Financial, physical or spiritual; unpaid debts accrue.

“Tonight as you lay half on, half off the bed, watching me write through the door ajar, aged 2 and a month, you said, ‘I love you, Mama.  Daniel very happy.‘ 

I cannot tell you how this moved me, that I taught you to express love (as you know it).  I was so, so moved.” 

I had been writing my response to Chris’ argument against backpay in child support due.  His stalling against facing responsibility to Daniel had wrought stress in our lives for over two years now.  Financial, physical or spiritual; unpaid debts accrue.  I could not change the nature of cause and effect, but Chris sought me to stem its flow in his direction.  

Since I had received Chris’ application against backpay in the mail, every time I collected Daniel from him or spoke with him on the phone, Chris badgered me to tell the Child Support Review Board that he owed nothing, that he had paid me.  It was harassing, wearying, caused me conflict and doubt.

“Thank you darling,” I said to Daniel, his body hanging over the edge of my bed to manoeuvre a view me. “I love you too. You know Mama loves you very, very much. Now, you must sleep.”  

Love:  a feeling, emotion, energy.  A gift.  Daniel’s love unfathomable to me, washed clean the wreckage in my heart.

‘Attention:  Child Support Unit Review Board’, I wrote.  I would type it up later, and print it out at the library. ‘Mr W has been pushing me to tell you that he has contributed toward his son since birth, in attempt to reduce his dues as per your recent decision.  Preferring not to be dictated to, I word Mr W’s request from my perspective…’

Reading Chris’ argument, I was perplexed.   Was Chris truly not able to see that buying a baby capsule to enable him to transport Daniel was not child support; buying nappies and clothing for when he had Daniel was not child support; the TV he got from somewhere that I didn’t need or want…  Could Chris not see that, or was he being opportunist in claiming that?  I just did not know.  My compassion, my downfall 

I stopped writing, looked at the pages before me.  It was curious that on this planet where we were landed, others would make decisions about our lives because we could not reach a consensus of support of our son.  The Scales of Justice imbalanced fatigued me daily as I suffered not only my very mind, but the weight of Daniel and his needs.  If Chris would just pay 50% of Daniel’s keep – and he was capable – I would have greater energy for Daniel, and my depression at being, ever searing potential joy with despair, might (could it?) be lightened.

I was tempted to look upon Daniel again, but must not keep him awake.  Knowing he was watching me, I brought the nib of my pen to my page again, and continued.

I wrote the background of Chris and my relationship, of the $100 Chris gave me a week after Daniel’s birth when he said he would give “what I can when I can”; how I opened an account in Daniel’s name with that $100; how after eight months I realized Chris was not inclined to give what he could afford to his son – rather, what he was willing to let go, in keeping his lifestyle. ‘Due to lack of support,’ I wrote, ‘I closed the account on the 5th of August.’

I wrote that I never pushed for money from Mr W ‘because my pride would not allow me to beg’.   Rather than beg Mr W’s support of Daniel, within two months I was keeping two jobs (court reporting/dictatyping from home and cleaning).

I was ashamed Chris had outed my weakness, my breakdown, when, tortured by insomnia, unable to eat, rendered zombie by exhaustion, I had closed my blinds and doors until I could face the world again.  But instead of hiding in shame, I acknowledged it and told the Board it had been the turning point – that at eight months when I brought up child support with Chris and he shouted “I’ll piss off, you’ll see!”, then disappeared for a month to punish me; after I handed Daniel to him and lay crying in my room for days, did not answer the door, did not answer his calls – after being brought to my knees, I had come out, determined to not bear Chris’ dues to his son as well as my own: determined to seek support of Daniel regardless of Chris’ urging that I “Tell them I’m a student who went back to China.”

I wrote that my Legal Aid Lawyer gave me an option to add to Chris’ debt the prenatal expenses – my nine months of pregnancy – but I could not in my heart do that, for I had survived that period thanks to the ladies at work – even women I did not know but for their face – who had given and given and given to me in a surprise baby shower.   I could not claim that abundance begifted me by work colleagues, as items and expenses due by Chris.  Life had greater meaning than gathering money at every opportunity:  I just could not do that.

I recalled the baby shower.

“The afternoon went on until I was surrounded by countless “baby things”, wrapping and cards. Tears had broken from me during the afternoon and I felt tired, overwhelmed. Gina offered to help me drive the gifts back to my bedsitter, which I accepted gratefully as they literally would not fit in my car alone.

I drove back to my flat in a daze. This morning I had nothing for the child in my womb; now I had everything.  Most difficult to understand, though, was why they all gave to me.  I just couldn’t get over it, the generosity, all directed to me and my unseen child.  I had never in my whole life experienced such an avalanche of goodwill…

I sat on the floor and leaned against the wall…

Emotions wild like raging seas, wrought from somewhere deep, swelled in my chest.  I felt like all of my Christmases had literally come at once.  Particular dismal memories of childhood had just been wiped away – like the ocean cleans sketches in the sand.

The emotions swirled a while and then, unable to stop the tide, poured through my eyes in tears. I don’t know why, I cannot explain why, but alone in my bedsitter, pregnant and without family at side, I cried hard, heaving sobs.  A powerful release occurred.

I cried a torrent and a day.”

I looked across at Daniel. At last his eyes were closed, his whole body surrendered in peace.  I got up and carefully moved him into the centre of my bed.  I looked forward to going to bed, placing my arm over my toddler son, our spirits united, sleeping.  But I had to finish what I had to do.  I would rest when I licked the envelope, stamped the letter, posted it.  In posting it, I would let the it go.  Until then, I could not rest.

To Chris’ alleged unemployment, I pointed out to the Board that he advertised his business in a new age magazine monthly at $26/month (I discovered); paid for a stall at the Fremantle markets; a stall at the Alexander library; a stall at the Conscious Living Expo. ‘I would have remained silent on the above’, I wrote, ‘if Mr W’s greed had not brought me to write to you.’

I felt drained.  I wanted to not bother.  But every mistruth I read, or inaccuracy, I felt driven to correct. 

At 17 minutes past 1 a.m., I finally I lay down my pen.  I had in my handwritten draft, I believed, righted the course of the ship of which I was captain:  Daniel and my lives, together.  We were back on path for Daniel.

‘However, I do credit the father’s attitudes today’, I wrote in closure, ‘believing him to have genuine loyalty toward his son’s future.’  I wanted by those words for Chris to see that I could see he had changed a little in his responsibility for Daniel – I thought, wasn’t sure.  But I had faith in him.  I wanted to bode well for the future, and let the Child Support Review Board know it was surely a misunderstanding by Chris – he didn’t seem to understand the enormity of what we together owed Daniel.

~

I placed the pile of papers in order on my desk, turned off the light, and crawled into bed alongside Daniel, still in my clothes.  The comfort of the large blanket covering us, sheltering us, resounded deeply inside me.  I smelled Daniel’s beautiful hair, listened to his light, gentle breath, and felt my heart beat with love against his small flesh being. The vibration of the love which emanated from my chest set a rhythm upon which I cast my fatigue deep, deep in my bones, and surrendered.

Mother and child, we slept.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

Tracy in The Dark

“No Dadda today,” Daniel said as I strapped him into his car seat.  I looked at him.  This was the second time he had said that.

“Sweetheart  –” I began.

“No Dadda today!” Daniel said again, half in order, half request.  I snapped the buckle shut, looked at my boy.

~

“Chris, how often do you leave Daniel with Tracy?” I had asked, when collecting Daniel.  It was the opportunity I had been waiting for – Tracy was not around.

“Why?” Chris asked defensively.

I had learned over the months that if I had a concern regarding Daniel, I had to broach it carefully with Chris, tactfully.  I had learned that his temper needed to be managed and I had to be calm, gentle, placating.   If I angered Chris by questioning Daniel’s mood upon his return to me – or even wanted to know what they had done together, Chris was susceptible to tantrums.  He might handle Daniel roughly to demonstrate he is in charge – to see pain and anxiety rip through me, then storm off down the walkway of the block of flats, Daniel looking at me over Chris’ shoulder, me feeling anxiety, concern, helplessness.  He might sneer or laugh at me for my fears “groundless”, humiliating me in front of Tracy, regarding me as soft, brainless – “You make him a Mama’s Boy!”  He might raise his voice, have me cringe lest neighbours complain and Daniel and me be looked upon as trouble in the otherwise peaceful community.

I wished so badly that I could discuss Daniel with Chris and not be met with defence and guardedness – rather, equal concern.  But I could not, and inside me burned embers hell hot, of anxiety.  Daily I burned deep within where the child in me still cowered, trembled at raised voices, pleaded to not be the cause of a man’s ire.

~

“Mum has to work, darling,” I said.  I have to make money (how to explain that to a child?) so we can buy things we need and want – and pay rent!”

I had left my job as actor at the Police Academy and was working normal hours in a small office.  The boss often had an open Penthouse magazine on his desk when he called me in for some reason or other.  He repulsed me.  I was conflicted whether to tell him to put it away, or resist saying so in case he got some bizarre pleasure out of me acknowledging the breasts and long legs laid open before him.

Daniel was not persuaded.  He told me again he did not want Dadda today.

~

“Because, well, I don’t know Tracy”, I had told Chris.

What would Chris say if I told him that when I was putting Daniel to bed the other night and turned off the light, he began panicking and crying “Tracy in the dark!  Tracy in the dark!”  I had snapped on the light immediately and ask ‘What?’  But Daniel would say no more, just whimpered, “Tracy in the dark…” as if that explained itself to me.

