A Girl Called Tim. June Alexander
cats loved the porridge and Weet-Bix. Besides Topsy, we had about 12 cats. Some were part feral, having been dumped by uncaring owners in the bush land adjacent to our property. Timid, they lived in the stable and haystack where they caught mice; some bravely hung around the back door of the house in the mornings and evenings, hoping for a dish of stale milk, or scraps from the kitchen.
They purred as I fed them my cereal, urging them to eat it all before Mum returned from the dairy. Next I took a thick slice of high tin loaf outside, through the back gate, throwing chunks to the chooks, who snapped the bread up in their beaks and dashed about, clucking madly and throwing their heads back as they gulped their treat down. Then I ran back inside, cut a paper-thin slice of bread to toast on the open fire, spread some Vegemite and washed it down with a cup of black, sugarless tea. From the age of five I’d been drinking tea from a favourite cup that Mum half-filled with milk, and sweetened with several teaspoons of white sugar. Not any more. Every day I found new ways to reduce my calorie intake.
Lunch on school days was easy, too. Mum cut two big rounds of sandwiches, wrapping them in waxed paper and placing them in my blue lunch tin, the lid kept on with an old Fowlers Vacola preserving jar ring. I asked for only one round but she wouldn’t listen and when I came home from school with one sandwich untouched, she was upset.
‘You need two rounds; you’re a growing girl. And besides, this is wasteful,’ Mum scolded.
I thought of another solution. The next day I took an empty tin home.
‘That’s better,’ Mum said.
Some children at school came from poor families who sometimes had no bread for making lunches, so I offered my sandwiches to these children. I gave them the cheese, jam, meat and peanut butter sandwiches, keeping a Vegemite, fish paste or tomato one for myself. My classmates also enjoyed my play snacks of lamingtons, jam drops, Madeira cake, chocolate slice and Anzac biscuits. I smiled as they ate while I went hungry; I enjoyed watching them eat.
The evening meal was the one daily meal shared by my family. Mum served the food on our plates and set them on the oval-shaped, oak dining table that stood in the middle of our kitchen. I dreaded casseroles, stews and gravy. Desserts were particularly messy.
I became resourceful and devious. By sitting down first, when Mum’s back was turned at the sink and others were combing their hair before coming to the table, I had time to move food from my plate to the next plate, which belonged to whoever was visiting. This was a relief. If Mum left the kitchen for a moment, I risked reaching across the table and placing my meat on Dad’s plate. Sometimes I gave his plate a roast potato as well. These were his favourite foods and together with Grandma, Dad was my favourite person in all the world.
When everyone was seated and busy eating or talking, I grabbed fistfuls of food left on my plate, whipped it under the tablecloth and slid it in my pockets. This was why I didn’t like sloppy foods, like mashed potato and meat covered in gravy. I ate a small amount of cabbage or carrot, and pretended it was a lot, chewing it over and over, finishing my meal at about the same time as everyone else. Or I pretended to chew and swallow nothing.
Main courses were a trial but desserts were worse. They were sticky or soft and hopeless for slipping in pockets.
Mum made chocolate sauce puddings, apple crumbles, apple puddings, golden syrup dumplings, jam tarts, sago puddings and custards, usually served with stewed or preserved fruit. Made with full-cream milk and butter, the desserts also contained sugar, available by the cupful from a big hessian bag in our pantry.
My heart sank when Mum insisted on pouring custard sauce or cream over the top of a steamed pudding. About the only dessert I could slip safely in my pocket was cinnamon apple cake, and even that was messy.
I tried to tell Mum, ‘I’m full. I don’t want dessert, thank you,’ but she would reply, ‘What’s wrong with you? I thought you wanted to be tall and strong like your Dad.’
Nothing but a cleaned-up plate satisfied my mother. She would remind me how as a child she ate ‘bread and dripping through the week and bread and jam on Sunday,’ and for good measure would add: ‘Think about those poor starving children in India, be grateful and eat up.’
I couldn’t see how the eating of my dessert would ease the plight of children in India. I wanted to lose my breasts. I couldn’t tell Mum that, so I waited for everyone to leave the table and for her to leave the kitchen, even for a moment. Then I’d jump up and toss the food off my plate into the scrap bowl and run it outside in the dark to Rip the dog, whose turn it was for a meal at the end of the day. Rip developed a real sweet tooth.
Summer passed into autumn, and autumn was nearing winter. My periods were on time every month. At school, I remained the only girl with breasts but they were shrinking and I hid them by wearing more clothing as the weather turned cooler.
However, Mum was starting to question my behaviour. I was quieter and on weekends, I liked to disappear into the bushland adjacent to our property, my thoughts as my companion. My mother and sister called me ‘stuck up’ and ‘rude’ when I didn’t want to join them in visiting our neighbours, who put the kettle on for a cuppa, whatever the time of day, and served sugar-laden cakes and biscuits.
I had friends on neighbouring farms but preferred to be alone or doing outdoor jobs. Luckily Mum liked me to help Dad and I was with him every possible moment. She worked hard, helping on the farm when I was at school, and she kept our house spotless and our large cottage garden beautiful.
Some local families had electric power, but it hadn’t entered our valley yet, so Mum did her housework manually: polishing the linoleum floors on her hands and knees, beating her cake mixtures with a wooden spatula, and washing our clothes in a wood-fired copper. She prodded the clothes with a broken axe handle before heaving them into a concrete trough to rinse in cold water, and wrung them by hand before pegging them on the outside line. The steel-bladed Southern Cross windmill by the river provided our water supply, pumping water to a tank 100 metres uphill from the house to gain sufficient pressure. Careful usage was essential because otherwise, when the wind didn’t blow, the tank ran dry.
One night, lost in thought over how to avoid the shepherd’s pie that Mum was baking for tea, I forgot to turn off the tap into the calves’ trough. Next morning, Dad gently asked, ‘Did you forget to do something last night?’ The tank had run dry. I blushed and hung my head. I would not forget again.
The following week the doctor came to school. My chest was almost flat. As far as I could tell, Daryl stayed out of sight. Nobody laughed as I lined up with the other girls in panties and singlets. The doctor chatted, probed and listened to each of us in turn before passing us on to the nurse who weighed us. At 6st 12lbs (43.5 kilograms), neither the doctor nor nurse noted my weight loss because they hadn’t seen me for four years.
My report was good on every count. While dressing I looked sideways and was pleased to notice other Grade Six girls were growing breasts too.
I had worked hard for three months, preparing for the doctor’s visit. Now it was over. That afternoon, pushing my bike through the school gate to pedal home, I felt relieved I would not have to risk making Mum cross at mealtimes any more.
2. MY ILLNESS DEEPENS
Globules of fat on the meat chunks peered out of the lamb stew, daring me to eat them. It didn’t help that the stew’s rich brown gravy had merged with its companion—a large blob of white-as-snow potato mashed with generous lashings of creamy milk and butter. For the first time in months I had looked forward to sitting down to tea. Tonight Mum wouldn’t have cause to growl. But, confronted by the lamb stew and potato, guilt set in.
I loaded my fork, and could go no further. The fatty globs glared at me. I skirted them, eating the boiled carrot and cabbage, carefully avoiding the bits that touched the stew and mashed potato.
Mum grumbled. ‘Wasteful,’ she muttered, taking my plate away. Then she served steamed apple pudding with a rich custard sauce poured over top. This dessert, once my favourite, now sparked terror.
‘For goodness