Author Topic: Short Story/Life Story Ages 9-13 Kinda Long Winded But Some Of It's Funny  (Read 473 times)

Ebony Bree Caple

I grew up in Wodonga, Victoria. I come from a typical, white, middle class, Australian family.
I was always a little bit of a trouble maker. Running away, stealing money from my mother or cigarettes. I remember one day when I was about 9 I stole a few cigarettes from mum and stole $2 from her purse. I went to school in my school uniform but had stashed a pair of dress shoes which had a little heel on them in my school bag. Walking across the oval on the way to school with my older sister I threw the $2 coin on the ground infront of me and said “Look what I found” to my sister a few steps ahead of me. I picked up the stolen $2 coin and pocketed it then proceeded to take out the dress shoes from my bag and change into them. My sister told me I would get into trouble. I didn’t care. Arriving at school I showed my friends the cigarettes and we hid in a bush and bum puffed them, drawing the smoke in our mouths and exhaling but not actually inhaling into our lungs.
I was in the library one day with two boys and we found my name in the dictionary. One of the definitions was Black. The boys called me Abo. They chased my through the schoolyard at recess yelling “We’re gonna get you Abo” and as I ran I ran past n Aboriginal boy who standing stock still, eyes wide as I approached. “Not you. Me” I breathed to him as I ran past. A few days later the boys had come up with a rhyme they would taunt me with in the school yard, “We can’t catch you Ebony. Super Aborigine.” They continued to call me Abo until one day a teacher told them not to. There was no mention that the word was racist.
Walking to school with my sister and her friends one day I was arguing with a Fijian girl. We were calling each other nasty names and I turned to her and called her a “Black bitch.” She looked extremely hurt and didn’t reply with an insult of her own and I apologized feeling I had crossed a line. We walked the rest of the way to school in silence.
I went to stay with a friend one night and we talked about running away. She said she had an Aunty somewhere who owned horses so the next morning we stole $20 from her morhers purse and took off planning to find her Aunty and steal the horses. We walked to KFC and bought some soft drink and somehow the Police found us and took us back to the station where they called our parents. When the Policeman asked why I ran away I said “Because my daddy smacks me.” The officer said “I’d smack you too if you ran away.”
My dad used to grow Marijuana in a little cupboard with lights in it. I would watch him open the door and pick bits off the tree and put them in a brown paper bag which he would then put in the microwave. I asked him what it was and he told me it was green tobacco.
My sister and I played netball and if our teams won we would receive a free ice cream voucher at the Great Australian Ice Creamery. We won quite often and our mother struck up a friendship with the shop owner. One day when I was 11  my mother asked me “Would you like to go for a trip to Bali or would you like to buy an ice cream shop?” I said “Bali.” A few months later we were on our way to Coffs Harbour in NSW after mum and dad purchased a Great Australian Ice Creamery franchise there.
I made friends easily in Coffs Harbour  and a boy Luke asked to be my boyfriend. He would call me everyday after school which I found annoying. The school holidays were approaching and my mothers sister Maggie arrived to visit. She lived on a hippie commune and asked my mother if she could take me there for a visit. J begged my mother to let me go, explaining how I wanted to get away from Luke and his annoying phone calls and mother agreed so we drove to the commune “Wytallaba” in North Western NSW, near Glen Innis.
At the commune there was no electricity except what we could produce through a petrol powered generator but I was having so much fun with my older cousin Mel that I didn’t care. We visited friends of  hers on the commune and one day we went to a little round hut at the bottom of a hill. There was a young girl in there with a red  mowhak and multiple earrings on her ears and she asked us if we’d like to go to her friends place with her. We all went to another house where there were two other girls. My cousin was 2 years older than me which made her 13 and the other girls were older still. One of the girls, who’s house it was, said her parents were away and that she planned on getting drunk. She also had some weed and her and the other girl asked me would I like to try some. My cousin protested but I begged her to let me and she said I could smoke what was left in the bong after the other girls had pulled the cone. I did this the same as the cigarettes I’d smoked previously, drawing the smoke in my mouth but not inhaling into my lungs. The other girls started pouring drinks and offered me some and again my cousin protested. The girls insisted and finally my cousin relented agreeing to me having a few sips. We walked home to my Aunties house, my cousin checking my eyes and attitude to see if I seemed intoxicated. I told her I felt fine as realistically I hadn’t smoked or drank enough to become drunk or stoned.