Could Chris handle to know this, or would he think I was making it up?  What if he told Tracy and she got upset, and took it out on Daniel?  This is what broken people do to get at others, isn’t it:  harm children or animals? Could I risk this potential side effect of me telling Chris why I wanted to know how often he left Daniel with Tracy?

Tracy, a former battered wife who took beating after beating, but when her husband broke their son’s nose – then she left.  Tracy, who Chris planned to take custody of Daniel with once Daniel was out of nappies, “Because we got a house, dog, fence, and you got nothing.”  Tracy, who told me she knew Chris was having an affair when he met me (and I thought we were starting a relationship), and who forgave his disloyal character “Because he’s been hurt by love”, she’d said, pouring a cup of tea, watching the steam rising.  Tracy:  someone I had no right to sum up, or judge.

~

I looked at Daniel’s eyes in the rear vision mirror as I drove.  They were troubled:  where was he going?  Where was Mum taking him?

“We’re off to child care, sweetheart!” I said, cheerfully.  “Lots of fun with your friends!”  Daniel’s eyes turned from gazing out the window to meeting mine in the rear vision mirror.

I had done well to leave the job I loved, in favour of normal hours.  This way, Daniel could be placed in child care instead of with Chris.

But Chris now had established rights as Daniel’s father; a pattern, though haphazard, of seeing Daniel.  He did not pay for Daniel’s food, keep or wellbeing – I still needed to construct a response to his appeal against the backpay due to “achieve” that – but he had established rights because when Daniel was born I felt that a father has rights to see their child, bond, assist in raising them.  With that idealism, I had availed Daniel to Chris from the very first moment he expressed interest in Daniel – one week after his birth when Chris rang out of the blue near 11 p.m., arrived with a feng shui chart he had drawn up about Daniel and told me I had born him a lucky child “right time and day – not perfect, but very good.”

I had accepted Chris’ bruised fruit offerings, allowed him to display Daniel to his various female accompaniments as they went out for a night on the town (he was not shy to say); I had accepted $100 once, thinking, “That’s not how it’s done:  you don’t indulge in hours of fun at thee casino then give to your child what’s left, or lucky left”, my lips speaking nothing, knowing I would be called ungrateful.

I had flung the door open to Daniel’s father for no greater reason than because he was Daniel’s father, and I did not know how to close it again – or no, hold it only ajar, stand guarding the entrance, allowing Chris to pass our threshold only if he followed my rules.  With Chris’ intention to have custody of Daniel, I feared going to the courts in case they forced me to hand Daniel over even more than I was now, with growing reservation, doing.

“No Dadda today” Daniel said, meeting my eyes in the rear view.

“Daniel,” I said, “Dadda wants to see you.  He wants to have fun with you!  I have to let him pick you up from child care, sweetheart – but then Mama will come and get you.” 

Daniel did not respond.  I repeated, “Then I’ll come and get you.” 

He looked away.

~

“Don’t know Tracy, don’t know Tracy.  You don’t have to know Tracy.  She my girlfriend!” Chris retorted.

“Chris…”  I had to tell him.  “Daniel seems to be afraid of the dark – because of Tracy.”

“Lots of kids afraid of the dark!  Why blame Tracy?!”

He was irritated with me, did not want this conversation.  He didn’t like it when I had concerns about Daniel.  I was pure annoyance to Chris.

“No, just – how often do you leave Daniel with her?  And Karen?  Why do you say you want Daniel but then leave him with your sister or your girlfriend?”

“You just jealous, that’s all!”

Oh no, not that argument: I wasn’t a woman of thought, opinion or concern:  I was dismissible jealousy.

“Chris, I’m not jealous,” I said.  How could I explain to him there was no way in the world I wished to partner him, as I realized his character more and more every day.

“They got opposing energies, that’s all,” he then offered.

“What?”

“Just a bit of different.  We all different energies – opposing energies.”

“Chris, it’s not an energy thing.  Daniel cried out ‘Tracy in the dark!’ when I was putting him to bed.  What does that mean?  What’s he saying?”

Chris looked at Daniel, annoyed.  He looked at Daniel as if he were the reason for this hassle of a discussion.

“I don’t know!  He make it up!” Chris said.

Tears came to my eyes.  I felt like I had no say what Chris did with Daniel when he had time with him.  I felt the horror of not knowing.  I felt powerless, engulfed in sadness, fear.

“I don’t want you to leave Daniel with Tracy,” I said through my tears.  Daniel in my arms, put his hand to my face, wet his hand with my tears, looked at me curiously.

“You want I help you, you don’t want I leave Daniel with Tracy!”

I couldn’t believe I had vocalized that:  I had actually made a rule.  It would probably offend Tracy, but Daniel was my child and I didn’t want him in her company any more.  I didn’t want to offend Tracy.  Surely she was facing issues from what she had escaped from, but I just didn’t want Daniel with her.

“Yes I want help but no, I don’t want you to leave Daniel with Tracy,”  I said.  Daniel was patting the wet of my face against my cheek.  I shifted him to my other hip.  “Don’t say it unkindly.  Just, if you want time with Daniel I don’t want you suddenly going off because of an appointment.  Make your appointments when you don’t have Daniel.”

Chris began steering me toward the door.  He did that whenever I reached his limit of tolerance – which was so, so low.  He didn’t want to talk with me any more.  He wanted us gone – me and my teary face and Daniel who didn’t keep his mouth shut.

“OK, OK, I not leave Daniel with Tracy” he said, opening the wire of his front door.

“Do you mean that?” I asked, incredulous.  Had I actually established a boundary?

“Yeah yeah I mean it,” Chris said. 

As his body moved forward on me backing out of his front door, I saw Phong, Tracy’s son, in the shadows of the house in the background.  I hadn’t known he was there.  I wondered what he would tell his Mum, how he would say it.  I wondered what he knew.

Minutes later, Daniel and me were driving away from Tracy’s house, Chris behind us.  I did not trust what he had said, but felt I should learn trust.  It’s just that, Chris had an awful habit of delivering words to you, wrapped in what you wish.

.

.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

How wonderful men could be

“Sweet Daniel,

This is my final week of late shift, because it takes me away from you too much.  I told them I cannot do nights any more.   I love you so dearly.  I don’t like picking you up in the night, dropping you in the middle of the day.

You’re awake!  Surely not.  Please, you must sleep.  I have to type before I go to work.

Here is another finger painting by you, done at the pool crèche – and a couple of wild pen-to-paper expressions by you, 16 ½ months.

Love, your Mama xxxxx“

.

The Police recruits may have to train at night too, but I decided to tell the agency I could not be available nights any more.  I was sorry to alter my agreement of availability but I needed to make a decision for Daniel’s benefit.  I was not enjoying the number of times I rang Chris when I left work to ask if he had Daniel, or he left him with his sister Karen or girlfriend Tracy, to find that Daniel was not with him.  What’s that in the back ground?  People talking?  Is he at a restaurant again?  When people are not up-front with you, you can only guess from what you know of them.

.

Time gave way to days, a month.  Soon would be another year.  I decided I couldn’t continue being an actor for recruits at the Academy.  As I walked up the hill of Stirling Highway, pushing the stroller, my backpack laden and bulging with groceries, I made the decision I would find another job.  If I had a normal office job, I could have Daniel regularly in child care.  The child health nurse had said again and again that routine is important to our young, but again and again I failed at living a life routine.

Daniel said ‘fuck’ the other day.  I didn’t know where he got it from.  As a parent, I had to tell him it was a ‘bad word’ – or not a nice word, really.  I had to begin conditioning Daniel that ‘fuck’ is offensive.    It is but not, to my view.    It can be very expressive.  But it is not expressive in a child; that’s just disturbing.

Chris doesn’t swear, I know; Tracy I do not know, her son Phong I do not know, his sister Aunty Karen I do not know.  I wasn’t knowing enough of who Daniel was with and I was trying to trust and believe everyone had Daniel’s best interests at heart like I did.  But I just wanted to know.  I needed to know.

I guess ‘fuck’ isn’t that abnormal.  Maybe there was an argument in one of the households – maybe that was it.

.

As we reached the crest of the hill where the Claremont Fire Station stood, I stopped to take off my backpack and retrieve a drink for Daniel and me.  I squatted alongside his pusher and for a moment there was silence between us but for gulps of cool water, and relief.  I looked into Daniel’s beautiful brown eyes and saw an intensity of some kind, that fascinated me.  Wherefrom our young spring, I just do not know.

“There!” Daniel said, leaning as far forward in the stroller as the safety belt would allow.  “There!” he said again, his arms outreaching to me and his head looking toward the fire station.   Its enormous garage doors were open, showing a cool and semi-dark interior.  I could see two Firemen talking to each other, one holding a drink.

“Oh no, sweetheart.  They’re busy.  They’re men at work.”

Daniel began agitating to be freed from his restraint.  I hesitated, but thought that maybe as we had only a short way left to walk, I would let him out so he could use some energy.  He climbed over the railing and moved in the direction of the open fire station.

“No, Daniel!  Busy!” I said.

In my difficulty of repositioning the backpack and standing up, Daniel had already begun toddling off into the fire station, seeking out what he wanted in the world as if life were that simple.

I watched as the Firemen noticed Daniel wander into their garage.  Only one part of me wanted to call him back, with the other part of me also desiring an adventure, a diversion.  Perhaps Daniel could let me into a world I would never normally enter.  I decided to test the potential for an experience.

“Sorry!” I said, calling out to the Firemen and pushing the stroller in their direction.  Daniel, now under cover of the fire station, paused a second.  Standing in the presence of enormous fire trucks and two men in uniforms, my boy finally had hesitation.

