Who ya gonna call?

After dinner the Pastor starts up. ‘Being a Christian is not just a piece of cake or a walk in the park,’ he tells the twenty or so of us young people bunched around the table. He pauses and surveys us: tanned, T-shirted, many with tattoos.

My friend raises her hand. The Pastor is momentarily thrown: a soul on offer so soon into his sermon? ‘What about a bed of roses? Or a good cup of tea? Is it like that?’ she asks with mock sincerity. I cannot look at her partly because I am genuinely shocked at her brazen attitude.

The Pastor shakes his head. ‘No! Christianity will become the enemy of the state. But the reward will be to meet Jesus Christ.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ the Christians chorus back. ‘Hallelujah! God be praised.’

The Pastor continues. ‘But judgement will be passed by God for those who have not received the Holy Spirit.’

I have not been filled with the Holy Spirit. I know for certain that I do not want anyone witnessing anything happening to me. I think about how much it would please my mother if I were to filled by the Holy Spirit and become a born-again Christian. She would see it as a triumph and validation of her mothering skills. She would see it as a sign that she was a good role model: would take it as a sign that I want to share her life with her. Eternal damnation is preferable to this but I feel uneasy that the Christians might be right.

My mother is a religious woman. Her passion is the Catholic Church and the pope. The church can do no wrong. Growing up, my entire family went to church but my mother was the only devout one. When I am at high school she sells what she refers to as ‘religious stuff’ from our lounge room. The front door rings constantly and all times of the day with strangers tentatively asking ‘Father William sent me here?’ The range and breadth of what’s on offer never ceases to amaze me and sends my school buddies into convulsions. Our sideboard displays a variety of different sized statues of Jesus, Mary and the odd Joseph; a never-ending supply of crucifixes—from wooden rough-hewn to glow-in-the-dark—and bleeding heart pictures with audaciously ornate frames. Just when we think there cannot be another angle ‘religious stuff’ surprises us all and Jesus turns up in a snow dome. My mother gives all the proceeds to the church. She organises and almost single-handedly runs the parish chocolate drive. Boxes of the cheap chocolate take up almost half of the spare room. There’s barely room for the deep freezer.

‘Would you girls like a chocolate?’ my mother asks my friend and me as she tips an entire box of chocolate bars onto the kitchen table.

‘Thanks, Mrs Glorie,’ says my friend, ripping open a chocolate bar. My mother takes delight in seeing us settled down at the kitchen table to wolf down bars of chocolate.

My mother tells me that the holy oil on her dresser will cure my blackheads. It is there after all to help the afflicted and was known to cure leprosy. I wonder about the oil clogging my pores further but it feels sacrilegious to voice my concern, especially after my mother announces: ‘God spoke to me once!’ Considering the amount of work she’s put in I am surprised it was just the once. She won’t tell me what God said to her but even I know it wasn’t about my pimples. I smear the oil on my chin anyway.

My mother attends a regular Friday night gathering called the Wandering Family and drags my father and me along. She starts speaking in tongues. The first time she does it I want to sink my fist into her face and scream at her. She is at her most loathsome to me when she is babbling incoherently; totally oblivious that she has a daughter in the room. My father is fidgeting nervously, wishing perhaps that he were at home with his whisky and cigarettes with The Dave Allen Show on the box.

‘Let us witness tonight anyone not filled with the Holy Spirit,’ says the Pastor raising his bible to the ceiling.

*

My friend and I are eighteen years old and living in Broome in tents. We set up camp with three others but we know just about the entire caravan park, who are all travellers and transients—like us. We are right on Cable Beach and spend our days on the beach, reading, writing innumerable letters to people at home or the innumerable people we have met on the way, talking about the night before; embroiled in the dramas of community living. I keep a diary and record all the minutiae of life.

‘You and that diary,’ my friend says.

At night we cook meals together or go to the pub when there’s a band or a DJ. We drink all night and take lots of great drugs. I kiss loads of boys. We laugh all the time and the weather is glorious. We have been away from home for six months.

Given the number of young people travelling into the town in search of something, it is rich pickings for the local evangelist Christian group. There is a tent-load of Christian boys in the camp next to us and they are nice enough and we become friends with them.

These particular Christians are obsessed with what they refer to as the ‘end times’ and ‘the beast’ or the devil. One Christian boy is determined to prove that all bar-code numbers eventually add up to 666, the number of the Devil. ‘The Devil walks on earth,’ he says, brandishing our box of Corn Flakes.

My friend and I snort into our breakfast bowls. I am used to my mother’s ramblings on Jesus but this something else altogether.

I discover that most of the Christian girls, who live in a house in town, are relatively new to Christianity: most less than six months. One girl was riding her motor-bike around Australia with three other girls when they got to Broome less than a month after their year-long planned trip.

‘I met Christ,’ she relays to me. The others went on without her. I know that bike is longing for the open road. Two non-Christian girls we know get kicked out of the caravan park for not paying rent. They are homeless until they are offered a room in the Christian girls’ house.

‘They’ll convert you,’ my friend warns them.