One morning I was listening to Mariah Carey with the headphones on and my Aunty screamed for me to be quiet. I shut up and my Aunty said “Helicopters” and gathered everyone in the house into the car. We drove towards a building on the commune called “The House” and on the way we were stopped by Police who searched the car looking for drugs. Everybody from the commune was gathering at The House and people were talking about where they had stashed their weed. Somebody said that such and such a person had been arrested when the Police had found Marijuana seeds in his pockets. Others were talking about previous busts where half the weed confiscated had gone missing when Police transported it back to town to burn.
The Police were on one side of the fence and everybody else on the other. I walked past a group of dreadlocked punks who were playing NWAs Fuck The Police and I approached the fence where a Policeman stood and started to yell at him “Yeah! Fuck You! You don’t live here. Fuck off!”
Us children played in the river in between mingling with adults and eventually the Police left having arrested who ever they chose. When we got back to my Aunties place my Aunty asked her boyfriend to check on the plants they had stashed up in the bush.
When my Aunty took me home I raced toward my mother saying quite excitably “There was a bust” and my mother looked very cross.
Returning to school I broke up with Luke and started hanging around a girl a year older than me. After school we would go to town and shoplift clothes. She taught me to swap the shoes and clothes I was wearing for the items in the store. Another trick was to go into stores with an empty McDonald’s bag and fill it with trinkets and jewellery. I had collected candles and little Buddah statues and silver rings and bracelets and kept them in a tote bag in my cupboard. I came home one afternoon to my mother holding the bag demanding to know where I got all the merchandise. I told her friends had given it to me so she told me I had to return everything. I took the bag to school and gathered my friends in the library and handed out all my treasures.
I was going through the medicine cabinet one day close to Christmas and found a money tin and opened it. There was a $50 note inside and I stole it. I went to the shopping centre and bought gifts for my family. Mum asked how I could afford such expensive gifts and I told her I had saved money from the few times I worked in the shop. A few months later my mother cornered me holding the money tin and asking did I know what happened to the money that was inside. I lied saying I didn’t. Mum said it was my brothers money given him as a gift from our grandmother.
That same Christmas my dad’s mother came to visit. I had been stealing hers and mums cigarettes having told a friend to steal some from her dad also. We had quite a stash. We tried smoking them but ended up throwing a fair few away becoming sick after smoking about 3. One day I went through my Nans purse and stole $20 and stashed it in my underwear. Forgetting about the money I got undressed in the bathroom to put my swimmers on and play in the pool leaving the money with my clothes. I was playing in the pool and my mother appeared at the edge telling me to come to her. I saw she had a wooden spoon in her hand. I asked why and she yelled about me stealing money from my Nan. I swam away from her and mum stalked the edges of the pool demanding I come to her. I reluctantly swam to her where she reached for me and pulled me out of the pool and smacked me with the wooden spoon until the spoon broke. She grounded me for 2 weeks.
Returning to my last year of Primary School I had a crush on a boy but was too shy to ask him out. I wrote him a letter pretending to be my best friend asking him out. I then wrote a letter to her pretending to be him asking her out. They both said yes. I enjoyed spending time with him and when my friend decided she wanted to break up with him I tried to get her to change her mind. She said “Why don’t you go out with him if you b like him so much.” I never had the guts to ask him out.