“That’s all right” one of the men said, the two walking toward Daniel and me.  I met them just inside the entrance.  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I wondered if my body was physically betraying my secret titillation.

“He’s – we’ve never seen the doors open before,” I said.  They smiled.  “We often walk past but, you know.”

“You live around here?” one of the Firemen asked.

“Yes,” I said. 

Daniel, seemingly a 50 foot descent from the centre of the action, wanted up.  I picked him up and held him on my hip, facing the Firemen.  I suddenly felt not like a woman any more, but a mother.  My sense of flirt retracted and my face reddened.  I wasn’t ashamed of Daniel, but felt inferior, being “a single mother” as Stuart had so nastily pointed out was what I would “be”, “with a screaming kid hangin’ off ya”, before he left me, Stuart did, my lover of two years.  I turned for us to leave.

“Has he ever been on a fire truck before?”

“What?  Oh, no!” I said, still red but sort of smiling.

“Does he want to?”

I couldn’t believe it.  “Yes!  He’d love it!” I said, knocking back a sob in my throat.  I don’t know why, but I felt sad that they were so nice.  It was difficult to accept.

“Do you want to go on the fire truck, Daniel?” I asked my boy on my hip, and he beamed delightedly.  Daniel’s legs started kicking and his arms waving, and the men and me all laughed.

.

It was some half hour later that Daniel and me left the company of the Firemen.  For no reason than that we were passing by, these men had given us an experience you would normally pay for.  I was overwhelmingly grateful how kind these men had been to my son, how wonderful men could be.

One had a wedding ring, but the other did not.  The other ventured into conversation which seemed to angle at my availability, my inclination to share my phone number.  But I felt too inferior, and so did not bite.  I felt he did not know what he was getting into – “a single mother”.  And I felt not as together as them in their uniforms, with their stable job, their lives in order.  I felt he was probably only curious to taste me as James had done those years ago before throwing me back in the water, for there are so many fish in the sea.  He couldn’t have been serious, I decided.  He couldn’t actually like me.  I had to be kidding myself – they were only passing time.

.

The Firemen behind us as we continued our way down Stirling Highway, I wished I had the self esteem to believe a man could, ever, possibly, like me.

.

I caught the phone, but only after almost tripping on the chair alongside my writing desk on which it rested.

“Hello?”

“Huh,” Chris said.

I didn’t know what that meant, and said nothing.  Daniel looked up at me, curious who was on the phone.

“Yes… Chris?”

“You won tattslotto,” he said. 

By Chris’ voice, I could almost see his sneer.  Then he laughed.  He had this thing, laughing at you when something was not funny.

.

.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

It.

Some days are so painful in my head, inescapably.  I wake up and know the day will be anguish, mental.  I brace to face existence aka life.

A demon clinging since childhood, it grins when I rouse from dreams, my departures.  Unpredictably it crawls into my room and under my covers as I sleep.  I never know when I am to be afflicted.  It claws down my face when I wake. I shut my eyes tight and wish it were not so. I open them again, and see sunshine.  But I feel bleak, hopeless, empty, sad.

Mum had electric shock treatment in a room somewhere down some hallways of some old mental institution.  But it did not stop her suicide.  Dad was electrocuted for ‘treatment’ too.  But still he was manic and depressive; still he viciously emotionally, psychologically abused us.  Seethed.  Seethed he did, like a demon personified.  White spittle always in the corners of his foaming mouth when he bludgeoned us with words that crushed my endeavouring spirit.  His spittle landed on my face, and burned.

My sister the schizophrenic; my sister not a schizophrenic but ever giving to professionals who counsel and counsel, for decades now; my other sister surrendered:  it’s easier to be a victim of our childhood, accept the benefits and call it a day, your life.  But I don’t know my sisters three, and they don’t know me. We are all strangers.  Same family, same orphanage, different planets in the universe.  Not a thread connects us, but blood.  And that has worn thin.

I don’t know, but what I see.

 

Today I cannot see light, life or beauty.  ‘It’ has come for me again.  ‘It’ sinks its teeth like a Rottweiler into my jugular and sucks the life from me, rendering the sun dull, perfume of roses putrid, the laughter between sisters in the streets a shard of no recall that slices down my wrist and draws blood tears.

I peep from under the covers, listen a moment to Daniel’s Angelic breaths in his cot.  I see the sun trying to force its way through a crack in the curtains.  If I fling them open, it will flood me with its glory, beauty, warmth, comfort.  And still I will feel void, lost on this Earth, sad beyond repair.  I know this even before I get up and do it.  But I get up and do it, because I must be victor of my mind, not victim.

Standing beneath the sun’s shine, bare feet on soft carpet, I listen more as my son takes breaths of life in my universe, his tiny heart keeping beat his tiny life.  I don’t want to move, to start today’s momentum, only to use all my energy to the point of exhaustion again – laughing gaily, crying.   But it is only a matter of time – will I be granted minutes or an hour – before I must do; before he wakes.  I must make Daniel and me food, I must get us out the door, I must have us doing something. 

My sister Wendy said in a letter that I should be still more.  She said I don’t need to exhaust myself propelling Daniel and me into activities daily.  But she knows nothing.  She doesn’t have a child.  She doesn’t understand their need and need and need of you, and I have never even been able to keep a pot plant alive – and how you have to keep giving the only way you know, because if you don’t then they cry and you hate to see them rejected by your need to be alone.

And besides, I must keep us active and moving even when it draws from me my last dregs of energy because if I still, then ‘it’ creeps over.  ‘It’ waits in corners of my life, I wanted to tell Wendy but could not; and if I still, ‘it’ crawls into my lap, this sadness from my past, and ‘it’ wants me to stroke its head and comfort it and indulge it.  But I can’t I can’t – I have to keep my energy for Daniel and me.

He catches me, he does, my new witness to Self.  He catches me on days like these staring at a crack in the wall, or a clump of weeds, or a paw print Pathos has so profoundly left in the leafy garden of our Cottesloe flats.  This boy so young sees me as I truly am, though try to hide me I do.  I try to hide ‘it’. I try and be victor of my mind not victim.  But always, he catches me.

~

Chris said he would still care for Daniel so I could work but he wasn’t going to promise to have Daniel any more.  He said that I was silly and over-cautious and he would leave Daniel with his sister Karen or with his girl friend Tracy when he wanted to, and he didn’t need to tell me.  I said that I had a right to know where Daniel would be and he said to trust him.  And I said but I was disturbed that he smacked Daniel for not standing up in the shower that time when Daniel was physically not capable of standing yet and Chris said “that was last year,” and I said “but I don’t want you forcing him to stare at the wall in a corner to teach him focus and obedience like you say you’ll do if Daniel ‘needs it’” and Chris laughed at me, and I said “but why do you say you want to see Daniel and then you palm him off” and he said, and I said, and he said.  Then Chris told me, “I have to go now” and I was dismissed again.

And I can hear the care taker sweeping the leaves on the path outside my flat.

Chris didn’t give back my number 5 top.  He said it was still in the wash.  I am finding it hard to believe him.

Daniel moved in his cot and I froze.  The day was going to have to start; I was going to have to live today.  Please, please don’t wake yet Daniel.  Please don’t wake yet, Daniel.

Milk stirred in my bosom, wept.  Daniel woke.

Standing barefoot on the carpet, staring at nothing nowhere in mental turmoil:  my son caught me, again.

.

.

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

By the light of 3 candles

“My dearest sweet son, Daniel.  I write to you on May 16 at 11.15 p.m. by the light of three candles.  I finished work in the evening and had a big hot bath when I got home.

I love you deeply in my heart.  I marvel at you.  I marvel at your beautiful character, regularly.  I beg to do the best by you.  I thank you so much for coming through me into this life.

God bless you, God bless us.  Amen.”

.

The sun rose on the next day; Time’s promise kept.

Sunshine warmed the souls of Daniel, me and Pathos the cat three, as I stood in bare feet at the clothesline, pegging our wet clothes for drying.  Daniel keenly provided me with pegs from the plastic bag I kept them in, and Pathos just as eagerly dived in to sniff out any that he dropped, lest it be alive and he could scare it to death with his enormous hazel eyes and intensity.

The simple joy of my boy was contagious, and it seemed that in the simplicity of the moment, lasted our lifetimes.  Yet, it would be forgotten, this moment – unless someone photographed us or I wrote it down.  Lives are lost to memories passed.

.

I smiled down at Daniel, offering me a red peg, but to keep his mind alive I said I needed a green peg for my top.  At 18 months, he needed guidance, but we played the game nonetheless. I squatted to join him at level of his age, and rifled through the bag of pegs to find the peg whose colour he would learn was green.

“That’s it!” I exclaimed, ever the actor.  “That one is green! Could you find me another green peg please, sweetheart?”

Pathos seemed never to tire of Daniel and my antics about the block of flats. He accompanied us on all excursions – from the letterbox to the garbage bins, witnessing our lives.

We still trundled down the lane occasionally to our old block of flats, to visit Cornelius.   Daniel had a little cart he would pull by the rope attached to it, and loved to trundle it anywhere important that we might be going.  Cornelius was important, and I am sure he could hear the cart as soon as we set off from our unit.  Sometimes we put a bit of dried food wrapped in a present for him and placed it on Daniel’s cart, for him to deliver.  We would have to carry the cart up to Cornelius’ prime position on the top level of our old flats, but all the effort was essential to the journey.  Pathos never followed us to Cornelius’ territory.  Animals seem to know, then respect, boundaries infinitely better than humans.

.

