For a Girl Read online

  Mother de Montfort sat down outside the year seven classroom with me. She was given to shows of temper. I remember another time I’d done something and she threatened to cane me. But she didn’t threaten to cane me on this occasion. She was quiet, worried, tender even, and it scared me. She spoke kindly. First she wanted to know who’d put me up to it.

  I was insulted she didn’t think me clever enough to come up with the idea by myself. ‘No one, Mother,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘We have to respect the brothers. You just can’t do things like that. It leads to sin.’

  Many things led to sin, although Mother de Montfort was never willing to go into detail. We were left to guess, and I had no idea. I knew it was something to do with the intensity of my feelings. I felt discovered, not for what I’d done, painting the sign, but for the feelings I had for Brother Bob. I never went back to morning Mass. I never saw Brother Bob again.

  When I finished primary school, I started at All Hallows’ School, which had educated three generations of women in my family before me. Nana was well known to the nuns at All Hallows’. She grew up on a farm outside Stanthorpe and she’d boarded at All Hallows’. Her best friend at the school later became a nun there. The nun was still teaching at All Hallows’ when I arrived.

  When Nana married my grandfather, they set up his medical practice in Fortitude Valley, just down the road from All Hallows’. My grandfather was a doctor for many of the nuns. Mum told me they used to go to lunch at my grandparents’ house. They ate in a separate room because you weren’t allowed to see nuns eat.

  The nuns from the school who knew Nana sought me out after I started at All Hallows’. They pulled me into bony cuddles and looked at me as if I were a sweet they wanted to eat. One of them called me down to her music room, made me sing notes to the piano—Nana, an accomplished violinist, was said to have perfect pitch—before dismissing me as a poor tuneless girl. ‘You haven’t inherited the music, eh?’ she said and let out a little laugh.

  For a long time, I felt lost at All Hallows’. There were no boys, and boys were what I was used to. Eventually I found a group of girls to join but, looking back now, it wasn’t a nice group to be in. We became the troublemaking group, which didn’t worry me so much, but someone—mostly me it seemed at the time—was always shut out. They would call me names and I would be alone at lunchtimes because no other group of girls would want a troublemaking girl like me as one of their number. I was not used to shutting people out and being shut out. It was not something my brothers and their friends had ever done. I used to hide under a tree by the sports field until the bell rang so that no one would know I was alone.

  Outside of school, I hung around with a group of neighbourhood boys. I still looked and acted like a boy. Over time, more girls joined the group, and some of the boys and girls started ‘going with’ one another, for anything from two days to two months. Francine was going with Craig. They kissed—pashing off, we called it. I was going with Craig for a few days after Francine dumped him for Pat, but when Pat and Francine broke off, Craig was there to comfort Francine and they were going with one another again. I wasn’t one of the popular girls. I was too much like the boys for that. I sometimes wished I could be more like Francine, but mostly I liked being me.

  In year nine, there was one girl in my home class at All Hallows’ who was part of the group of girls I’d landed in but who was nicer to me than the others. Wendy had five brothers and was a tomboy like me. She was mostly my friend even when the others in the group weren’t. We did things together in the holidays, went to a YMCA camp. I went and stayed at her house on the coast once.

  Wendy and I both liked our maths teacher, Sister Maureen, who had an Irish accent. I remember a weekend detention when we had to help Sister Maureen clean up some part of the school. We set off the fire alarms by overloading the incinerator with cardboard boxes. Sister Maureen thought this funny, smiled with sparkling eyes as we heard the sirens of the fire engines coming from Kemp Place, kept smiling until the principal joined us, when she tried to look stern, her feet in sensible shoes pointing outwards, her hands demurely clasped in front of her.

  Sister Maureen was one of three teachers at All Hallows’ who became heroes. The second was my English teacher in year eight, Mrs Thomson, who saw how much I enjoyed writing creatively and inspired me to think about the importance of the words I used and the stories I told. The third was my science teacher in year nine, Sister Dominic Mary, who was strict and smart. She seemed old to me then but she was probably in her twenties. I remember she asked me to stay back after class one day. ‘Your other teachers tell me you muck up, but you don’t muck up in my class. Why?’ I don’t know, Sister, I told her. ‘Are you scared of me?’ No, Sister. ‘You could do better,’ she said finally. ‘You ought to think about that.’ Science was the only subject I did well in that year.

  There is no doubt I was headed for trouble at All Hallows’. When I did something wrong—disrupted classes with what I believed were clever jokes, pressed the emergency stop button in the elevator, set off the fire alarms—the nuns who taught me would talk to one of the old nuns, who would ring Nana so she could tell Mum. This must have been excruciating for Mum. Nana was a wonderfully engaged grandmother but a domineering mother. Mum must have dreaded every Saturday visit from Nana while I was at the school.

