They Told Me I Had to Write This (14 page)

Dear Gram

Weekends get me feeling better and I am not thinking about police interviews today.

The Carters invited Dad and me to a BBQ. Violet had a present for me and it was a t-shirt but the writing was back to front.

‘Put it on in front of the mirror,’ she told me, so we went inside.

In the mirror that t-shirt said, ‘You’re awesome.’ I stood there but had to keep blinking and I read it again.

‘We all know it,’ Violet said, ‘but you have trouble believing it.’ My eyes got misty and she hugged me until the others must be hungry by now.

Out at the BBQ Mr Carter said, ‘There’s prawns and veal kebabs and fancy sausages. What’ll it be?’

‘What are veal kebabs?’ I said.

‘Skewered steak,’ he said, ‘but from a baby calf and not a bullock.’

‘I’ll have prawns and sausages,’ I said, coz I could only think about our calf at school. And I said, ‘What’s the song about Mr Bojangles?’ And Violet’s parents and Dad tried to sing it. Bad news, my dad singing.

Mr Bojangles is a dancer and he jumps so high and he lightly touched down and he had a little dog that died and I think the Rev set me up with that song.

But this is the weekend and I am out to enjoy.

From Clem the T-shirt Man. Awesome.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN TIME STANDS STILL?

Dear Gram

Another day another week another month. Sometimes that is how time feels and especially when things are running normal time, which is called chronology. But there are some days that have danger moments and then time stands still or it just disappears.

We had Values for Life class the other day with Mr German, and the values class had sentence number four in it that said, ‘Silence or violence, are they the only two responses?’ And we were very silent I can tell you coz we remembered that day of the message about Hamish and how this sentence was there on the board.

Mr German got us into thinking mode. He asked about how to respond to Bundy who sold Hamish the drugs, which is really hard coz Bundy was one of us. Well, that is when the chronology stopped. Hamish and Bundy were both at the school with us and then they were both gone.

I didn’t know what to say about that sentence and that was wrong because it meant I was choosing the silence but that sentence only gives two choices and there are more than two, I know it.

The time of that class didn’t follow the normal rules of chronology, like when the bike chain slips the sprockets and you go nowhere. Hamish was a demon on the trails and he deserves for me to be different about him than either silence or violence. But I don’t know what.

It’s like the hands of a clock. You look away then you look back and they’ve changed but you never see them moving. Time is standing still. It’s waiting for me to make up my mind.

From timeless Clem.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
THE SWAP

Dear Gram

We had the second police interview, which is when I said how that teacher did a set-up on me and Dad and it was about my poster that I did for ecology.

The police asked me to tell them how it started.

I said, ‘That teacher got us to do posters on ecology as homework and the best three posters would get trophies. He had those trophies sitting on his desk. But when we handed in the posters things had changed.’

He said, ‘None of these posters is up to standard for first prize and so I am going to award only the second and third prizes.’

I got third prize, and I could tell that everyone was a bit upset that there were only two prizes. That afternoon the teacher kept me in. He said, ‘Clem, I’ve thought about your poster and I think it’s worth first prize after all. Are you happy about that?’

I said, ‘Yes.’

Then he said, ‘But the problem is that if I give you the first prize this late everybody else will get upset, especially the person who got second prize. We wouldn’t want anybody to get upset, would we?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘So you have a problem, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So the way out of the problem is that you will have to take the trophy home with you and not have it on your desk. And it will have to be a secret. Does that sound like it will fix your problem?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

I sure liked having that first prize trophy. But I didn’t like having that secret. The next afternoon he kept me there again. I had to sit in the classroom while he worked and everybody left. Then he started to ask me questions.

‘Well, Clem, did you keep the secret of the trophy?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t tell anyone, did you?’

‘No.’

‘I have another secret for you to keep, a really important secret. Come with me.’

And he took me to the storeroom at the end of the school. He was breathing strange and he told me to stand still but when he began to take my clothes off I knew it was the end of me. And that afternoon in the storeroom made two secrets that I had to keep.

Those two secrets got to three and four and he would keep me in and do things to me and he was keeping me in over homework and posters.

But he never gave out prizes again.

Dad said to the police, ‘We’ve got that poster at home, the one about ecology.’

‘Are you sure it’s the same one?’ the police officer asked.

‘Yes. There’s only one on ecology. But there are others that I kept.’

‘Clem,’ one of them said, ‘you said the teacher kept you in over homework and posters. Can you tell us more about that, please?’

I told them, ‘If I handed in a poster the teacher would find a problem with it and keep me in. And when everybody else had gone from the school he would take me to the storeroom. I didn’t even want to do posters any more.’

The police asked Dad if he had kept many posters from back then.

‘I kept them all, until that teacher started to tell me what Clem’s behaviour was like in school. Then I didn’t want to keep them.’

Dad’s eyes were not looking at anybody and he said, ‘The teacher told me things about Clem and I believed him. He said Clem was always lying and couldn’t be trusted by the teachers, and the other kids didn’t like him. The teacher said Clem’s behaviour should be expected because his mother had died. And I believed the teacher instead of Clem.’