It was the day of the court hearing.  Despite the DNA test results stating, “…the likelihood that ChrisX is the father of DanielX is in excess of 99.9999%”, Chris still refused to sign acknowledgment that Daniel is his son (acknowledging financial liability).  Packing up the pegs, throwing them into my wash basket and opening the laundry gate for Daniel to race Pathos through, I recalled what offence it felt to me that not even the test results could be brought to acknowledge Chris is Daniel’s father.  In aversion of open truth, the report would only concede the likelihood of Chris’ paternity, and that likelihood was not 100%.

Was I not Daniel’s mother 100%?  Why do They, then, stop short of stating Chris is Daniel’s father 100%?  What is that measure of .0001%?  Is it doubt, or allowance granted Chris that maybe, just maybe he is not entirely responsible to this new life we brought into being?  I did not understand it, and pulling Daniel’s top over his head, brushing his silken locks down around his face, I remained offended that the law would stop short of declaring the whole truth.

.

As I drove toward the Family Court, us streaming by the chill fresh waters of the Swan River, I recalled my despair at school that I never received 10/10 in an essay or assignment – only ever 9/10, at best.  I tried for a year or two earnestly, to effect perfection of score; finding crevices in my broken home life in which to retreat and focus on writing which I so loved.  But I was never perfect.  Then, as my father whipped me with his illness mental and abuses, it became less important to obtain a 10/10 at school.  Mere survival would be good.  Years later, when I was holding my own ground in life, I decided that it wasn’t in the nature of probably 99.9999% of teachers to concede a student’s endeavour and production ‘perfect’.

.

I delivered Daniel to the court room child care centre, signing him in.  It was stressful and tiresome to run these miles in pursuit of Daniel’s human right of support by two parents, but I did not want to be like “the other mother” Chris spoke of; the mother of Daniel’s half-sister who did not receive support.  I would bring Chris to face his responsibility, and possibly he would think twice before impregnating other women.  Money has most people think through their behavior.

I announced my arrival to the desk clerk, and was told what court I would be in.  I saw Chris on the outside of the court room, wearing his khaki army style shirt with ‘Feng shui – Happy, Healthy, Wealthy’ embroidered in red on the front pocket.  It was his favourite shirt, that he wore to appointments.

Our eyes met but averted, and I felt sad to be there.  The mixture of feelings – that I was doing Chris wrong; that I should raise Daniel on whatever finance I could manage to gather alone, and whatever cash jobs Tom saved the day with, that I exhausted my last drops of energy on regularly, and by my work, absolve Chris from responsibility like “the other mother” did…but that I should show Chris he can’t “do this”, not to my boy; all churned like debris from broken trust in my guts.  I felt nervous, bad, wrong – but also like I couldn’t just let this happen to us.

Mary Soper of Legal Aid intercepted my mental pains, to tell me that she would approach Chris and give him one last chance to sign Consent Orders, stating he is Daniel’s father.  If he didn’t sign, she said, the Magistrate “wouldn’t be too pleased”.  In the face of the evidence, she said, he really had to.  She offered me to read the Orders:

“…agreed between the parties hereto that the following declaration be made by consent:

1.      The Applicant and the Respondent are the parents of the child, Daniel…

2.     That there be a declaration pursuant to s.106(1) of the Child Support (Assessment) Act 1989 that NoeleenX was entitled to an administrative assessment of child support for the said Child, payable by ChrisX.

3.     The hearing set down for the 6^th day of August 1997 be dismissed.”

It was true, Chris really had to sign.  I wanted so much to not have to go to court on the 6^th of August and continue pursuing Daniel’s rights.

.

On Cottesloe Beach, our retreat from everyday life, Daniel and me sat wet in our clothes.  I had neglected to bring bathers because I didn’t plan to end up there after court – and neglected to bring a towel and sun hats and a change of clothes.  But there we sat at the water’s edge, the cool ocean and salt cleansing us.

My long black pants were wet and stiff.  Daniel was plopping glugs of sand on my thighs, looking for my attention, my laughter, hugs and love, my animated joy and play.  But I felt troubled and bad inside, that I had done Chris wrong.  He had signed the Consent Orders before the Magistrate could tell him off. Mary gave us each a copy, and we went our own ways.  However, I was left laden with that horrible affliction, the blessing of religion:  guilt.

I knew Chris saw it as a matter of power that I had “won” today.  I had not meant to win anything.  I had only sought cover of Daniel’s rights, with a hopeful side effect of consciousness by Chris before he had future children.  That was ill of my character I knew, but a hope nonetheless.

I knew this would change things.  I could not count on being able to go to work next week because it was now uncertain that Chris would look after Daniel.  I would have to ring him and ask, which I didn’t want to do because I felt so bad – so, so bad.

I looked at the mess of wet sand over my long pants, and at Daniel looking up at me, needing love.  I needed love.  I wanted love.

As I reached to bring Daniel to me, begging an embrace, a wave rushed in and covered us both with froth and foam.  We tumbled backwards.  I gasped. Daniel instinctively struggled back to his feet, and I helped to right him.  A seagull squawked, cutting across our gaze.  The sun twinkled – or was it winked, at us.

 

 

Copyright,

Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

To vote me to win the Big Block Exchange,

please click here.  You can only vote once,

so THANK YOU, those who have.  Here’s hoping!

My Number 5 Top.

Sometimes life “just goes on” – no problems.  It’s a bit surreal, when that happens.

I am used to difficulty – problems of the people or problems of the mind – but for a while, just a few weeks, life seemed to go okay.   I was working as an actor at the Police Academy, collecting Daniel from Chris or Aunty Karen’s; Daniel and me settled in the fall of night together, safe in the little abode I afforded us, wrapped in sheets and blankets, awaiting the next day. 

Having every expectation there would be a next day.

.

Well, Chris does touch me when we’re in the same room together and I don’t like it, but I don’t know how to stop him.  I don’t want his hand at my waist, that movement around to my belly, or him touching the cheeks of my buttocks.  I don’t want him to stand close like he does sometimes, as if he is going to touch me more.  But I don’t know how to stop him.  So it happens.

It’s not the first time it has happened against my will – touch by man – and because I don’t know how to deal with it, I go into hyper-animated mode.  I smile widely, say thanks for having Daniel, goodbye, glad he has eaten well. 

And then, I swear Chris looks like ‘the man’ sometimes – Tracy behind him and me before him, a smirk across his face as he sees Daniel and me off.  What ever did I once see in that man?

.

I don’t know what I expect from life.  

I never expected to be sad almost every day of it, or insanely blithely ‘happy’ in spasms of the alternative; I never expected to love Daniel so deeply, and to feel non-love about family members (all of whom I ran from) – just general care for them as fellow human beings; I never expected to not love my husband, to wait for love to grow in me like he said it would – he was sure it would – but then leave him after nine years of togetherness because it never did.  I never expected to actually need anyone.  Those are just weakness, those days.  It is far better to adjust to needing no-one, and not ever be let down.  You have to help yourself or die.  And people do die.

And I never expected to see what I detected to be sadness in Daniel.

.

Having handed me photographs of Daniel at his sister Karen’s house, together with her ‘report‘ of Daniel’s bowel movements, sleeps and meals of the day, Chris waited for me to have the appropriate reaction of gratitude at the mementos.  But I just stared at the pictures.

“Chris,” I said, hoping not to offend him by any suggestion – and not making any suggestion, “Don’t you think he looks sad?”  Daniel was at my feet and holding my leg, us on the verge of departure from Tracy’s home.

“What? What sad?” he said, brusquely.

“Just, if you look at his face, his eyes – don’t you think he looks sad?”  I extended a photograph for Chris to look at more closely.

“Sad sad, happy happy.  You look too close all the time everything.”

He didn’t take the photo for a second look. 

I wondered what Tracy, in the background behind Chris, thought.  I wanted to ask her, but didn’t want to cause a scene.

“He just wake from a nap!” Chris barked.  “He wait for his mum! Can’t look happy all the time!”

I brought the photograph back to me.  I felt uncertain.  I did have a problem with analysing things too much – Chris was right, but… I looked at it closely, a bit longer.  It really did seem to me that Daniel was sad.

In writings abound, is penned, ‘Time stood still’.  But this time it really did. 

I stood near Chris’ front door, Chris square-on in front of me.  Tracy stood behind Chris a few lengths away, at her couch.  The television was speaking at us all but not one of us was listening.  And Phong, most surely was in his room and listening to our exchanges.

.

As I stared down at the photograph, my vision vagued over and I became aware of Daniel on the floor holding my leg, looking up at me.  Had he seen these pictures?  Do toddlers recognize themselves in pictures?  We had only just got used to his fascination of himself in the mirror. 

What reaction would Daniel have if I showed him?  Would it be recall of a single moment, or recall of ‘bad times’.  To this very day, the smell of hot water reminds me of the bad times at the orphanage – that carer, the sullen sallow one; the one with the so very tight lips.

Tracy made a noise of impatience. 

I looked up again.

“Um.  Thanks for taking care of Daniel,” I said.

She gestured acknowledgement slightly, with her head.  Chris came close to me, which had the effect of me turning away toward the door, and thus he successfully moved us to exit.

.

Chris walked Daniel and me down Tracy’s front path.  At each of those steps, I wanted to say more.  But I was afraid to.  How often did Chris leave Daniel with Tracy? With Karen?  Of all the hours Chris said he was available to care for Daniel – of all of those hours, for how many did he in fact care for our son?

At Tracy’s front gate, I asked Chris would he be taking care of Daniel on Tuesday – himself?

“I take care. If I get feng shui appointment, I got to work.  I tell you that already.”

“It’s just that, can’t you make feng shui appointments at times when you haven’t promised to care for our son?”

What did Daniel hear, understand, know?

