There were three of us in my family. Not at first, of course. At the beginning, we had a mother. Dad had a wife. I can't remember much about Mum, because I was only young when she died. I was only two years old, and although I'm convinced that it must have effected me in ways that I could never truly begin to guess, well, by the time I was 18… I could barely recall what she looked like. We had photos, and my father's memories, which he always loved sharing with us, but I didn't have anything that I could recall. Which bothers me now more than it did at the time.
My father never let his feelings show to myself or my sister as to how he was suffering. I'm sure he was. But he probably didn't want to let make us sad as well. He was a big man, and he probably didn't want us to see him weep, because he undoubtedly would have. (And when I say big, I mean it. He was over six foot tall, and from his job as a mechanic he was broad and solidly built. His face was what you would describe as roughly handsome, with black hair. He always had about four or five days of growth on his cheeks and chin, and he had a moustache, thick and bushy. What always intrigued me was the hair that poked up out from the neck of his open-necked shirts. It was thick and curly and black. It was the same as on his arms and legs. But I never saw him naked. Not until the day… ah, you'll have to wait… By the time I was 18, I was tall like he was, but I didn't really have a hairy body. I had pubes, of course, and a smattering of curls across my chest, but I wasn't as hairy as I suspected he was).
My sister was two years older than me. When I was 18 (the year everything changed for me on how I saw our family… but more on that later), she had grown into a stunning 22 year old. Her memories of Mum were much stronger… she could remember her touch, and the way she smiled. She could remember her loving hands at night when she held you if you had suffered a nightmare. And she remembered, most of all, how much she loved our father. Sharon actually looked like Mum, from what I could see of the photos. She was tall, jus a bit shorter than Dad, and she had long dark brown hair that trailed down her back. To me, she was gorgeous. Although, at that age, my understanding of female beauty and what it could do men was limited.
Sharon had always been somewhat of a mother to me. Dad had never remarried—he held the memory of my mother too dear to his heart—and Sharon took on the role of looking after me. But now that I was growing older, and only a few years away from turning 21, I was starting to want to pull away from her. I don't mean to say that I rejected her or anything. And I also don't mean to suggest that she did everything for me, because she didn't. what she did was to teach me how to look after myself for the time when I would have to leave home and do exactly that. I was learning to cook, and sew, and wash dishes and clothes, just as Dad was teaching me how to fish, and hunt, and fix a car, and—dare I say it—fight. My sis did all of this stuff while attending school. I don't know how she did it, but I will always be grateful.
The year I was 18, sis worked at the local store behind the counter. She wanted to go to university, but had had to work to help pay for it. With Dad working as a mechanic all the time just to earn money to help us survive, he couldn't afford to pay for her education beyond high school, although he would dearly have loved to have been able to do that. So since she had left school, she had stayed at home, and worked and saved furiously.
I remember the day that my knowledge of the world changed forever as if it was yesterday. It was summer, a hot hot day. I had been down at the nearby creek with some friends. We spent all summer there, and I'm surprised that we didn't grow gills and turn into fish from the amount of time we spent in the water. I had headed home, tired yet happy. My mates and I had been talking about sex, which was what we almost always seemed to do. Of course, exactly what sex was we didn't have the faintest idea. Although Dad and sis had told me a lot about the world, sex hadn't yet been broached. My mates and I were all talk, and it was the stupid, full-of-shit talk you would expect from a bunch of 18 year olds. We all pretended that we knew about sex. But of course it was all shit. None of us knew anything!
I walked up the driveway of our small, tidy house and went round the back. As expected, my sister's bicycle was there. She always finished early on a Wednesday. Surprisingly, my Dad's old ute was there as well… perhaps he had been able to sneak away early as well. I went in and dumped my wet bathing suit in the basket in the laundry, and headed through to the kitchen. No one was there, which didn't surprise me, as Sharon was often busy in one of the bedrooms, folding washing. I was about to call out "I'm home.. what's for dinner?" when I heard laughter. Female laughter. It sounded like Sharon, and she was through in one of the rooms. I started to walk down the hall, and again I was going to call out, but something made me stop. And then I heard a male voice.
The voices came from my father's room. Intrigued, I crept closer. Something deep within me said, "be quiet, don't disturb what is going on here. Just look and listen". I don't know what that voice was, or where it came from, but I listened.
Getting to my father's door, I saw it was open slightly. I knelt down on the carpet, and listened. I could hear breathing, heavy breathing, as if someone was exercising a great deal. I also heard soft moans. I had no idea what was going on, and one half of my brain was crying out "don't look! You don't want to look!!" But the other voice came back, and said, "just ease open the door a bit—be very quiet—and watch what is before you". And so, with my heart in my mouth, I did.