  My report cards were full of those stock-in-trade comments: ‘attention-seeking’, ‘disruptive in class’, ‘talkative’. I was troublesome enough to frustrate my year ten class teacher so much she locked me in a cupboard so that my evil spirits wouldn’t get out and infect the other girls. I don’t remember what I did that led her to put me in a cupboard. I remember her tears as she closed the door, which frightened me more than her stern voice. Her chin quivered with the upset. She died some years later of breast cancer. When I think of her I wish I’d been kinder.

  I left All Hallows’ when the nun who put me in the cupboard—who was also the deputy principal—called my mother in for a meeting and told her they would not have a place for me to repeat year ten.

  ‘Well, we don’t need a place,’ my mother replied. ‘We’re going to another school.’

  On the way to the car after the meeting my mother was indignant on my behalf, and I still love her for it. It couldn’t have been easy, for she must have known that I deserved to be thrown out, and she must have known that come Saturday she would have to answer to Nana for my leaving All Hallows’ suddenly. She never once mentioned this as a difficulty—that her wayward daughter had been thrown out of the school of her forebears, the school all my cousins and at least one branch of Wadleys were excelling at—and it is only now that I can see what it might have been like for her.

  Your other mother’s letter are full of such love for you. I wonder if you have read them. When you have troubles at school, she describes you as spirited, blames the teacher who doesn’t understand you. She must know how biased this appears. I think she doesn’t care, in much the same way as I don’t care when someone accuses Otis of doing something or being something they find uncomfortable.

  I think you have a right to this: a mother who will overlook your faults, who will stare in the face of your grown-up accusers and tell them, Yes, yes, you are right, but this is my child and I have only love. It’s what my mother did for me.

  Our first heroes surely are our parents. I know mine were. Even when I failed in school, I wished I’d done better to please my father. I loved nothing more than when my jokes made Mum smile. We spend our childhoods adoring our parents even when they fail us. And all parents fail. I’m sure of that now that I am one. We use the marvellous energy of adolescence to push away, as we must. We come to adulthood and, if we’re big enough as people by then, we begin to see our parents as the real, flawed, beautiful people they are.

  But for children like me, who sought heroes other than their parents, adolescence is a time of particular risk.

  My teacher and
her husband

  SHE WAS MY CLASS TEACHER in my second year ten, and I hated her. I hated most teachers automatically but I hated her in particular. I hated her odd clothes—pressed white slacks and colourful floral blouses, with flat shoes. She was like someone trying but not quite managing to achieve a particular look.

  I hated her hair parted almost at her ear. I hated her strictness, which was forced. Everything about her was forced, fake. When I think of her now, I think of those Russian matryoshka dolls, the first doll hiding another with a different face, and another and another until, finally, the tiniest doll, and then nothing. She was not authentic as a strict, tough teacher. She talked about the army. Her husband was in the army. I gave her a nickname. I called her Bomber.

  The school I’ll call Saint Catherine’s was a small, local Catholic school where Religion was called Christian Living. It had a strict principal who glared at me in my interview and said, ‘Now tell me something: how is it that a girl can get a grade of one in every subject but English?’

  ‘I like English,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘But if you can do well in English, you can do well in everything. So are you lazy or are you trouble as well?’

  ‘A bit of both, Sister,’ I said.

  ‘I thought as much. Well, you have a chance to start again here. Do you want to start again?’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ I said, because Mum had told me to say Yes, Sister, to everything, but also because at that moment I truly wanted to start again. I was sick of being the child known only for trouble. I wanted to be something else too, although I had no idea exactly what.

  I changed in my first months at Saint Catherine’s. I found I was actually quite clever; not as clever as my older brothers, but clever enough to find some subjects interesting. I had a mix of friends, some of whom were tough, naughty, most of whom were good girls. I was still talkative, difficult at times. But I worked at my studies and made friends. The buildings at Saint Catherine’s were modern. There were fewer places to get lost in. The fees were nothing like those at All Hallows’. The girls came from families that didn’t have wealth, like mine. I thought I might be happy there.

  In the second half of my first year at Saint Catherine’s, my teacher became one of my heroes. It probably happened gradually, but I remember the moment our relationship began to change. We were on a school Christian Living camp. There had been singing. I played my guitar. The priest had talked to us about love and sharing. There were not so many rules I could get in trouble for breaking. Everyone was more free and loose than at school. We were soft and ready to forgive one another. My teacher was less strict and it made her more real.