Exasperated by me and irritated, Chris ushered us out of Tracy’s front gate and toward my Holden.

“I give you photo, you get problem.  Aunty Karen give it to you a gift!  You never happy.  You ask too much.”

“But Chris – please, can’t you see – “

and somehow – I don’t know how man has this power over me, but somehow I was hushed, and then leaning into my car and strapping Daniel in.  I was disconcerted, yes.  I wanted to discuss my concerns with Chris, yes.  But I was leaning into my car, buckling Daniel into his little seat, kissing his marshmallow cheeks, and then realising that Chris’ hand was feeling the curve of my arse.  It felt firmly over one cheek, and moved to the flesh of the other.

I ducked out of the cabin of my car, stood up straight to face Chris.  I looked immediately at the windows of Tracy’s house.  I hoped she wasn’t peeking through the curtains – and hoped Phong wasn’t peeking through the curtains, either.  How much did he see?  What did he know?

No-one was peeking through curtains.  Tracy was standing on her front porch, watching us.

.

Deeply, deeply embarrassed, I looked at Chris, flashed a quick wave goodbye to Tracy, and was just about to close the car door when Daniel said, “Number 5 top.”  I ignored him, but he said it again, with some urgency, “Number 5 top!”

“Oh!”  I said, searching Daniel to see if he had my Number 5 top with him.  A charcoal coloured hoodie with a red number 5 on its front, my Number 5 top had become sort of a security blanket for Daniel.  I wore it often, so it had my smell all over it.  Daniel brought it every time I had to leave him somewhere.  He held it, like a piece of me.  I sort of liked that.

“Oh Chris!  My Number 5 top!  We almost forgot my Number 5 top!”

Chris looked at me.  His irritation returned and flashed angrily all over his face, like little demon leprechauns doing little demon jigs.  What a nuisance we women seem to be, to men.  Men don’t seem to care in the same places we do.  I felt bad.

“He be a Mother’s Boy!  I tell you that already!  He not need your top!  He must learn separate from the mum!”

I was dumfounded. Did that mean Chris had taken my top from Daniel because he thought he would be a Mumma’s Boy?  

“Chris, where’s the top, please?”

“He don’t need it!”

“Chris, it’s my top.  I need it – I wear it.  Daniel just likes it when I’m not there.  That’s normal.”

“He a Mother’s Boy!”

.

This was horrible.  I wanted my top back.

“Number 5 top!” Daniel said again from his seat in the car, anxiety now in his voice and a touch of a wail threatening.

“It’s in the wash!” Chris suddenly said.

Was it really, I wondered?  It was possible.

“Tracy doesn’t have to wash it – that’s okay, I’ll wash it.”

“Too late!  It’s in the wash!”

I looked beyond Chris at Tracy. 

God, I hated how the people Chris had in his life stared at us whenever I came by.  We really must be some kind of a freak show.  Was it because I was the first of his women to challenge him?  Is that what the fascination was, of our exchanges?  I hated it.

.

I felt highly conscious that I needed to show Daniel how to treat women, and needed to show him that we would work things out.  I sat back onto the car seat to be face to face with him.  I tried to look positive and not worried.

“It’s okay Daniel,” I said.  I leaned in and kissed his soft, soft cheek.

“Dadda’s going to wash it for us! We’ll get my Number 5 top next time!”

I smiled. 

Daniel, at the mercy of adults in his life, had no option but to learn trust (or not).  He had to venture in himself whether or not to trust what Mum said would be true.  For one so young, pure on this Earth, that was easy.  He calmed down.

.

But as Daniel calmed and I smiled at him with my face of hope and positivity, a dagger cracked the bones of my rib cage.   I jolted – sort of like had a twitch – at the force of consciousness which had been ignored.  The dagger pointed its silver tip into my heart then shoved hard to penetrate my inner wisdom, and pierced me. 

As the first drop of blood cried from my heart at grief to come, and splattered upon the leather of my car seat, Chris walked away.  He had had enough.

.

.

Copyright,

Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

(Author’s note: I wrote this Saturday morning 16 Mar’13, & cried at the end.

I then edited it, & cried at the end.

I broke away,

made tea and toasted cheesies for Daniel and me,

then returned to re-draft this,

& cried at the end.  

It is now some 15 1/2 years since this day,

and I still cry at my utter dumbness.

I am politely warning you Readers, this reality is harrowing to me,

so if you have issues around abuse, low boundaries,

self esteem, self damage,

truly think whether you can handle this telling

- or perhaps may rather read it as one book whole,

closed,

eventually.

Sincerely,

N’n)

The naked strippers or the naked gullible me?

Chris’ brother James was apparently a fighter.  He was, Chris said, always getting into kung fu trouble despite we were living in Australia, in this century.   He had neither a regular job nor a regular relationship.   In fact, nothing was regular in James’ life but Australian government benefits.

.

Sometimes James accompanied Chris when he visited Daniel, and I began to wonder what story was the in-roads to these men.  I had wanted to know Chris and his life when I was with him, but he would not tell me anything about his self.  He only gave vague responses to my inquiries personal, while I lay naked at his side.

Similarly I had wanted to know Stuart, my lover of two years post-marriage.  But he also would tell me nothing of his self.  He spoke in the alternative, such as that he had been with strippers.

“They’re not the lack of brains you might think they are.”

“But it is pretty dumb to think your sex is all you have to give – to not reach deeper into yourself than plain old tits-and-arse shaking. I mean, men steal sex from women all the way through their lives if they can.  There’s no way I’m going to sell it.  My sex is a sharing of myself to one or two especial as an occasion may be, never hordes of nameless desperados.”

Stuart’s contempt at me considering my sex special, he hardly attempted to hide.

“They empower themselves by selling it – instead of having men steal it.”

“It is an illusion of empowerment to prostrate yourself before the deemed master, him tossing coins at you as you ‘choose’ to do that, surrendering to his estimation of you – stripping from clothed to vulnerable, shaking your sex in his face, allowing him to inhale the perfume of your bouquet -”

“What?“

And that would be it.  

I would lie in the wake of Stuart’s sex, idly fingering my pearl necklace and staring up at the ceiling.

.

I had wanted to know James of the casino too – my first grip of man beyond marriage.  But James would not speak of his soul, stating, “I don’t want to love no-one and I don’t want no-one to love me.”  By this drawing of a line in the sand, we only engaged in sex.  He answered my query what his Indian tattoos meant to him, and I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee because of him, but what hinting of heart was not scored into his skin, I may not know.

.

And Chris:  a mystery too.  What was this new world I had stepped into, leaving my nine year relationship behind?  Was it normal to not share your heart, to only open your legs, to only ejaculate upon another’s interest of you?

My ex husband David did not know me intimately – typically, as had been my learned way, only physically.

I hid so much:  my bulimia, constant will to die, lack of self esteem so excessive that I hid in the cupboard some days when I heard him arrive with company.  David knew so little of me, whom he had declared love on.  

But I did not expect to encounter the same guardedness from men when I left the marriage.  Out of the marriage, I was willing to brave my self in the world.  I indulged passionately in my discoveries of flesh and spirit beyond the institution from which I had fled.  I reeled.  It truly stunned me to find myself a naked numph in a forest of men emotionally protective.

What had happened since I was 16, before I met David at 17, when boys, if you found the right one – from an abused household like you were, tuned into the music you were; when they were capable of being honest about their feelings through their eyes, touch of you, their time with you?

~ / ~

“He been good, Aunty Karen say he been good all day.“

It was an absolute delight to receive Daniel back into my arms after being free and acting all afternoon.  I had missed him, but I had loved my work.

My guilt at enjoying my work was a vulnerability, I knew.  Chris intoned in many ways and regularly, how fortunate I was that he was helping me.  As I was indebted to him for his stepping up as Daniel’s other parent, as appeared a choice for men, I had to ensure not to rock the boat by suggesting our son needed money for food or clothes or, say, ask for a packet of nappies next visit; nothing like that.

Our court hearing for child support was approaching but neither of us said a word about it.  Chris’ crazy “NO!” continued to resound, from the day I had rung and asked him, “Now the DNA tests prove you are Daniel’s father, will you please sign acknowledgement that you are, and avoid us going to court?”

.

James watched as I cushioned Daniel into my bosom.  I smelled Daniel’s hair, so curiously beautiful to smell, and looked over his head at James.

James continued to stare as Daniel groped about looking for my nipple, tiny hands feeling the flesh of my breast.  He had that stare of someone without the social consciousness to know when to look away.  Either that, or he just did not want to look away.

“Do you mean he was with Aunty Karen all day, Chris?  From when I dropped Daniel to you at 11 am?”  I lifted Daniel above my shoulders, smiled into him, distracted him.

“Yeah, I have very very important feng shui appointment.  Very important customer.  But I pay Karen:  no problem to you.”

.

It wasn’t quite working as we had discussed.  It seemed that Chris had important feng shui appointments every day he had Daniel, so that Daniel was left with either his girlfriend Tracey or with his sister Karen.  I still did not know much of his girlfriend, only the fact she had been a battered wife who escaped her abuser when he first ever caused their son to bleed. I didn’t want to judge Tracey for this, but I did want to know about who she was, that Chris was leaving our son with.

Should I accept Chris’ judgment of with whom he left our son?  Should I trust Chris?  Should I just learn to trust in general, for this I clearly lacked?

I wanted to say something about what rumbled inside, to Chris, though conscious I would be at risk of losing my job if Chris lost his temper over it.  I had to apply some intelligence to my phraseology.  I had to placate male, be gentle, ask without a tone accusing lack of Daniel as priority, why he chose to do feng shui in times when he had Daniel, for after all he was freelance.