A new girl started at our school, Billy Joe Deloris Pat Doo Peterson. She said her and her father moved about alot. We decided we would skip school one day and planned to meet at the mall. I packed spare clothes into my school bag and instead of heading to school I headed to town and got changed in thd toilets at the mall. I waited and waited for Billy to meet me at the appointed place but she never showed. I dressed back into my uniform and went to school 3 hours late. Billy wasn’t at school either and she never came back. She was only there for about 3 weeks.
My mother came home one day and asked me if I would like to do modelling. She said she met a lady at the hairdresser who ran a modelling school and had showed my photo and the lady invited mum to bring me along. We were given a list of items to buy including makeup and clothes and they taught us how to walk and do our makeup. I was 12. One day my mother got a call saying I had been chosen as a potential model for a school uniform clothing advertisement. I fell asleep on the couch in my room the night before the photo shoot and had a nightmare that the roof was caving in. I woke just as it was about to crash on top of me and heard the back door closing. I went back to sleep. I stayed home the next day waiting for a phone call about the photo shoot but no one called. My mother pulled me from the modelling school after that.
We went for our High School orientation and on the bus afterward all the kids starting chanting “Ebony loves Simon” over and over. The whole bus. I just sat there calmly reading my orientation handbook. When we got home my sister said the boy she sat next to on the bus had remarked how well I had handled the taunts, not reacting.
My sister and I were not close. She was 2 years older and would taunt me about having no breasts. She was well endowed whereas I was straight up and down. I asked my mother who did she love more, my sister or me. My mother said she loved us equally. Then she said she did think I was prettier and that satisfied me. My sister was actually very girly and dressed much more prettier than me being I was more of a tomboy.
In high school I became more rebellious. Skipping school, smoking  (inhaling now) stealing money, smoking weed and drinking.
My friend Kara’s father lived in Coramba and we stayed at his house one night. My friend asked him if we could try his weed and being he let us smoke cigarettes he agreed. I pulled on the cone, choking and coughing and blowing some of the weed out of the cone piece. My friend had a cone and pretty much had the same reaction. Her dad went to the pub and me and my friend sat at the table giggling all night calling each other witches. We were 12.
I would work at my parents shop occasionally for $5 an hour and one day I was working with my dad and one of their staff members. When dad was out of the shop I asked her if she would buy a packet of cigarettes for me at the service station. She did and we talked and I told her I smoked weed. She invited me back to her place after our shift to smoke some with her. I finished before her bit waited down town and when we met up we went to her place. I smoked one cone and was high as a kite and told her I had to go to meet my mother. I met my mother in town as she was picking my little brother up from karate and when I got to the car and sat inside she asked me what was wrong. I told her I was fine. Mum drove us all to the shop where she told us to wait in the car. Dad came out and got in the car and drove us home. When we got home Dad asked me what was wrong. I told him I was fine. He said “Stop lying. What have you taken?” I told him I was fine and he told me to get in the car. I got in the car and dad said he was taking me to the hospital where they would pump my stomach if I didn’t tell them what I had taken. I finally admitted to smoking weed and dad asked me if I stole it from him. I said I had and he lectured me and I was grounded for 2 weeks.
One day I came home from school and told my mother I wanted to move out. She told me I couldn’t and that I’d have no where to live and I told her I would live with Kara and her dad. Mum tried to stop me but I continued to argue until she was so frustrated she finally told me to go then. I rang Kara and told her I was coming to her place and that I wasn’t going to live with my mother anymore. Kara and her Dad met me and we went to his place. My dad called me that night and asked would I like to live with my older cousin in Melbourne. I said yes so Dad told me to come home.