These two girls laugh. They consider themselves wild, free and tough. They assure us they will be shocking the Christians. My friend doesn’t particularly like these girls and I have my doubts about them. They are bludgers: cigarettes, beer or food. Once it was bail money for one of them.

‘Next time we see them they’ll be Christians,’ says my friend as the girls walk off.

My friend is right.

‘It was like we were tripping,’ one of the girls says two days later about the ‘night the Holy Spirit came down’.

The other girl nods her head, ‘Tripping.’

The converted girls haven’t really changed though. They are still bludging, taking the Christian girls’ cigarettes and eating their food. But now say things like ‘I just don’t want to see you burn in hell.’

Then, out of the blue, our camp is evicted from the caravan park. It’s almost July and the more well-off tourists are heading north and there’s no room for two short-wearing girls in thongs living on fortnightly dole cheques—no matter how great their tan.

My friend is incredulous ‘This town doesn’t deserve us!’ Our friends make plans to head to Darwin but I’m not ready to leave Broome yet. I am having too much fun and I am seeing a man who rides a black motorbike. I sleep with him in his tent fully clothed, we never have sex, we barely kiss, but I feel like we are in love anyway.

My friend and I are offered a caravan by the house where the Christian girls live. I think it’s a nice thing for them to do. My friend scoffs.

‘They see us as fresh meat.’

‘Please!’ I beg my friend. She relents.

The Christians begin singing their born-again songs and arms are raised in ecstasy in anticipation of the Holy Spirit visiting. The scene is all too familiar to me—I think I am immune.

My friend whispers to me, ‘Last week they were off their nut on drugs.’

‘Lord God almighty, let your holy spirit come down tonight. In Jesus’ name, amen.’

‘Amen. Praise the Lord,’ everyone choruses back and I hear my own voice in the chorus.

‘Give me a walk in the park any-day,’ my friend grabs my hand and steers me out the door. We go to the pub where we get drunk and my friend picks up a boy commonly known as Bush-Pig.

‘I’m taking him back to the caravan,’ she tells me.

‘I’m worried I haven’t been filled with the Holy Spirit,’ I tell her drunkenly.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ my friend says.

I spend the night with my bikie boyfriend.

I am woken up early the next morning by someone whispering through the tent. ‘Your friend is outside.’

I find my friend sitting by the shop drinking a carton of ice-coffee, surrounded by our belongings. We have been thrown out by the Christians.

‘They didn’t even give me time to pack,’ says my friend.

*

The Holy Spirit did not come down that night, much to the Pastor’s frustration. As he and his wife drove out of the Christian girls’ house his headlights happened upon my friend and Bush-Pig on the grass outside the house.

‘There!’ said the Pastor pointing his finger to my friend in the ditch. ‘There is the cause. The root of evil.’

I ask my friend if it was worth it. ‘A bush-pig in the bush is worth two in the hand,’ my friend laughs and then says soberly, ‘I needed to get you out.’

*

I am five years old and my mother beats me for not eating my soup. I am already used to being screamed at and smacked across the head but she’s never gone this far. She slaps me about the head and yanks me from the table and drags me into the bathroom. She strips me naked and lands slaps all over my body. My screams and my mother’s fury brings an older sister, who is fourteen, running to see what is happening. My sister immediately runs screaming for my father and I can hear her begging him to do something: begging him to stop my mother. But all that happens is that I get an audience. My father, my sister and my little cousin who is staying with us, all stand by the bathroom door and watch. They finally leave when mother pushes me into the cold shower.

*

One evening when I am in my early twenties this sister calls me on the telephone. When I answer, she gives no salutation or introduction, just blurts out: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t help you more,’ and bursts into tears. I know what she is talking about but I do not admit to it. Even though I have thought about that night almost every day, it is unbearable for me to speak about it. I leave it like that for another ten years when finally after seeing a therapist for three years I tell her. My therapist tells me I have suffered a trauma. I do some calculations and realise that I have paid more than twelve thousand dollars to hear this and all I feel is that another person has joined the audience to add further to my shame. My therapist says the most traumatic part is often how the trauma is dealt with after the event. I cannot remember what happened after this event. What I do recall, however, is that during catechism lessons, whenever the teacher told us about the humiliation of Christ (‘you cannot imagine, children, the humiliation he endured’), I was able to imagine it.

My parents are distasteful to me and I am distasteful to myself. I reject them. I become secretive. I hide from my family and barely speak to them. I spend lots of time on my own either in my bedroom or playing outside. I am bullied at school and the teacher tells my mother, who in turn demands an answer from me about why I am being bullied.

They do not love me because I smell; because I do not do well at school; because I wet the bed or my pants; because I am noisy and demanding; because I do not eat my dinner; because I am unlovable. During meals my father hauls me from the table and launches me into dark rooms and slams the door behind me. I am the bad child because I do not eat. Then when I am twelve and do not stop eating and am a fat, my father is equally as venomous with me.

I am a teenager and my friends all like my mother. They say she is funny and ‘a character’. My best friend lives next door. She is an A grade student, street smart and funny. I am a C-grade student but as smart and funny as she is. The two of us are outgoing and we have loads of friends. I’m allowed to have parties and as many friends over as I like. I have my moods though. I am angry and told that I am ‘over sensitive’.