“You left Daniel with Aunty Karen on Monday too,” I said.

“Yeah?” Chris said, and James continued to stare..

I often had a feeling that Chris and my interactions were an enormous source of entertainment to James.  He never said much, only looked much.

“Just… I think it would be good for your business image if you were unavailable at times.  They don’t need to know you are a father being with your child – they can imagine you’re busy with other appointments, other clients.  Let them think you’re in demand.  That would be great for your business!”

Chris was sullen one unreadable moment.

“I not even on the Birth Certificate.”

This was sudden.

In typical roundabout style, Chris was actually inviting discussion.

“How can I be the father, I not even on the Birth Certificate?”

“Chris, you are Daniel’s father and you know you are Daniel’s father.  But you abandoned Daniel verbally within minutes of him being born.  Do you remember my phone call to you, to tell you you have a son?”

“Yeah yeah, I busy then.  You embarrass me you ring up you say it’s a boy.  I have people there, I can’t talk.“

.

Daniel had stopped playing with my bosom and settled with simply being in my embrace.  James continued to watch the Australian domestic drama unfold before his eyes..

It was possible Chris had been busy that night I gave birth, and so unavailable to talk, and that’s why he brushed me off by saying it was written in my stars that Daniel was born to me and good luck to me (‘bye ‘bye).  Maybe I had been unfair to Chris.  

But how could he not have time to talk when I am ringing to announce that he is father to a boy?  No, maybe I had been unfair to Chris.

“Oh.  Well.  I told you that influenced my decision to not name you on the birth certificate.  I didn’t think you were worthy to be named, to be Daniel’s father.  But anyway – you told me to tell the government that you are a student who went back to China.  Aren’t you happy to not be on the birth certificate?”

Chris now thought about it.  It was his cue.  Would he be original of delivery or would James play prompt in the wings?

“I not pay nothing, I not on the Birth Certificate.”

“I don’t know if They ever change birth certificate details, but I can try for you if you want me to.  I can write to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and tell them the results of the DNA test and tell them I know the name of the father.  Would you like that?”

“Yeah I like that.”

“Would you then sign a consent that you are Daniel’s father, and be responsible to Daniel’s prosperity in a financial sense?”

“You don’t need all that official,” Chris said, reverting to day one.  I had naively accepted his word in the beginning.  I had believed that a father could not possibly prefer to go to the casino, entertain various women through the Personals as Tracey said he did, buy himself a new desk  and obviously live just fine, when his newborn son had so many needs – was just starting out in life, was born to him, had so many needs. 

I sighed.  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.  “We won’t talk about it again.  If you insist, we’ll go to court.“

James looked at his brother.  

Chris, irritatedly, turned to leave.  

James followed him.

“Yeah, the Godfather told me he read your palm, he told me I know you then I go to court.“

“What?“  

This was the first reveal to me of anything that had transpired that visit by the Godfather, when they spoke Chinese together, put up Chinese placards about Daniel and my home, Chris gave me $100 and said he would give what he could when he could, and they left.

“You’ve never told me anything that the Godfather read in my palm,“ I said.  “Tell me more!“

“HE TOLD ME I KNOW YOU, I GO TO COURT!“ he barked, and Daniel stiffened in my hold.  

Chris and James left dramatically, banging the door behind them.

.

I did not understand.  In this very moment, with this apparent awareness Chris had of the potential for court issues, he could avoid going to court by facing the challenge of moral responsibility which was presenting in his life.  

I question the value of feng shui, when you are not guided by it but rather, learn how to blame another by what it purports to reveal.

.

I closed our front door gently.  Daniel’s enormous brown eyes looked to me for reassurance that things would be okay. 

I could not provide that reassurance, but I could act.  I had grit my teeth as a little girl and bore it, many many times:  unfavourable moments:  attack by other humans: challenges – like when Mr Mason of 956 R’Road wouldn’t return my bond to me when I left renting his bungalow, at 17, where he had spied on David and me having sex – his gaze a cold shower, penetrating through the slits in the Venetian blinds.

“I’ve got Mr Mason keeping an eye on you.”

“What, dad?”  Chill.

This was just another it.  

I would do whatever was necessary to assert the rights of my beloved son in this day time and century.  I would enable for my son financial support by his father.  I would not be like the “other mother” – the mother of Chris’ daughter.  

.

But who really, I wondered as I set Daniel down to play and seated myself alongside – who really is the ‘pretty dumb’ female:  the naked strippers or the naked gullible me?

~

~

Copyright,

Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

I sort of love me, but hate me

- or that aspect of me, really, which doesn’t give up.  I drive myself mental with it.  Truly.  Some times that works for me, sometimes not.

.

So, the next chapter was due out last Saturday (in my mind).  So, I worked on it – love it!  - you know, the weekend!  feel good!  Got most of it done Saturday and physically tore myself from the computer for a jog and sauna.

Alas, iMovie kept crashing that night (the next chapter is a reading by me; hope y’all will like it).

.So, I think there’s always tomorrow.  Need sleep.  Been a big week.  Must not develop insomnia over the next chapter, crazy driven though I am.

Ditto MEGA FAILS the next day : crash, re-edit x 1 billion, until the end of the day – again I tear myself away to tend to the physical being, which needs exercise as much as the mental self.

At least there’s Monday after work all day, yoga, dinner, dishes, need sleep.

Long story short last night was Tuesday and after my day’s work all my house work, I was DETERMINED TO GET IT DONE IN SPITE OF iMOVIE, REGARDLESS OF THE EVER-FAILING iMOVIE.  Fancy trying to get something creative done ‘in spite of’ iMovie!!

Consequence:  I have had 1 hour & 56 minutes sleep all night.  I now must go to work.  And I cannot EXPORT the movie/reading I have created & re-edited & re-edited & re-edited through the night, after each of  iMovie’s MADDENING crashes.  I am talking MADDENING crashes.

.

Subbers, thanks for being there.  Simple as that.  Having an audience DOES inspire me to keep going with this novel.  And I want you to know I’m trying, oh, I’m trying to deliver.

This novel will have closure this year, this whole part in my life will have closure this year.  This tree has had all its leaves fall to the ground – my words, my tears – and this year it’s going to sprout new life, on closure of this tell.

However, despite ALL my efforts from Saturday to now, 8.39 am Wednesday 20th February, I still have note been able to PUBLISH what I’ve made for you.  

This has also taken my time from visiting you – which is more torture via iMovie.  I ENJOY visiting you, swinging by, seeing wassup.  I enjoy that.

So this is what you call an update.  It’s made – the next chapter reading (and ooh some good footage ) – I’ve just got to get it to you.  Sighhhhhh.

To the recently subscribed:  I’m very touched you have interest.  Thank you.  Who ever would have known while I lived this, I would find any kind of poetry in it – ever – and then find this forum by which to reach people… hopefully including people once like me; because I highly recommend if you are anything like I was, you take a first step forward away from that victim.  Life can actually be a source of joy (this is a revelation to me; sorry if it’s common knowledge out there).  

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Copyright, N’n.

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Hey! Just thought of a great advertisement for iMovie:

” iMovie

iSuck “

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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

“Unable to prepare project for publishing…

The project could not be prepared for publishing because an error occurred. (-108)”

Life is good, when you choose well

It was four days before Chris visited to say that he would support Daniel’s potential for prosperity (by enabling me to work with full reward) by taking care of his child.  He was not shy about delivering his decision/choice with magnanimity.  I was glad that Tracy and Phong were with him on the visit, so I knew it had been discussed.

Daniel and me in life’s ocean, a buoy cast in our direction…

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I would actually be earning money from acting!  I had earned erratically as an extra in TV commercials,  feature films, and doing voice-overs, but this would be steady, regular acting work.  My agent never put me forward for acting:  I found this (and voiceover) all by myself!

AND I would be hired again and again, casually, as each influx of police recruits arrived.  I saw a glimmer of the potential life has to be living joy, when you work in the field of your natural talents, bypassing the zombie hordes on trains and buses heading for those static environs.

.

“But”, Chris went on, as he placed on our kitchen bench a tin of stale biscuits from the Fremantle markets where he worked, “I can’t all the time.” 

I knew the biscuits would be stale (once his offering was cobwebbed) for I had accepted Chris’ terms of fatherhood – that he would give “what I can when I can (so pursuing child support legally isn’t necessary)” – soon after Daniel’s birth.  I had accepted his word to be of honour, because that’s how I endeavoured in life.  Of course:  not perfect at being am I, human.

.

Beyond my marriage, I had borrowed several thousand dollars from my male boss for me to travel overseas, simply on the strength of my word in a contract which he left me to write up, and he signed.  He was okay for me to seal my promise of repayment by a handshake, but I know how associations can change in time and I did not want anything misunderstood.  I’ve learned pieces of paper can hold truths which our memories have lapsed.

When I discovered pregnancy I put my dreams of travel away and gave my boss his money back without prompt.  Kept working.

.

When I’d left the marriage, divorcing was not necessary because we together knew we were no longer a union and it did not matter, any Establishment’s decree.  I divorced eventually only so that my son would bear my surname. 

That the courts took their sweet time and Daniel was born when he was, is of little consequence to me:  I provided my surname for Daniel’s birth certificate because he was my son, not the son of my marriage four years previous – and not the son of his father who had not demonstrated sufficient loyalty to the soul so imminent, and then present in our lives, to be honoured by being named as father.  Pieces of paper also bear illusions which hearts have already endorsed; hence are overruled in this world so material.

