Sisters - The Inside Story

Mild references to family violence and pedophile behaviour.

My name is Laree. My sister Carrie is three years younger than me. We have our similarities, but apart from getting mistaken for each other at times, Carrie, especially, prefers to be distinct from me. And heaven forbid if anyone thinks I’m younger. It happens more often than Carrie would like, to her chagrin. I found out how vastly different we are from each other. Our experiences of similar events, and the stories about them, are poles apart.

While in my early twenties, my birth father visited me. I could have refused to see him. But I wanted to speak to him. I had bottled up such resentment since he ditched our family when I was seven years old. He didn’t say goodbye; he didn’t even tell me he was leaving.

Back when I was seven years old, my father drove past me one day while I walked home from school. I waved my arms, but he never saw me. I high-tailed it home, believing he would be there. My father travelled for his job and would be away for days or weeks at a time. But when he returned, I’d be so happy. As the oldest, it meant I had my Daddy there, spending time with me and reading me bedtime stories. With two younger siblings and my mother pregnant with a fourth, I had many chores and responsibilities as the big sister. Time with my father meant a lot.

I arrived home and raced inside. ‘Hi Mum, is Daddy here?’

‘No, why do you ask?’

‘I saw him, and I knew he would beat me home. But I don’t see his car . . .’

‘Laree, he doesn’t live here anymore.’

I felt like I had been punched. ‘What do you mean? I just saw him coming home.’

‘No, Laree. He’s been gone for weeks. He won’t be coming home.’

My body stiffened, and tears rolled down my cheeks. My mother looked confused, as if she had already discussed it.

‘He never even said goodbye.’ I turned on my heel and raced to the bedroom. Sobs racked my body. No one came. I crawled into bed and tried to make myself small. Wasn’t I supposed to be sad? Something about this seemed weird, unreal. I learned that feelings about my father, good or bad, were not important. We weren’t to mention his name.

When I turned seventeen, I heard he had remarried for the third time - to a sixteen-year-old with whom he had been in a relationship for a year. Her parents broke their hearts over it, but didn’t know what to do. Alienate their daughter? Break her heart?

It destroyed me because my mother had already told me the truth. ‘Your father behaved like a pedophile. I had to protect you and your sisters.’

I couldn’t believe it. My memories of him led me to believe my mother had jumped to the wrong conclusions. But I began to realise that the way I saw my father, as someone who once gave me warmth and attention, was not the way my siblings, or even my mother, experienced him. This made me reflect on how each child’s view of family and parents can be shaped by their age, their relationship, and what they are told or protected from. Our experiences of the same events were filtered through our own lenses, and so even within the same family, the stories we carried were vastly different. The family never discussed anything about my birth father. The rift between our parents had been acrimonious and never a topic for conversation. The accusation about his tendencies paled into insignificance with the more obvious problems. The fighting we never forgot.

Somehow, in adulthood, I felt a measure of excitement about seeing him again. Would I feel free to say all the things I had never had a chance to say? Could I be angry at him? Or was it all water over the dam from too long ago?

I felt good about my circumstances. Even though my ratbag husband had been incarcerated for five years and I had our son to bring up alone, my home was my own. Though it was a mess when I first moved in, I later bought it off the landlord. I tidied the gardens, replaced the roof, relatives helped me paint the outside, a friend painted the bathroom and kitchen, and my Mum helped me paper my bedroom. It was something I could feel proud of. Like the transformation of a simple string of glass beads into a cultured pearl necklace.

He arrived, and I invited him in. We sat at the kitchen table. I couldn’t call him Dad. The word made me choke. Instead, I called him his name, Brad. His presence seemed so natural; I felt nothing out of the ordinary: no resentment or hatred. We drank tea and talked.

I calmly informed him that he never said ‘goodbye.’ I believed, at the time, that he and Mum needed to stay together for their kids’ sake. But with my own marital problems, I concluded that you can control yourself, but if the other person doesn’t want to try, the marriage will still fail, children or no children. I had a keen sense of responsibility toward my child and didn’t want him subjected to any more fighting than he had already experienced. I had decided not to have my husband back. It felt the right thing to do.

Brad felt we were better off without him.

However, he had never felt a keen sense of responsibility towards his children. I asked him why he never paid child support, and when my mother remarried, he allowed us to be adopted by our stepfather in exchange for the thousands of child support dollars he owed, being paid for him. I told him I felt sold but didn’t want a different surname from my siblings or a different father. I also didn’t want to be in limbo with no one. At least our stepfather wanted us. Brad never said goodbye at this time, either.

He felt we were better off without him.

I said, ‘Why should I believe you?’ It seemed a cop out.

He accused me of not wanting to see him because he did make a day and time, and all he got on arrival was a letter from me, sellotaped to the back door, saying we had all gone out for the day.

I informed him that it had broken my heart to be forced to write it by my mother. Did he really believe it was my idea?

Whether he had truly rejected us or not didn’t come into it. We four children felt unwanted. And in my case, because his love and support had been there originally, I felt more than bereaved. The empty hole of abandonment had affected me deeply. His intent was merely to see how each of his four children fared. After he left, I felt numb. I felt pity for the family life he had missed and the grandchildren he would never know. He would never visit me again.

I felt a burning need to speak with my sister Carrie, who Brad had also visited. I felt apprehensive. We needed to have a serious talk for the first time in our lives.

