There was an unwritten rule at Neerkol. Never touch a nun … never.
We used to sluice the veran-dahs of the dormitories each Saturday morning. The sluicing involved washing down the verandahs by either hosing or throwing water from a bucket and then sweeping or mopping the water off.
One particular Saturday morning, 11-year-old 'Kenny' had sluiced the verandah of the big boys' dormitory. Sr [B], our dormitory nun, was going crook at him because she thought the verandah was not clean enough. Perhaps half a dozen of us were on the same verandah listening to her getting really cranky and finally shouting and screaming at him. He had used the wrong bucket. It was a cast iron oval shaped bucket at least twice the weight of the normal-rimmed galvanised bucket. Most of the older boys often found it too heavy to use effectively.
Sr B continued her tirade seemingly with more and more distress. We could all hear her and then, suddenly, she just seemed to snap. I saw her raise the bucket and hit Kenny on the back of the head. He fell to the floor immediately. Then as he curled up on the floor to protect himself, B just went berserk.
I can see her face white and taught with anger as she was bending over him on the floor and just bashing him about the head with the bucket. I suddenly screamed 'Stop! Stop! He's hurt'. Two of us ran the twenty feet or so to help him. I remember shouting to Sr B to 'Leave him alone, Sister. He's hurt. He's bleeding! Leave him alone, you'll kill him!' I could see blood coming out one of his ears. She was still bashing him over the head when I got to them. I got behind her and, still shouting at her to stop, wrapped my arms very tightly around her arms and hung on with all my strength.
Even though Sr B still had the bucket in her hands I had effectively pinned her arms and prevented her from bashing Kenny further. I remember her screaming at me to let her go but I hung on very tightly. I shouted for someone to get help from the nursery. (The nun there was a trained medical sister who treated all major injuries). B screamed 'He doesn't need it!' but two kids went anyway. She then dropped the bucket on the floor. Kenny was safe. I released my grip from around her and moved away a little. Her face was white with anger. That was when I realised what I had done. I had touched a nun. Bloody hell, I had touched a nun.
Within minutes the nursery nun was there and we got three or four kids to carry Kenny to the infirmary. Everything was deathly quiet. B went to her cell. The verandah echoed with absolute shock as other kids with fearful faces gathered around me. The news had spread. To my knowledge only three other kids at Neerkol had ever touched a nun. My action was feared … not by the nuns, but by the kids. The nuns would now crack down on any minor infringements.
Their palpable fear and the deafening silence reached out to me. The pit of my stomach contracted tightly into a ball. My feet refused to move. I felt violence coming my way. B came round the corner and without looking at me told all the other kids to go round to the back verandah. She turned to me and said, 'So God help me, you'll regret this day forever. Don't move!' Fear forced obedience. B went back to her room.
The verandah vibrated under heavy footsteps as the three yardmen came into view from around the corner. I knew them all by name and was on good terms with two of them. I often did yard work (cattle yards) and [X],[Y] and another whose name I cannot recall.
We had just spent six weeks together helping to rebuild the dairy yards.
No one spoke a word as all three stopped in front of me. Their jaws were set and their faces hard. My heart had stopped beating! I vividly recall the ab-solute shock when X's fist slammed into my cheek bone. I didn't see it coming. Then a fist slammed into my solar plexus, winding me completely. I doubled over in agony. A heavy blow crashed down onto my head. I thought I had been hit with a 4x2 bit of timber. It must have been double closed knuckle fists. Looking up to see what it was, X's fist slammed into my eye socket.
The punches kept coming, slamming viciously into my sides, kidneys and back … hard knuckles with gut-wrenching repetition. I dropped into a tight curled-up ball on the floor with fingers clinging desper-ately to the cracks between the floor boards. Hard, calloused hands dragged me off the floor and tore my ball apart. Held almost horizontally, the fists of X and Co methodically slammed into any soft tissue. Lips, eyebrows, nose and cheeks all suffered mercilessly as did the back of my head. Each time they would change over, I was dropped to the floor where I again curled up into a ball. When I used my leg muscles to keep me tightly curled, X and Co punched my thigh muscles causing almost imme-diate 'caulkes' or painful spasms. I tasted salt and blood. I knew my lips were bleeding from the inside as well. I thought they would never stop.
They seemed to change jobs so the intensity of the bashing could continue. It seemed to go on forever. I was praying to God to have mercy on me, to forgive me, to make the pain stop. It didn't. I stopped praying. The pain hurt too much.
I wasn't brave, I didn't fight back. Nobody helped me. Nobody stopped them. Nobody saved me … not even God! I didn't even know when they stopped.
Someone was talking, very softly, very gently, almost whispering. The voices were [boy's name] and [boy's name]. I couldn't see them at first. They were trying to get me to move over to the form on the side of the verandah. They were ever so gentle.
The three yard men were gone. I couldn't move. I could just see through narrow slits. My arms and legs were all red and bruised. I can still remember the deep darkness inside me.
I was no hero to the others either. For weeks and weeks all the kids at Neerkol, including Kenny [the one saved from the nun], showed fear and sadness whenever they saw me. I was avoided. I was an example to whole orphanage. I had two black eyes, one cut eyebrow, cut lips, bloody nose, sore head, arms and legs black and blue and yellow all over, un-able to walk properly for over a week and it was a long time before all the bruising stopped hurting. Parts of my body were hurting for months. I was off school for two days. B [the nun] was my minder. Fear pervaded. When Sr [A] saw me at school two days later, she asked with real concern what had happened to me. I told her. She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She always did that when she was cranky about another nun. She said "Leave it to me". I felt a tiny warmth … a glimmer.
Some weeks later when I was alone on the school verandah near the trees, Sr A walked past me. As she went past she said, softly and gently, "I could not help". I was still aching all over. The light dimmed. The leaves started to blur. But I knew, I just knew I would never touch a nun … never.
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