How it Was
Michal Horton
We came from everywhere but belonged nowhere. We knew a lot about secrecy and survival. But we knew little about belonging.
Many of us came from local feeder schools and in-zone certainty schools. A few of us came from overseas or refugee camp schools, or occasionally, from no schools at all. Some of us were local, our families notorious. The fires that raged in our bellies sometimes spread to our fists, leaving our futures in ashes. We had curls and dreads, pony tails and and fringes and we were fair, brown and black, thin and fat, tall and short. Some of us were beautiful but didn’t know it because no-one had told us, and some of us were ugly and did know it because everyone was always telling us.
It was poverty that defined us; no words needed, like illustrations in a kid’s picture book. But the books that told our stories mostly got lost. Poverty clothed us in second-hand uniforms, shabby hand-me-down uniforms, only-one-shirt uniforms, no-jersey uniforms (we’ll sort it by winter) and $20 Warehouse shoes. Poverty provided us with leftover stationery handed out by desperate teachers in Week Three and forced us to beg, borrow or sometimes steal. It starved us of nourishment while filling our bellies with chips for breakfast, nothing for lunch and noodles or toast for dinner. When we had to make do with toilet paper to manage our periods, that’s just how it was.
Apparently, how it was lay in the hands of the adults in charge. They were labelled meth heads, losers and child abusers, white trash, dole bludgers, FOBS and parasites. Most of them were just tired.
Many of us had siblings. We feared for the young ones who tugged at our sadness and stirred up our rage. We churned inside with fear for them and found ourselves helpless. So we yelled and swore at them when they whined about being cold and hungry, when we couldn’t bear their snotty noses any longer and when they made us late for school because we had to drop them off. Or when they woke crying in the night looking for comfort.
How it was shaped our bodies and our minds, and sometimes broke our spirits. It determined our futures and held us to ransom. How it was couldn’t be shrugged off with the kindness of teachers, learning support or ten weeks of therapy. It blocked us from A grade teams, burdened us with histories that no-one read and smirked as we slid into silence and stayed there. How it was told some of us, but not all of us, that we might not make it.
Five things: Q&A with Michal Horton
You are a writer with a background in psychology. Can you say a bit about how one influences the other, how your view of real stories impacts the stories you write?
I began my working life as a music therapist, working mainly with young children who were diagnosed with autism. I had been raised in a politically conservative family and this was my first real foray into the world of difference and all of its complexities. The work took me beyond my own immediate concerns and I went on to complete a Masters in Counselling at Waikato University. The course was focussed on Narrative Therapy, a modality that challenged many of the medical model assumptions in psychology that were prevalent at the time, particularly with regard to the expert position taken by some therapists and doctors. I went on to work as a school counsellor for fifteen years and am now in private practice as an ACC counselling provider for sensitive claims, i.e., working with people who have been sexually abused and/or sexually assaulted.
I am interested in real stories that sometimes remain unrecognised and/or untold, stories that might be regarded as ordinary, unimportant or too hard to tell. The telling of these can feel quite compelling and I write them partly as a way of advocating and railing against injustice and partly as a way of assuaging my own guilt at my privileged position in society. In the school counselling setting I was confronted daily with students whose lives were shaped by the adults around them, for better, or often, for worse. The power imbalance was normalised, both in the immediate school context and across the wider community context. My current clients face very similar challenges.
This piece came from a specific starting point. In writing creative nonfiction, more generally, for you, does the impulse to explore an idea come first, or the view of something real – a headline, a conversation, a moment in a museum – or something else entirely?
I often think about this question. I have come to writing relatively late in life and there is no doubt that my impulse to write both fiction and creative nonfiction usually comes from something real that I have observed, experienced or read about. Eventually, though, the views and ideas become intermingled.
Tell us about your use of the collective ‘we’ as the voice of this story.
I have been attracted to this point of view since reading Julie Otsuka’s novel, The Buddha in the Attic. I then went on to read other novels using the first person plural and realised that they have a particular function. I often want to write about issues that are bigger than me, in a way that can feel intimate, but also safe, for a group or a community. The collective approach can give a sense of commonality and belonging, while also protecting the characters from individual judgement.
There are knowns and unknowns here. So much noted in this small story, and so much left for the reader to imagine. Do you think this is the key to creative nonfiction, this intersection of what we know and what we don’t?
I have always been uncomfortably conscious of what I don’t know, so embarking on creative nonfiction was bound to be a challenge. In this piece I have stuck with what I know but what others might not know. My knowing came from frequent daily observations over a long period of time, but it was also enriched by the stories entrusted to me by the kids in the school. I originally wrote this as a longer, more detailed, and possibly more satisfying piece, but, even though I had made sure there were no identifying features, I was increasingly suspicious about my (possibly unconscious) intentions around this approach. Was I helping the reader to know more simply in an effort to make the story more readable and therefore making me more attractive as a writer, or was there another, hopefully finer motive? So far, I have only figured out that I don’t want to use other people’s stories of suffering for my own ends. But I also like reading pieces that have spaces in between because it leaves room for speculation and possibility. Maybe that’s a finer motive.
What’s different, for you, about writing fiction and creative nonfiction?
I first started writing creative nonfiction very recently and didn’t really understand what it was. Once I realised that it is possible for writing to be true and authentic as well as creative, things became clearer. Writing fiction is easier for me because I am more practised at it and I don’t feel the need to be as careful about the characters. With creative nonfiction, I am acutely aware of the need to be scrupulous about respect for people’s privacy and experiences, mindful always that they might interpret my work as a judgment. This can present some complex challenges, but those challenges can also lead to more innovation. Writing fiction is a very different experience because my imagination has free rein. That requires another type of discipline, particularly around plot and structure. I tend to spend much longer on crafting when writing fiction because I feel as though I need to prove the story’s worth by presenting something beautiful as opposed to something based on fact.
Michal Horton lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Her life is filled with work as a counsellor and counselling supervisor, children and grandchildren, a tolerant husband and a small but very full garden. Michal has always been an avid reader, mainly of fiction, but started writing only over the last few years.