My dad drove me to Brisbane to catch a flight to Melbourne where my Pa picked me up at the airport. I went to live with my older cousin Kim in Cranbourne. The first day we had a barbecue where my cousin asked me if I smoked. I said I did and she gave me a cigarette and told me not to tell my dad. She was a youth worker and had a delinquent teen living with her and I lent the teenage girl my nikes to wear to school one day. They were the kind with air bubbles. She never came back. I told my cousin she had stolen my nikes and my cousin said her workplace would compensate me. She took the money and bought me a pair nikes but they didn’t have the air bubbles. I complained and my cousin told me they had air bubbles on the inside.
After 2 weeks I went to my new school and on the first day I was paired with a girl who turned out to be the teachers pet. At recess we were at the lockers and a girl approached me and asked did I smoke. I said yes and she told me to follow her. We went to the girls toilets and she shared a smoke and the principal walked in and told us to put our cigarettes out and wait at her office. We went to her office and heard over the speaker that there was a school assembly. We waited a while and then my new friend told me we should just go to the assembly. The principal didn’t call us back to her office. A new girl moved into my cousins house and we shared a room. My cousin went out one night and me and the new girl found some weed of my cousins and got high and started playing with makeup. We were babysitting my cousins two young children and her son came out of his room crying holding his dick. He needed to go to the toilet so we showed him how laughing our asses off stoned out of our minds.
One day the young girl staying with us came home from school telling me she had been in a fight. We were talking and there was a knock on the door. I answered the door and there were 3 girls standing there demanding to see the girl that lived with us. I told them to wait and told the young girl they were there. She went to the door and they demanded that she come outside and fight. We went outside and a girl named Faith wanted to fight her as she was the girl she’d fought with in school. My friend didn’t know how to fight and fell over after the first hit. Faith was kicking her and my cousins 3 year old daughter came outside and ran in between them. Faith went to hit the girl again and hit my baby cousin. I grabbed Faith and pushed her up against the house while my friend ran inside. Faith and the other 2 girls left. My cousin came home and I told her what happened. As I was telling her, her friends son Troy came to the house. I told Troy what happened and he said he knew Faith. My cousin demanded to know where Faith lived and Troy told her and she jumped in the car and took off. When she came home she said Faith’s parents had offered her bourbon when she got to their place. The young girl that lived with us moved back to her parents.
Michelle (the girl at school who offered me a cigarette), and I were good friends. We would go to discos and the skatepark together, getting drunk and smoking cigarettes. I invited her to my place one night and her and Troy hooked up and I got with Troy’s friend. It turns out Troy’s friend was Faith’s ex boyfriend. The boys invited me to the football and we were on the train and Troy’s friend started saying “Gooks. I hate fucking Gooks” I didn’t know what a Gook was and asked him what he was talking about. He pointed to the Asian people on the train and kept cursing under his breath. I told him to be quiet.
My cousin’s childrens father was Spanish and she would call them her little niggas. I told me Koori friend on the phone back in Coffs and she said “That means you're black” I said no, it’s just what my cousin is like.
I got suspended from school and was telling my mother on the phone and she asked would I like to come home. My cousin was telling me to stay with her but I told mum I would come home. Mum met me at the airport with my sister.
It was the day before my 13th birthday.
I was wearing some new black trackpants my Mum had bought me which were too small considering I liked baggy pants. I thought she deliberately bought me clothes that were too small but I wore them anyway because they were the only trackpants I had. I went to school to meet up with Alicia and Kristy who were two years older than me. Alicia and I were going out with two boys we met when they performed at our school. They were dancers with the Bagga Bagga Dancing group, an Aboriginal dancing group that was visiting schools and performing. Alicia was 15 and was actually already going out with a guy in town named Stafford but she cheated on him with Jason, the dancer, who was 24. My boyfriend was Lindsey, Jasons cousin and he was 17.