My mother is impossible to reason with and my father will not stand up to her. My mother has told an overweight friend of mine that she is fat. When I try to talk to her about this she lashes out at me and tells me ‘I’m accusing her’ but doesn’t say what of. My mother will not be questioned is the unspoken rule in our house. My father flies into a fury, as he always does at the slightest upset his children cause his wife. My mother will not be made upset is the other rule in our house. My father shouts at me two inches from face. He doesn’t hit or kick me (I am sixteen now and too old for that) but I burst into tears anyway. I have no-one to call on for support.

*

My friend and I move on to Darwin and after three months living in a hostel I come home because I’ve fallen in love with a male friend I have been writing to. I find our letters romantic and thrilling. I cannot believe my luck. He has a full-time job, a fantastic car and when we finally kiss I want to sleep with him. I am nineteen years old and have been experiencing ultimate freedoms and meeting dozens of men but I have not had sex with anyone in nearly two years—I have not allowed anyone to really touch me. We are excited and nervous to see each other. On our first date we knock heads over a dropped bottle of Coke. We laugh and see it as a good sign. He drives us to the beach. We get stoned and don’t kiss. On our second date we go to a Midnight Oil concert, we dance and we don’t get stoned and we never stop kissing. We are in love and talk about moving in together. We date more and get stoned at almost every meeting. My new boyfriend is good to me although somewhat indifferent at times. I am left baffled at these times because I don’t understand what is happening.

I find a part-time job in a stall selling leather goods at the local weekend markets. During the week I have a lot of free time on my hands. It is summer and my parents go down south on holiday. A week of 40-degree heat hits the city. During the day I crank up the air conditioner, smoke joints and read or watch television. At night, if I don’t see my boyfriend, I have friends around and we play cards and smoke dope with the doors wide open, the stereo on and a bottle of bourbon on the table.

I get postcards from my friend who has made it to Queensland with a carload of other travellers. I feel at a loss and think about my travels, especially Broome. I pick up one of my mother’s bibles and go straight to Revelations and read all about Armageddon. Everything the Christians in Broome told me comes back to haunt me. I have nightmares about the end of the world and a bleeding moon. I take it as prophetic and don’t make the connection between that and the amount of dope I’m smoking. Summer continues. I smoke more dope both with my boyfriend and then late into the night after he drops me home.

One night my boyfriend and I go to the movies. Ghost Busters is playing. As I open the front door I can tell my boyfriend is looking forward to going out. He is smiling broadly and wearing his good shirt. He’s delighted that I’ve invited a friend along with us. It is a beautiful, warm mid-week evening. I sit between my boyfriend and my friend in the car and the radio is on as we travel along the causeway to the city. As we are driving and chatting my boyfriend lights a huge joint. It seems to be too big for a nice Tuesday night out at the movies. I’m unsure if I want it. But I don’t say anything, just take it in.

By the time we take our seats at the movie my paranoia has set in. The movie begins with a malevolent ghost haunting a library. The audience, including my boyfriend and my friend, are in stitches of laughter: I am rigid with fear. It’s supposed to be a comedy but all I see are sacrilegious undertones. The movie is playing with the devil and making fun of the end of the world. I keep leaving my seat and in the toilets I question the morality of society that finds such a movie entertaining. But how can someone be scared of Ghostbusters? It has Bill Murray in it and its jaunty theme song can be heard over all the FM stations in our town: ‘Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!’

The Broome Christians were right. The Devil does walk the earth. We don’t go to the movies again.

Over the next month my boyfriend becomes increasingly distant. He disappears one night when we are out at a pub with friends and he has no explanation when I see him a week later. He says I complain too much.

‘Like the time we went to the movie,’ he says.

I know I do but not about what really is the problem. He fades out of my life and I continue smoking and reading the Bible. I wish I was still travelling. I wish I was with my friend. I wish I didn’t have so much time on my hands. I wish I could sleep.

At two o’clock one morning every sound I hear seems like the beginning of the end of the world. I have no idea if there will be any warning to the end of the world. I am desperate to speak to someone about this but I don’t know who to call. I wake my mother.

‘God is a God of love,’ she says to me. ‘He is not going to do something like that.’ Immediately I am comforted. Despite everything that I do not believe, despite how I feel about my mother; I believe what she is telling me.

‘Don’t read Revelations any more,’ she says matter of fact as I lie down in my bed. She lays a hand tentatively on my shoulder. ‘It’s not for us to read the entire Bible. There are mysteries that cannot be explained.’

A week or so after that night I move out of my parents’ house for good. My mother and I never talk about that night and I never read Revelations again. I bin my bible: in the wrong hands it has became a dangerous thing. I discover that I do not believe in God but rather other people’s, my mother’s, belief. I am not convinced by my own beliefs: if I believe it, it must be wrong.

But what I came away with, and what to this day I am thankful for, is that finally there was another powerful and intimate moment with my mother and I was the only witness.