Laree: How are you, Carrie? I’ve just had a visit from Brad. It was surreal. After all this time. How did the visit go for you?

Carrie: Considering I never really knew him, it went fine, apart from my memories of the arguments and fights. I remember Mum and I climbing out of the bathroom window to get away one time. He worked in the basement and locked Mum in the house that day. I had such a rough deal, so frightening, while you and Peter were at school, oblivious.

This needed to be handled tactfully. It was never all about her. Laree: Of course I wasn’t oblivious. Mum told me things that happened. And when you were asleep at night, they argued and fought. When we heard things smash, Peter and I got up to try to stop them. We begged them not to fight. You were oblivious.

Carrie: I never knew.

Laree: No one in the family understood how hurt I felt when he left. You all carried on as if nothing had happened when he didn’t come home. Mum, especially.

Carrie: Yes, but you are forgetting that Mum’s father died when she was five. She would understand and believe we could cope.

Laree: Actually, she didn’t understand. I had a conversation with her about it a few years ago. I told her that when her father died, it was very sad, but that she could find comfort in her wonderful memories of him. And the fact that she had been the first girl after five boys, and he loved her very much.

Carrie: I don’t see the analogy. I didn’t really know our father, and I had no happy memories.

Laree: I am the oldest. Remember when you and Lizzie were squabbling over who would sit next to Mum? Peter had to sit on the other side as he got into mischief. You two girls constantly fought over her.

Carrie: You said you couldn’t understand what the fuss was about, as you never got to sit next to Mum.

Laree: Exactly. When Brad was at home, he held me, sat me on his lap, and read me stories. Whatever we found out about him after didn’t detract from the fact that he was there for me when I was little. From fourteen months old, when Peter was born, until I was seven. Then he left without saying goodbye. He chose to be with a new family. I felt utterly abandoned. Having a father somewhere else, deliberately staying away, is the worst betrayal. The fact that he eventually married someone a year younger than me when I turned seventeen reinforced all the bad things Mum said about him. He had no excuses.

Carrie: You have a point. I didn’t realise you felt that way. My visit with him was a non-event, really. He’s my birth father, and we got a new father. Our stepfather adopted us.

Laree: Mum already had me. I couldn’t understand why she needed husband number two. He wasn’t that great. But we did have more money as a family. I worried a lot less.

Carrie: I didn’t notice any difference except that we moved into a new house and later, Mary was born.

This woman made me laugh. Laree: Before Mum remarried, we were never given pocket money. Not even me, who would have saved for worthwhile things. We didn’t eat meat every day. I wore cast-offs and second-hand clothes. Half of what I wore, Mum reckoned, made you look washed out. Your skin is a different shade. So you got new clothes. Much prettier clothes. Then they married, and I finally got new clothes. Our new Dad certainly put his money where his mouth was. But I remember the new fancy shoes she bought me. So beautiful. But impossible to wear. Too narrow for even my skinny feet. Mum thought it was such a waste, so she made me wear them until I grew out of them. Then the first time you put them on, you threw such a tantrum, she said you didn’t have to wear them, and bought you new ones.

Carrie: They were hell to wear. So uncomfortable.

Laree: All Mum said to me was that she hadn’t realised and I should have told her. Mum barely noticed or listened to me as a child. Yet, she said I was the difficult one.

Carrie: To think I was always so jealous of you. You left home first. You had money for things once you got a job. And I had to take over heaps of your chores. I hated you for that.

Laree: What a laugh. And how come I had so many chores? It wasn’t because I was the oldest. It was because all you guys moaned your frocks off when you were asked to do things. I didn’t complain. Eventually, I asked Mum why I had so much to do when I was the one doing so much homework from school, but she had never thought about it. So she did, and confessed. I would do it all without complaint or needing reminders. It made life easy for her.

Carrie: And Dad was always on my case when you left. He didn't understand teenagers.

Laree: That's why I left.

Carrie: You never talked about it, or complained. Why are you like that?

Laree: I guess it’s because I didn’t have the luxury of being a child for long. Our father left us. I became the one our mother relied on, looked after you when she worked. And learning about our birth father and why he made the decisions he did crushed me. As I said, the feeling of abandonment is still there.

Carrie: I always thought life was tough for me. You had it much worse.

Laree: And I couldn’t believe how demanding you were, getting things your own way. That was the difference. I obliged. I’ve since learned to speak up for myself. It’s been a hard road.

Carrie: I’m glad we had this talk. I should have looked up to you more.

Laree: You look up to anyone? Just continue being yourself. I treasure being myself. I love you, Carrie. We are survivors.

***

After my husband came home from work, I told him all about my interesting conversation with Laree.

Carrie: I had a most interesting talk with my sister Laree today.

Husband, Don: What did she have to say?

Carrie: We talked about Brad, our birth father, and so many things that happened in the past. I never really knew her, even though she’s only three years older. It’s weird that the only good thing that came from seeing my birth father, after so many years, is finally understanding my sister. How can two sisters live such different lives and have such different memories? I wish we had known each other back then. I honestly thought I had it hard. I believe my life was so much easier because of what my sister went through as the eldest. I thought I was close to Mum. But Laree was closer to her in a way I could never be. For the first time, I truly see her as my beloved sister.