I knew that to a male (“knew” from what I had been taught of men) that it would be like being let off the hook, to not be named on a child’s birth certificate.  However, after long thought I still decided that Chris was not worthy to be so named, and so however it came across to the man I did not care:  I was doing what was aright according to my heart.

.

Just as years previous a male thespian had given to my hands the money needed to leave my marriage and place bond on a bedsitter on my word that I would repay it (which doing was my first priority upon first pay cheque outside the marriage), so when Chris said he would give to his son what he could when he could, I readily accepted it, believed it:  giving your word (and standing by it)  was normal to me.

It was a slow and, to my heart deeply, deeply offending realization that Chris’ offerings were mere donations to Daniel not of what Daniel needed, but what patrons of the market had rejected from dawn through to dusk.  And his donations, he delivered 80% of the time with a woman at side, be it his partner of two years or those he was not shy to introduce as his (latest) “friend”, on their way to dinner or the casino – his favourite outings.

I developed a habit of receiving Chris’ donations, commenting “thank you”, then rifling through them for anything worthy of, or needed by, our son.  I then binned the rest.

Deepened, the blue of my eyes.

.

But this was good:  this would be good:  me working casually, and Daniel being with his father.  Chris would surely fall to love Daniel, if he didn’t already.  I could not tell whether Chris loved Daniel – and who was I to gauge/judge that?  I thought (fancied) I saw a father trying earnestly to honour his son’s life, needs.

“What do you mean ‘not all the time’?” I asked, Daniel in my arms sedately – not struggling to be with Dadda, but keeping an eye on Dadda.

“My sister Karen take care of Daniel when I have feng shui appointment.”


“Daniel’s aunty…your sister Karen?  Where does she live?  Is she married?  Does she have children?”

“Too many questions.  I pay her $4 an hour and she willing to have my son.  You don’t need a worry.”

“$4 an hour??!” (so little…)

“She take care all the kids $4 an hour,” Chris stated.  “I pay, I pay:  don’t worry.”

It seemed a decent arrangement that if Chris couldn’t take care of Daniel when he’d given word he would, then he pay for a carer, but…

“Why can’t you make feng shui appointments when you don’t have Daniel?  And what other kids does she care for?  Does she have children?”

Daniel wanted to get down, so I let him.  How many of this tone of conversation had we had in front of him, how many more would we have?  What did Daniel understand, I wondered.  What words did he know certainly?  What did he think?

“You don’t understand my work.  I go when they call.  I take the opportunity.”

“I understand you needing to work, but can’t you choose appointments when you don’t have Daniel, or around him at least?  You’re freelance.”

“He’ll sleep with us,” Tracy offered in persuasion.  Chris always seemed to bring Tracy when he had need to negotiate with me, leaving me with the distinct impression, usually, that he had in fact negotiated me.

Phong, I noticed, had taken up position in the chair at my desk.  He was completely bored of all our company, of his position in life, I could see.  And troubled.

“Karen teach him Chinese,” Chris said.


“Oh!  That’s fantastic!” I said.  “That would be fantastic!  Daniel can be bilingual!”

“Yeah, yeah, see.  It all work out.”

.

I set with Chris the times and days, and secretly hoped he would not make feng shui appointments on those days – or if he did, they would only be a few hours at the most.

Karen lived “in the sticks” – the outer suburbs, I learned – and coincidentally nearby where my ex husband David’s mother had helped us to obtain a mortgage.  Having established a house and just working on a front fence, a Labrador (like he had when a kid) was what would be next before which, it was expected, “By then she should be ready to have children”…

Daniel didn’t know what was being negotiated in our little home, but by the time Chris, Tracy and Phong left, after Mum dumped the biscuits and bruised fruit into the bin, by the time we were on the floor in his toy room being together, Mum seemed happy enough.  And Daniel sensed all was well with the world, today.

Life is good, when you choose well.

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Copyright Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

Wait for Me

aside…

They say socially, “How was your weekend?“

How to say…

A Collection of Knives

Having collected Daniel from Chris and Tracy, I felt both nervous and hopeful for the future. 

I had to accept that if Chris would not support me working then I had to make the decision to either put Daniel into child care, or simply not work.  It wasn’t a great pay-off to have Daniel in care all those hours at such cost – much better to be with family – so while driving I decided that if I were to not work in the acting job (that I was stunned to be thought good enough for, having passed auditions), then I would look for other work. 

We would get by, we would be fine, I determined, slowing down for the lights.

“How are you, gorgeous?” I turned to say to Daniel, and he gave me a big rosy-cheeked grin.  He then burbled something in the trill of a song bird, sounding excited and eager. I laughed.  The joy which emanated from this young being was so charged, I was begifted every minute by his very life.

I turned to continue driving.

.

It’s important to not hope on Chris’ support, I thought to myself.  I did not like the sense of power I felt Chris possessed in being able to say yes or no, he will care for his child.  I had no power of sway (also did not care for power games) for I had said ‘yes’ to Daniel with all of my heart upon his birth.  Thereby, I would always be there for him – but Chris had the power to be available for his son and assist us, or not be available to his son and be absent, a father.
I had to remember Chris had it in his character to disappear from Daniel’s life at will, like when I started talking maintenance and he spat, “I’ll piss off, you’ll see!” – and then was uncontactable for a month.  That had been such a torture to me, isolated in Western Australia without family, no friends with children, night clubbing buddies lost to the night and lost my number, no adult to talk to but Tom when I ran into him.  And it had happened just before Robert ambushed me sexually. 

I could have rung Des from theatre days but he could not relate an iota, single man living a single man’s whims; I could have rung Tom my yoga teacher but preferred him not know me depressed for he was always so positive; I could have rung the theatre director Andrea who’d said, “Keep in touch, now” – but who ever means that?; I could have rung my grandmother but I had not exposed her to Daniel yet, and wasn’t sure how she’d receive me as a parent single; I could have rung my sisters over east but I didn’t want them to know Chris was toying with me (that’s my pride, my downfall)… really, I could ring everyone and no-one; besides all of which, utterance of the word ‘help’ had not crossed my lips ever, not ever, in my life.

“Neighbours are more curious than concerned (don’t ever seek help/tell what’s happening)”, dad had hissed at us.  Still, Wendy during an argument with him, had flung open the window one day and screamed into the world, “I DON’T CARE IF THE NEIGHBOURS HEAR!”  I can never forget my father’s freezing at that moment, and I did too:  she was so, so brave.

I had got through everything alone and I would again (if Chris doesn’t help), I decided resolutely as I turned down Eric Street, Cottesloe Western Australia.  

Who am I?  Had I determined at an early age self-imposed exile?  Was I abandoning myself from the human race, so that I cannot be abandoned; not asking for help so I cannot be rejected?

I remember that school essay, “Write on the theme ‘No man is an island’.”  But I am, I had thought to myself.

.

But torture, it had been – his disappearance for a month after I tried to discuss maintenance.  And psychological endurance.  I would not ring Chris, I’d decided at that time, when he told me “The other mother doesn’t ask for money; why should you?”  (What other mother?… You have a daughter you don’t support too?).  For, if Chris loved his son he would come to see him, have time with him.  Oh – but was that me playing games, too?

And when Chris did ring after that month, I needed to pretend I was fine, we’d been fine (to not allow him the power of seeing me broken).  No, no, OF COURSE I didn’t leave our son playing on the floor when I was immobilized by depression, lay in my bed so Daniel would not witness the real me, a tear welled from the little girl still inside me, welled in my eye.  And unfallen, it glazed my vision.  So I stared, something like an hour, at the vacancy of space spread across my bedroom wall.

Mum used to lay just so – get up, get up.  You can’t do this to Daniel:  get up, get up.

But I can’t move my legs, I can’t feel my legs – or my body, my hands.  I’m numb.  I’m stuck.  I’m stuck in tragedy in time.  Get me out.  Move me.  Someone move me.

Snap out of it:  “Depressed (sneer) yer don’t know the meaning of the word” – Dad: circa, Yesterdays.

Stumble,

to the bathroom, wash my face,

to Daniel, big smile.

Him looking at me quizzically.

Me sitting with him, lifting a toy but it’s so heavy, just so heavy.  Trying to act, “Hee hee – ha ha – smile – beautiful! darling! gorgeous! we’ll go to the beach later!”

But I couldn’t do it.

‘Kung fu is practiced every where every way’ – Sifu of Yesterdays.

I can do it!

Stare, freeze, stun, numb.

“Mum?”

.

I had gone to the kitchen drawer one of those bad days, those terrible terrible days when I had carried Daniel with me every waking moment for more than a week unending, given him the whole of my attention unending, when my back felt broken, when my body shut down on me, collapsed on me. 

I had gone to the kitchen drawer in desperation, as Daniel wouldn’t settle and was bored of his toys and I needed to rest.  I needed to find something to occupy him before I lapsed into unconsciousness, so unslept was I, unwashed, ravaged by depression, aloneness, Chris’ departure from Daniel and all it implied about who he was by way of Daniel’s other parent.

I had yanked it out of the cabinet, the drawer, and plonked it on the kitchen floor. Daniel, fascinated, took to it immediately.  I watched a few seconds, then stumbled away to my room and collapsed.  I blacked out with fatigue, extreme fatigue.  Not sleeping at night.  Not sleeping at day.  How do they do it in the Army?  How do they march on?  Only those who could march on, survived Mao’s long march.  Would I have died, therefore, weakly now resting on my plush bed?  We all think we’re strong, think we’re survivors, but we all collapse – at some point we collapse.

Mum?  Are you there?

Daniel’s clanking and rattling the kitchen utensils.  There’s a great commotion out there.  Are you a Guardian Angel, or are you just pleased to see me?  Ha ha – hee.  That’s not funny.  Not funny.