I got to school and Alicia and Kristy said they were wagging and going to see the boys at their Aunties house so I went with them. We walked across the school oval and through the reserve and saw Lindsey walking on his own and we sang out to him and he came with us to his Aunties house. He was drunk. It was about 8:45am.

At the boys Aunties house we sat in the loungeroom for a while talking and then Lindsey invited me to his room. I went into the room with him and we laid on the bunk bed kissing. Lindsey pulled at my trackpants and I took them off. We kissed a bit longer and then he started to pull at my underwear with his teeth ripping them. I took my panties off and he took his pants off and we started having sex. It was my first time. I used to lie about not being a virgin to the older girls but this was the real thing. Lindsey and I did it for about 20 minutes and then he came and we just laid in bed not talking. Kristy came in the room and looked at me laying under the covers. She said I should have a shower. Lindsey and I went to the bathroom and we showered together then we got dressed and went back into the loungeroom to talk to the others.

In the afternoon Alicia and I made plans to meet with the boys that evening. We were going to run away with them to Nambucca where they lived.

I went home about 3:30pm and walked in the house and Mum and my little brother Jordan were in the loungeroom. Jordan said “I saw you walking across the oval this morning” and I didn’t say anything. Mum asked what I was doing walking across the oval and I couldn’t think of an excuse. Mum said “You’re grounded” and I protested telling her I wanted to go out that night because it was my birthday the next day. She said “No. You are staying home” and I told her I would go out anyway. I went to my bedroom and gathered some clothes and went to the bathroom to get showered and dressed. There was blood in my panties.

It was about 6pm and Mum said she was going ballroom dancing and I was not to leave the house. I said I was going out wether she liked it or not and she said I better not. I went to leave and she grabbed me by the arm and I spun around and hit her. Mum was shocked and left in tears and I simply left the house and went back to the boys Aunties house.

Alicia was already there. She had packed a bag which I hadn’t and was prepared to run away so I decided I would too.

The boys asked did my Dad have a bicycle and I told them yes. They asked where did I live and I told them and they left the house to go and steal my Dads bike. They came back with my Dads bike and another bike and we went to bed.

In the morning Lindsey said I didn’t really love him and I cried telling him I did. I told him I would run away with him to prove it. I actually think he was trying to get rid of me but didn’t realize at the time, instead thinking I had to prove I loved him.

The boys Uncle came to pick us up and take us to Nambucca in a mini bus and we all went bringing the two stolen bikes with us.

It was Saturday, my 13th birthday, and when we got to Nambucca Jason bought a bottle of alcohol for us to share to celebrate.

Alicia and I were drunk and we went for a walk to the beach where Alicia told me that Lindsey had slept with Kristy the day before he slept with me.

Back at the boys place I told Lindsey I didn’t want him anymore and he left the house.
Alicia, Jason, another boy and myself got drunk nearly everyday and Lindsey came back one night to see if I was still there.

Jason asked did I want to get back at Lindsey and I said yes. He called out for Lindsey to come to the loungeroom and when Lindsey came out Jason told Lindsey I wanted to be with him again. Lindsey asked me was this true and I said “No way” and Lindsey looked hurt. Lindsey tried to get his cousin Bee to bash me but she took my side because Lindsey had cheated on me. Lindsey left again.

One night a friend of the boys ‘Frog’ came over. We were drinking and Frog asked me to the room and we laid on the bed kissing. I didn’t like the way he kissed so got up and told him I wasn’t into it. Another night a younger cousin of the boys came over and he and I laid on the loungeroom floor under the blanket kissing.

Jason and Alicia said they were going to Coffs Harbour for a visit, my hometown. They asked would I like to come but I chose to stay in Nambucca on my own. While I was there alone my Mum came to the house and tried to get me to go home with her but I refused. Alicia and Jason returned the next day.

One night Jason asked did I want to go to the beach for a swim? Alicia was asleep. I said yes.
We were drunk and at the beach Jason kissed me. I told him I couldn’t because he was with Alicia but somehow he convinced me and we laid on the sand and he tried to have sex with me but he couldn’t get it in me. We ended up swimming and going back to the house.
Finally, one night I was drunk and sitting outside throwing up. Jason came outside and started to kiss me. I was so out of it but I didn’t try and stop him. I was laying on the ground and Jason was kissing me and Alicia came outside and started hitting me. Jason pulled her off me and took her inside the house and I walked down the street in the middle of the night not really sure where I was going. I just walked and walked in the dark and finally came to the highway. I thought that maybe I would try and hitchhike down to Sydney but then got scared and just walked along the highway not knowing I was heading North. I came to an IGA supermarket on the highway with a phone booth out the front and rang my parents house and told them I wanted to come home. Mum asked where I was and I told her I didn’t know, just that I was at the IGA. She told me to wait there. I sat down at the phone booth, still drunk and waited. Eventually Mum and Dad arrived in the early hours of the morning with my little brother asleep in the backseat. I didn’t say anything, I just got in the back of the car and we drove home


STRUGGLING TO KEEP IT REAL IN A WORLD FULL OF FAKES
 

Ebony Bree Caple

Might take a while but I'm sure I can write 14 to 18
It's more graphic but I laugh reading most this shit
I don't really calm down til 33
STRUGGLING TO KEEP IT REAL IN A WORLD FULL OF FAKES