There’s a teacher in this picture, front row, fourth from the left in the red top. It’s a picture of teachers at Thornbury Primary School in 1978, and she is familiar to me. I look at the picture and I remember a hero who rescued a young autistic girl. That girl was me.

Around 1972 or 1973 a young teacher, named Christine, took me home to her flat in Thornbury. It was the sanest thing to do, the heroic thing to do.

Christine was in a defacto relationship with her car dealer boyfriend, Greg Morrison and they had come to Saturday night party of a car dealer colleague of Greg’s – my father Jackie Williams from Bedrock Motors in Northcote. My criminal parents threw such parties sometimes every few weeks, sometimes fortnightly, sometimes even weekly. They were showing off their dirty money, the big two story house on Bell St Preston with views of the city lights at night, the chandeliers in every room, the brothel style gaudy flocked wallpaper in decadent reds and black and silver, the pub style red carpet stenched with beer, the well stocked bar, the massive snooker table, the in ground swimming pool, the open fire, the record turntable playing music all night, the gun rack on the wall stocked with too many guns and the revolved in the hall table in the front hall which my father would jokingly take out sometimes to scare the shit out of someone.

Jack was funny, a salesman, a schmoozer, a charmer, and a compulsive womaniser. My mother played the perfect host, handing round hor d’oeuvres, filling drinks, flirting less conspicuously than my father but enough to still befit this brothel disguised as the family home. Us kids, there were three of us; my older brother, quiet, serious, imploding and aged around 11-12, my younger brother, wild, hyper, usually Valium’d, and aged around 2-3, and then there was me… introduced as ‘that’s Donna, she’d psychotic’ on account of my having been diagnosed as a psychotic child at the age of two. I lived in the purple decor chandeliered attic with its barred window, stunning view of the city, more guns in the built in wardrobe behind my boutique clothes, and regular flow of drink-in-hand, cigarette-in-hand party tourists brought through all night to see the view. I was around 9-10 years old by now, had been functionally non-verbal and swung between echolalia and selective mutism and with a severe language processing disorder was just beginning to understand sentences.

The parties would rage all night and once you’d had a few drinks, at the hor d’oeuvres, danced a bit and swam in the pool, it was easy enough to forget the kids in the house, especially the unrelateable one.

Not every party ended in terror, knives wielded by my mother, guns fired by my father, glassed smashed everywhere and my mother with her ribs broken and false teeth smashed in yet again. And usually such theatrics were reserved for after the guests had left. Only occasionally did they flee. And this was one of those nights when they did.

Jack had been rampaging, drunk and deluded. He rarely came up to my attic room and when he ever did he looked like a wild animal and simply hid in the manholes in the walls of the attic room like some possum in the roof hiding from the police who might arrive. I was Dad’s girl and in spite of the dangerous and serious harm he dished out my mother (who regularly seriously harmed me) he had never harmed me in my entire life. But this night I so feared that finally, he would.

He rampaged into my room, went to the built in wardrobe tore out my clothes, came into my bedroom throwing them at me as he cursed at me like a whore he felt had crossed him. Then he grabbed a decorative Italian bed doll from the spare bed in my room and smashed its crotch against the purple wallpapered wall. Then much to my relief, he left. I was in shock. This was the first time his dangerousness directly threatened me. Until then, in spite of how dangerous he was to my mother, he was the safer parent.

No longer safe in my room, I went down the stairs to the first landing. I stood there hearing the smashing glass, the screams of my mother. I was frozen, unable to dare go down, unable to feel safe going up. Then he rampaged past the bottom of the stairs. He locked onto me and changed his track, rampaging up the stairs toward me. Then just as I’d seen him bash my mother, he clenched my hair and hit my head onto the cornered white bannister. I had learned from the suffocation about I’d lived with from my mother since at least age 2 that the safest strategy with mad people was to feign death. I let the shock drop me to the floor, still, not even breathing. My father left, rampaging back down the stairs.

I had dissociated, for I don’t remember getting to my feet and only vaguely remember creeping out of the house still filled with the sounds of violence. Off the front porch and through the large front garden I went to the safe space of the street. It was around 1-2am and I stood there by the driveway in my pygamas, a superficial cut to my forehead that was bleeding. A car stopped by me, calling me toward the car much like one might try and tame a cat. I was afraid of anyone at that point but eventually got into the car.

The car arrived at a car park to flats. Never having been to such flats I thought it was a motel. I was encouraged by Christine along a path to their front door. They entered with me, made up a sofa and I was shown to it as my bed. They went to bed and I laid there traumatised but safe in the darkness of their living room. Christine came in later, checked on me, then went back to bed.

The next morning Christine loaned me a dressing gown. I checked in their cupboards, found rice bubbles and Christine made me a bowl of cereal. By late morning they called my parents who were recovering from their usual hangovers. They had wondered where I’d gone but had not called the police. I could have been anywhere, taken home by anyone. Christine and Greg returned me to the brothel-house that was my family’s home.

My father told me in my adult years that Christine was a teacher and worked at the Thornbury Primary School. He told me that after I’d stayed with them Christine had talked to them about me being autistic. The Elvis film, Change of Habit, had just been a big Hollywood film hitting Australian cinemas and was the first English language film to overtly use the term ‘autistic’. It was about a selectively mute girl deemed emotionally autistic and blamed the mother for the child’s autism, the cure for which was portrayed as ‘holding therapy’, which became popular in the 1970s. I thought of Christine often. I wondered about her life. I always thank her for her humanity, her heroism, for waiting outside that house of terror, for saving me that night. I always wished that I could verbally thank her and show her that I did survive that family and lived a happy, healthy, safe life.

Polly Samuel (aka ‘Donna Williams’)
Author, artist, consultant and presenter.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.