month old when I first ran away from home.

One afternoon after school, Lynette and I were playing with Calvin’s stereo. When he arrived home from work that night he turned his stereo on, it was so loud it almost blew our eardrums. ‘Who the fuck has been playing with my stereo?’ Calvin yelled. ‘Robert has’ Lynette replied, innocently. ‘And you’ I said, referring to Lynette. ‘No dad, it was just Robert,’ Lynette protested. ‘Go to your room, pull down your pants, and wait there for me!’ Calvin yelled as he made his way to the toilet. By this time, I could barely take any more hidings from Calvin and Sharon, so on my way to my bedroom I sneaked out the front door and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t care where I was going, or what I was going to do, but I knew one thing, and that was I wasn’t going to get another hiding that night. It was almost dark as the night set in, I knew that before long I would need to find somewhere to sleep. I made it as far as Wainuiomata College, which was about a kilometre from our house, as I was wondering around, I saw teenage boys playing basketball in the school hall. I walked in and sat down to watch the much bigger boy’s practice. A young man approached me. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked ‘Shouldn’t you be at home with your mum and dad?’ it was about 7 p.m., too late for a nine year old to be out wondering around schools. Not wanting to go back home, I told the young man I had been playing on the “monkey bars” after school, and had fallen and hit my head on the pavement. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, ‘I can’t remember,’ I said, ‘Where do you live?’ he then asked.

‘I don’t know!’ I said, I knew that if I told him where I lived, he might take me home. ‘Well you had better wait here then and I’ll go and call the Police.’ As he walked towards the office, I ran from the Gym and headed towards a friend’s house not far from the Collage. Once there, I was afraid to knock on the door because I knew Calvin would eventually turn up looking for me, so I went and hid in my friends Garden Shed. It was cold and dark, but for some reason, I was not afraid, I guess sleeping in the cold and dark shed was much better than a beating from Calvin. Not long after I made myself comfortable, I heard Calvin’s voice outside, he was with my friend’s Dad, not wanting to be found I hid under a workbench and placed boxes in front of me, the shed door opened. ‘Robert are you in here?’ I did not reply. I was worried that they would find me hiding under the workbench. Believing I was not there the shed door closed again. ‘If he turns up could you call me?’ I heard Calvin saying to my friends Dad as they stood outside.

The next morning I emerged from the shed, cold and hungry I knocked on my friend’s door, his Mother was quite surprised to see me, ‘Where have you been all-night Robert? Your parents were worried.’ ‘I was in the shed’ I replied, ‘Really? We looked in there for you last night, she said. She then gave me breakfast before Telephoning Calvin to come and pick me up. When we arrived back home, I still got belting for playing with Calvin’s precious stereo and a few more belts for the trouble I had caused by running away. Not long after I had run away, Lynette and I started helping my granddad on his milk run. He had owned the milk truck since I was quite little; the truck had a distinctive Orange cab. I remember visiting my Grandparents on Sunday afternoons. My Grandad would be sitting at the dining table counting the takings from his business, and often he would give each of us kids ten cents each, as we stood watching him count his money. I enjoyed helping on the milkrun, it gave me the chance to get away from Sharon for a couple of hours, three days a week. Any opportunity to get away from Sharon and Calvin was good, even if I was only away for an hour or two.

We only had five small streets to deliver the milk, and it would normally take about three hours to finish our run. It seemed like a normal day delivering milk one day, during summer of 1981, when a man came from a house in one of the small groves, where we delivered milk. He seemed to be in a hurry and came running straight for me. At first I thought we hadn’t given him the right amount of milk, as soon as the scary man approached the milk trolley, he demanded money. ‘Give me all of the fucking money’ he said. He seemed quite angry, and it was very scary when the man in his early twenties demanded money from me. I felt I had no choice but to do as the robber ordered. I gave him all the notes and coins I had. I was worried about telling my Grandad about the robbery, I knew he would tell Calvin and I feared being beaten for not standing up for myself. Immediately after being robbed, Lynette and I ran back to our Grandparents house, which was just down the road from where we were delivering the milk, we told my Grandma of what had just happened and she called the Police.

I felt a sense of relief when the man who robbed us was arrested a short time later if he hadn’t been arrested it would have been hard work convincing Calvin, I had actually been robbed. Not long after this incident I would have my own run-in with the law.

Sharon had sent me on the twenty-minute walk to the Wainuiomata Shopping Mall, to buy her a bag of potting mix for her pot plants. ‘Can Cory come with me?’ I asked, ‘No go by yourself,’ Sharon ordered.

I was wondering around the Woolworth’s supermarket looking at the nice food, I was so hungry. So I thought if I could walk out of the supermarket without paying for the potting mix, I would be able to use the money Sharon had given me, to buy a hot pie from the mall bakery to eat on the way home. I had only just walked out of the shop, when I was confronted by the store security and asked to go back with them. I was led to the Manager’s office before the Police were called. Fear set in straight away, it wasn’t fear of the Police coming to talk with me, it was fear of what would happen if Sharon found out I got caught stealing her potting mix. The Police took me home, and had a brief chat with Sharon before leaving. The marks from the Jug cord took a over week to fade.

I had been doing the milk run with Lunette for a month or so now. Normally after we had finished, we would go for a drive with Granddad back to the cool-store, where he would off load the empty bottles and any remaining full bottles of milk. I remember feeling left out when Granddad would park his truck, telling me to stay in the truck and wait for him as he and Lynette would disappear to the small room behind the Cool-store, where he would deposit the milk tokens. On one occasion they were gone for quite some time, after becoming bored I decided to go and see where they were. I walked to the back of the cool-store and tried the office door, but it was locked, so I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I knew they were both inside the room that was the only place they could be. so I put my ear on the door to listen for any sound inside, it was quiet, and I was puzzled as to their whereabouts, where could they be? I thought. I knocked on the door again, but still no answer, so I went back to the milk truck to wait for Grandad and Lynette. Eventually they both appeared from the direction of the room where the tokens were deposited. From the looks on both of their faces when they hopped into the truck I knew something was not right, however I would not find out exactly what had happened on that day until many years later when Lynette had enough courage to confess to me. Finally I was able to piece together, why I could not find either of them on that day at the cool store I learned my Grandad had sexually interfered with my sister. From that moment on my feelings changed towards my Grandad.

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