Dad was holding his jaw tight and his eyes were in strife and it was trouble to me to see Dad like that and he couldn’t even look at me but just spoke those words into the floor. Everyone was quiet and then Dad looked up at me and said, ‘Clem, I am so sorry,’ and his voice disappeared. The heat was making our faces distorted and distant, like at the campfire.

‘Mr Dylan,’ the policemen said, ‘we’d like to see any posters that you have kept. They might give us a date for each offence.’

And then they said to me, ‘Clem, the next interview might be pretty tough. When we have the posters and check for dates, we will need you to tell us all you can remember of what that man did to you each time. It is likely to be upsetting for you, but nobody here will embarrass you deliberately.’ And I said, ‘OK.’

And that was the second interview that was so terrible for Dad and me, but the police thought it was very positive because of those posters. I was scared of messing my daks again but I told them the teacher’s name this time without the mess.

Clem.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
GETTING MR BOJANGLES

Dear Gram

I went to see the Rev and faced him up straight.

‘You set me up with that Bojangles song when we were talking about the calf and about Hamish being light on his feet.’

The Rev was up to it and said, ‘Clem, I didn’t mean to set you up and especially not to make you more upset about Hamish.’

There was no slippery sentences in there and I said, ‘It wasn’t about Hamish it was about my dad.’

‘Perhaps you could tell me about your dad.’

‘In that song where the little dog dies it says, ‘after twenty years he still grieves.’ That part of the song is like my dad still grieving my mum after all these years. I only just figured that out.’

‘Clem, if you look closely you might see that you are also a bit like Mr Bojangles. But I didn’t have that in mind when I spoke about the song.’

I had to screw my eyes shut when he said that but even my own eyes wouldn’t help me. What the Rev said was the honest truth. And I said, ‘For my whole life there is some part of the chronology that isn’t working and is standing still and I don’t know how to get it running. But this year lots of things have started up for me.’

We waited for me to get OK, and the Rev said, ‘Lots of people record the Bojangles song, but my favourite is by a guy named Bob Dylan.’

‘One day you might get to hear a song by Clem Dylan.’

‘That would be OK by me,’ he said.

So that is my week or month or was it just a day I don’t know. Just as well we’ve got holidays coming up. I need some time out from all this while the clock catches up.

With love from Clem who is starting to love himself.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2
INTERVIEW THREE

Dear Gram

The third police interview is over. Dad had all my posters from home and the police asked me to tell them about any that I could remember when the teacher had done stuff to me, except they were now calling it sexual assault.

And there were more posters than I could remember about and there were dates on those posters. There were some posters that didn’t have bad memories for me. But lots of other times he did stuff to me and I did not have the posters or know the dates.

I started out OK but when we got to the stuff in the storeroom I lost it right there in the police station.

‘That man took off all my clothes and he started doing things to me with his hands and then with his mouth,’ and by then I was charging round that interview room like I used to in session. ‘And it went to even worse from there coz it got to where he would take his own clothes off and on those days I knew it was going to be very dangerous for me.’

I reckon those coppers must have been taking lessons from the Rev coz they just sat there and listened and took notes and that whole interview was being recorded and they got me on record charging round that room fit to take somebody’s head off his shoulders. I was radioactive, but I knew I could meet the challenge on this one and I had what it takes.

It took a bit of charging around before I got calm enough to go through those posters and tell the police everything I could remember about what he did without going right off. Eventually I got to the end. But the difference this time was that I hadn’t run out of batteries.

And those police had to take full–on crap from me before we got all those memories out.

Then the surprise happened. The police told us that this teacher was already in prison for doing sexual assault on other kids. There were several people who charged him who were now adults and I was the youngest boy to talk with the police. And nearly every person had the story of the third prize trophy.

That man was doing the same stuff to kids for years before I was in his class and I really got mad and was back up and yelling things about that man and what should happen to him for doing terrible things to so many little kids. And everyone sat and listened as I shouted until this time I did run out of batteries. When I sat down again Dad and me just looked at each other.

The police told us that he had been in prison for over a year and he would be there for another eight years but he would be formally charged over what he did to me and he would be there for even longer. It was a very quiet finish to the interview that day and the support person took Dad and me off for a smoothie so we could slow down.

And so that’s the interviews finished Gram, and they were pure toxic on me but all that teacher’s set-up on Dad and me is now over.

Clem.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21
KEVLAR & CHRONOLOGY & CRYING CLEM CLEAN

Dear Gram

Holidays were top stuff, but I didn’t spend much time out on the track this time. Most of it riding around town or with Violet or with thinking about writing this song.

We’re back to school and Wednesday is my normal session day.

I told the Rev about the police interviews and he listened like he usually does and that means that something’s coming and I had better watch out. He only said, ‘I wonder why that teacher picked you and not some other boy.’ That sounded safe enough and I was relaxed a bit after the holidays. Not smart, that relaxing. Suddenly I knew what that teacher had done and I wasn’t so safe after all.