As the night wore on, more and more of the young lads and their girlfriends became intoxicated. More and more, sex became the subject with the girls urging on the boys. If Jacko dropped his trousers, so did Fred. If Sam could hang his T-shirt over his erection, dance around and have it not fall off, then Peter could do it with two T-shirts. But the girls wanted action. So they singled out Tanja and enticed her into the rear of a Holden pan van that had a mattress on the floor. Once inside, four girls pounced upon her, held her down, stripped her naked, forced her legs apart and stuffed her panties into her mouth when she began to scream. Others soon climbed into the back of the van. Amongst much raucous laughter and drunkenness the girls then drew straws to determine which of the boys would mount her first.
Stark terror tore through Tanja’s mind. With her body frozen in fear she couldn’t fully comprehend how her newfound friends could subject her to a situation of such hideous terror. As the first boy climbed on top of her, his girlfriend guided him into her vagina. Then she yelled, “Now push, ya bastard!”
He gave a mighty thrust. It ripped away her virginity to riotous cheers all around. Tanja’s eyes went stark white from shock, pain and terror. She felt her flesh being torn away as though a red-hot poker was being thrust inside of her. The humiliation, the degradation, the pain and the agony didn’t stop until the fourteenth boy pulled up his pants.
After being discarded into nearby bushes, Tanja didn’t know how long she had been there until the chill of the early morning had her rummaging around for the remains of her clothing. Gradually she found enough to cover herself and began to walk home. She was still too terrified to cry but somehow the tears wouldn’t stop flowing.
Sometimes she stumbled and fell, ending up face down in the dirt. She’d pick herself up and somehow take a few more steps. But with each step came increased pain in her legs, stomach and crotch.
From behind, a vehicle approached. It went past her, slowed, stopped then reversed. It was the old neighbour from two kilometres up the road. He took one look at the girl, recognised her, saw the bloodstains and knew exactly the situation.
“Hop in and I’ll drop you off,” he told her.
Quickly he leaned down and threw an old bag onto the seat where she’d be sitting. Slowly she climbed into the cabin of his Ford F100 and closed the door. He didn’t challenge her for conversation. Instead, they rode in silence. At the front gate of the Polowski house he came slowly to a halt and waited for Tanja to leave his vehicle.
Reluctantly, he drove away. A short distance further on, he pulled his vehicle off the road. He leaned over, rolled up the now blood soaked bag where Tanja had been sitting and discarded it into bushes. The old man was visibly shaken from only a glance at how much blood and semen had been oozing from the girl.
* * *
The sun was just above the horizon when Tanja walked inside. All five brothers and her parents, already up and fearing the worst because their sister and daughter had been out all night, took a brief look at her then turned away. Nobody spoke. Tanja stood before them, shaking uncontrollably. Dirt and dust stained tear tracks covered her face. There were still leaves and debris in her hair. Her arms were black and blue from where she had dared to struggle and her legs were bloodstained, filthy and badly bruised. Her clothes, now nothing but torn rags, hung from her body like those on a scarecrow in an orchard. Tanja’s knees began to go weak as she prayed someone, anyone, would say something.
Finally her father did. He approached her with his belt buckle in his hand. Tanja cowered. As he raised his arm preparing to lay into her with his full force, she collapsed onto the floor. Her father then received another view of the blood and the bruises and chose not to go on with it.
“YOU ARE A SLUT!” he screamed at her, as she lay collapsed in an embryonic position. “How will I ever be able to hold my head up in this town again? Or your brothers? You will never leave this house again. You will never sit down with this family again. You will live here but you will live separately. Your brothers will build a separate room outside for you. You will live in there. These are the last words I will ever say to you.”
Tanja, her eyes filled with tears, looked up at her mother. “Mama?”
“You have shamed the family!” she answered bitterly. “Now get into a hot tub and make sure you clean it out when you finish. Others have to use it after you.”
Her brothers, wanting no part of her shame, actually stepped over their sister as they left the house. It took every ounce of energy Tanja could muster to lift herself off the floor and make her way outside to the bathroom. Sobbing hysterically, Tanja filled the bath, scrubbed herself then emptied it. She found scissors and hacked off her hair. Then she bathed again. Using one of her brother’s razors she shaved every inch of her body. Tanja had an overwhelming desire to get rid of every trace, every grain of sand, every touch and every smell she had encountered. Then she bathed again. So degraded and unclean had she been made to feel, she again filled the bath, this time shaving her head and using a hard bristled brush to scrub between her legs. Only when she made herself bleed did she stop.
Through it all, her tears flowed like a river. During the entire cleansing operation not once did her mother go to check on her. When Tanja finally made her way back inside and towards her bed, it was her mother’s acid tongue that greeted her.
“Your brothers. They have your room built by Sunday night. After that there’ll be no need for you to come inside. Don’t use the bathroom at night, use in the day when nobody here. Your meals I put in hatch from kitchen through to your room. You want soap or pads or other things, leave a note and I ask your father. I hope he say piss off.”
“So that’s it?” she asked her mother, still dazed, still in deep shock.
“You shamed the family. You are a brazen hussy. Maybe one day we’ll wake up and you’ll be dead…”
“I WAS RAPED BY FOURTEEN GUYS, MAMA, FOR CHRIST SAKES!”
“If that was true, you would be dead!” her mother said dismissively.
“Jesus, mama! You don’t believe me?”
“I listen no more. Isn’t it enough you shamed the family? Like your father, I got nothing more to say to you either.”
For the next three days Tanja got up only to toilet herself. She lay in her bed in the foetal position and cried and cried and cried. Upon arriving home from work, her father and her brothers spoke little. Her youngest brother, deeply disturbed by what was happening around him, retreated to the point of almost hiding. No one went to her. On the fourth day she managed to get out of bed and dress herself. She warmed some soup that had been left over from the family’s meal the night before and briefly went outside. A few minutes later she returned to her bed. Five days later it was Tanja’s fifteenth birthday. It came and went with not a word being said by her family.
Across town events at the club on the previous Saturday night had spread like wildfire.
“Who was it?” would come a question.
“That little Polowski chick,” would come the answer.
“How many?”
“Fourteen of the pricks.”
“Fourteen! Who?”
And from there the names flowed freely. From then on the Polowskis as a family weren’t seen in the town again. They travelled to another, twenty-five kilometres away for their shopping and supplies. But that town was already abuzz before Angelko and Tessa even decided to