Black.

~

When I had woken that time that Chris disappeared for a month – I remember so clearly, I came to consciousness with that good feeling in the body, where your whole being thanks you for stopping, just stopping in your strides of life.  Refreshed, I’d sat up and looked across at Daniel’s cot, but he wasn’t there.  He wasn’t in my bed either, where he crawls to, and we become two pearls in one oyster clammed off from the world, secure and warm ‘neath blankets.

I had got up and said his name, but there was no answer. 

“Daniel?” I’d said again, panicked.

I had rushed quickly out of my bedroom to the kitchenette and there, slumped alongside the kitchen drawer on the hard ground, was Daniel.  My boy in my care:  not one year on earth yet: was slumped on the cold wooden floor.

I tiptoed close, seized with fear.  What had I done to my boy?  I had slept, had neglected my boy.

Once close, I saw peace a gentle veil lain over Daniel’s face in rest.  I would not disturb him. 

But the cutlery?  There was no cutlery in the drawer.  I wondered if I was half dreaming, if I had removed the cutlery from the drawer when I gave it to him – but all that clanking???…

I looked under my writing desk, alongside the refrigerator, behind the bin, but there was no cutlery.  I then opened a cupboard door, and there discovered a collection of knives and teaspoons.  I opened another door and saw on the shelf where I kept the dish cloth and detergent, more knives, more spoons, and forks.

My God! I thought to myself in horror: how stupid, stupid, stupid am I, to leave my son playing with knives.  My God, what is wrong with me, I thought to myself as I stared, a little awed at the completely stashed collection.  I looked back at Daniel but he was not cut, was simply sleeping like none but an Angelic cherub can.

How curious it was that Daniel had so meticulously shoved all my cutlery from the drawer into the cupboards.  He must have decided to divide the stash as it must have been spilling from one, requiring another.  Not yet walking, he would have crawl-walked little bundles of cutlery across to the cupboards.  How curious, how odd, how funny and cute.  But I just could not believe I had been so stupid.

Thank you, dear God, I said in my head.  I so, so meant it.  God knows what Daniel and me were spared in my stupidity, fraught with exhaustion and despair yes, but – it could have been horrific – an eye out, anything.

.

That day, then, I returned to my bed and, refreshed, mentally lay, new plans to survive Chris’ withdrawal upon my talk of maintenance.  We would be fine, we would get by, I’d thought; just as I was thinking now.  I released Daniel from his car seat in the car park of Cottesloe Beach, Western Australia, and brought him across to the front seat with me.  We’ll be fine if Chris doesn’t support me working.  I will find another way.

I remember reading once that there are infinite paths to the same end – you just need to be flexible, adaptable and persevere.  So, simply, I would take another path.  I had sold every material possession of mine that was sellable:  sold the kitchen table, my music tapes, books, work clothes, but, “We’ll be fine”, I said to Daniel, our cheeks like two marshmallows squashed against each other as I hugged him.  I could have almost squeezed him to death.

I unbuckled myself and, not caring, at the ocean’s shoreline I removed my jeans.  Then in t-shirt and knickers I played with Daniel.  We splashed, made holes, I buried his feet so he couldn’t move, and giggled when I pretended I couldn’t move after he buried my feet.  

Time brought us through the day on its tide until eventually we were warm, clean and in nightwear.  Then the day closed like the heavy eyelids of a child who has had so much life in one day, they’ve grown a mile.

Thing is, I thought to myself, lying alongside Daniel in my bed, him sleeping – that time Chris “pissed off; you’ll see” - that time, just when I had buckled up and adjusted to the all new brand of non-support (absence, instead of unpredictable presence) – just as I had adjusted, Chris returned.  And it all started again.

~

I would not let Chris have such an effect on me again, I decided, amongst my last thoughts before sleeping.  I will pretend to the agent that I can make the acting assignment at the Police Academy.  If Chris pulls out and I have to cancel, lose my good standing, then so be it.  Some thrilled actor will step into my place, and I will never be called up by her again.  So what.  That’s life.  It’s only acting.  It’s only something I want – not a need.

The most important thing is – Daniel snuffled, his long brown eyelashes fluttered.  I smelled him.  I loved him.

The most important thing is, because I had to learn from that month’s absence and how it destroyed me alone in a flat, facading wellness to passers-by in my life – I’m okay, we’re okay:  what I would learn this time was, I will not rely on Chris.  I will even start looking for other work, while waiting for Chris to say yes he’ll take some responsibility for his son in support of me working and bettering Daniel and my lives.

If there’s a road block, we’ll take another route.

~

~

Copyright, Noeleen&Daniel 50/50

 

You just want more money$

The moment lulled, our cheer subsided. 

Standing in Tracy’s front foyer, my backpack slung over my shoulder and Daniel in my arms, it was obvious I should now leave.

“Um Chris,” I ventured.

“Yeah.”

Why did I feel a need to be gentle with this man, to coerce this man, to “bring him around” to the idea of supporting his son’s wellbeing by keeping Daniel’s care within the family?  It was strange.  I could not be normal with Chris, I always had to “deal with” Chris.

“I’ve got – ahem (I cleared my throat).  I’ve got some work coming up.”

“What work?”

“Acting work!”

“Yeah yeah, an actor.”

“Yes.  Well, the thing is, it’s three days one week then four days the next week.”

“So you want me to look after the baby.”

I looked at Tracy, standing alongside Chris.  I wondered what she thought.  Was caring for her boyfriend’s child troublesome to her?  Did she indulge in the utter beauty of Daniel’s buoyant spirit, or did she resent each swipe of shit, changing his nappies.  Did she have giggles with Daniel, or was Daniel a hassle to her?  Tracy was a parent single who did not have paid work, so her days were open.  Was she an energetic person, or a lazy person?

“I can’t promise nothing,” Chris said.  That was no surprise.

“But, do you think – do you think it’s a possibility?”

“Why don’t you just put him in daycare?”

“I can, of course I can, but the cost of placing him in care causes, in effect, that I work for extremely low wage.  To receive the most of the wage handed to me, it would be best to have family support.  I mean, you’re not my family – but the other parent’s support.”

Tracy and Chris looked at each other.  I could read neither of their faces.  Phong, I could hear in the background in his bedroom, got up from what sounded like a bean bag, changed a game in his Xbox or whatever he had, and sat back down again.  Punching, kicking and excitable music played.

“I try, we see.”

“It would be in two weeks time,” I said.

“Oh, not yet?”

“No.  The thing is, it could be ongoing work.  That’s the best thing.  The agency have a contract with this… place.  I could get work forever through them!”

“Regular work?”

“Well, if they like me, yes.  For this whole year, I would get work for a few weeks, break a week or two, and work for a few weeks.   Never five days – just one to four days in any week.”

“You see:  you don’t need child support.  You just want more money.”

This threw me completely.  It must have been forefront of Chris’ mind.

“Chris,” I said gently, “I don’t want ‘more money’.  I want to earn sufficient to afford Daniel’s life and, with the support of you, the father, to even afford him prosperity in life.”

“The government give you money too.  You’re lucky in Australia.”

I was riled, deeply.  I had worked during my school years – paid for my books in the final year, and I had worked nonstop after that – well, basically nonstop.  I constantly left jobs when I could cope no more, go underground, survive a depression, and come out acting smiles and confidence to win another job.  But I had worked “forever” and now, because I had a child whose father was denying parenthood in the justice system, I was brought to accept government money.

“The government gives me less money if I work.  The government only keeps me – your son – on the bread line.  Because I don’t want to raise Daniel poorly, to afford Daniel great experiences – excursions, a good home, quality food – I –“

“Yeah yeah, you want more money.”

I was being baited horribly.  This was a mindset of Chris’ which was abhorrent to me:  that others – the government, and secondly me – are financially responsible for Daniel…anyone but him.

“Don’t you want Daniel raised in prosperous circumstances?”

Tracey was completely silent.  I absolutely knew Phong could hear us.  Chris threw back his head and laughed fully at me.  He opened the door.

“Chris?!” I said, taking a step toward the flywire, obviously not welcome any more.  

“Chris, I need to know so that I can plan.”

I felt anxiety inside, felt as if I need to preserve Chris’ good temper.  I felt I needed to negotiate this man, pander to his clear self belief that his job was number one (it was, after all, going to make him ‘rich and famous’ one day).  My job could be useful as it would cause him to (have to) pay less money to Daniel, but my job was not useful as it was asking support from him.

“I think about it” he said, as we stepped onto his patio.

I would not beg.  I would state my request.  I would leave and find another way without his support.  And if I could not find a way, then simply I would not take the opportunity for work – an opportunity to work in what I really enjoy, an opportunity to get a name in what I really enjoy and future work by it.  I wanted to cry at the wrongness, and desperation, I felt in this moment.  But I would not beg, I would not beg.

I had to put Daniel down, so I could slip my shoes on, which were at Tracy’s front door.

“I need to know pretty soon,” I said to Chris, tying up my runners.

“When?”

“As soon as possible.  I start in two weeks – the Wednesday.”

“I see what I can do.”

I guessed he wanted to speak about it with Tracy.  I had to respect that.  I just hoped he wouldn’t take long.

“Thanks for having Daniel” I said, straightening up and slinging my backback over my other shoulder.

“Yeah,” Tracy said.  She never said much.

“And you’ll let me know as soon as possible, Chris?”

“Yeah yeah, I tell you soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” I said, and walked down Tracy’s path.  As I opened the gate, I turned for a last goodbye, but they were gone.

That was Chris.  

 

Copyright Noeleen&

Daniel 50

/50