  In the evening on the second day, I was putting out cups for tea and my teacher was helping me. As people came up, she suggested cups for them. ‘Here comes Jessica,’ she said. ‘She needs a cup that will hug her, don’t you think?’ I couldn’t believe she had a sense of humour. It was like another Russian doll opened up and here, finally, was something real. She was funny. I was giggling with her as we made the tea. We were more like two friends than a teacher and her student.

  On the last day of the camp, she gave me a book of Charlie Brown cartoons. She marked with an asterisk the ones she thought relevant to me. I don’t remember any of them now, just that I pored over them for weeks to try to work out what they meant.

  In the months that followed our camp, my teacher would talk to me after school. Sometimes I would wait for her for half an hour, an hour. When she came out on her way to the car, I leaned down and pretended to be working on my bike so she wouldn’t know I’d been waiting for her. We talked about the things I worried about, the way life should be. She was a mentor to me, supportive and concerned for my welfare. She was interested in me. I told her things I’d never told anyone else. I worked harder at school. I did well.

  My teacher was unpopular; even the well-behaved girls disliked her. There was that lack of authenticity about her in class and kids are quick to pick up anything false. But outside, after school, she listened to me, counselled me. I didn’t really talk to my mother about problems and while I was closer to my father than my three brothers were, it was more like I was in a temperate zone in his heart while they were in the tundra. We had no family friends I could turn to. There was my uncle and aunt Tony and Jill, who I was close to when I was younger, but we hardly saw them in my teenage years. We lived in our world and there were few grown-ups. I didn’t tell my friends I was talking to Bomber after school. They would have made fun of me.

  One Saturday towards the end of the year, I visited my teacher’s house to do something for the school with a friend. I can’t remember what we were doing, something for the end-of-year party. I was thrilled to be going to her house, to have been asked, although I didn’t tell my other friends about it. I would have been embarrassed to admit I was going to her place. The friend I was with was one of five beautiful daughters with a strict father who protected them with curfews and threats. She didn’t like Bomber much either but came to be with me.

  We met my teacher’s husband. He was working in the garden, wearing Speedos and a t-shirt. He stood up when we arrived, arms out from his body, legs apart. He had short dark brown hair parted neatly on one side. He was so thin it made his head look too large. He smiled and told us my teacher was inside, called after us to have fun. When we were leaving later, he was washing the car. He turned the hose towards us, just missing us, and laughed. His eyes lit up when he laughed.

  In my year ten Christmas holidays, my teacher asked me over to her house one Sunday for lunch, on my own this time. Over the next few months, we became friends. In the next year, my year eleven, I went there after school, on weekends. I started calling my teacher and her husband by their first names.

  At first it felt odd but soon I became used to my teacher being my friend. My teacher and her husband ate foods I’d never heard of, chicken casseroles with real wine in them. They drank wine too and so did I when I was with them. I felt grown-up. They had people to visit, people from the army. Their house smelled good, of clean washing. They used fabric softener in the washing machine, I learned, and it made things smell nice. They gave me attention, much more attention than I got at home. Their spare bed, when I slept over, had clean sheets that smelled of the fabric softener. I loved being there.

  When I visited my teacher and her husband, I was on my own. My other friends from school didn’t know and my teacher and her husband suggested it would be best not to tell them. I readily agreed. My friends would have thought less of me if they knew I was friends with a teacher like Bomber. A couple of times another teacher asked me if I was spending time with them outside school. I lied and said no. She didn’t believe me, continued to question me. When I told my teacher and her husband about it, they said I must never tell anyone we were friends. They said the other teacher, the one who asked me the questions, was out to get my teacher, that she was jealous. They told me things about other teachers in the school too, explained that many of the other teachers were jealous of my teacher because she was a very good teacher. I believed them.

  Initially, I think Mum thought my teacher and her husband were a good influence. They sat in our lounge and drank tea, while Dad hid in his bedroom. They were responsible, sensible people, and I was a wayward girl. I had been asked to leave All Hallows’. I needed guidance. Maybe they would give me that guidance. Later, Mum saw how much I looked to them for counsel, and I’m sure it worried her. But by then, I was absolutely convinced that they were good people and my parents were fools. My teacher’s husband had told me as much. My mother couldn’t tell me what to do and she knew it. She did say something about me spending time with them, but I ignored her; I knew better.

  By the end of the first term of year eleven, I was spending most of my spare time with my teacher and her husband. When we were out, people sometimes thought they were my parents. I liked it when this happened. I wished they were my parents. I thought they were better than my parents
. My teacher’s husband knew so much about the world. He gave me advice about what bad people were like, who to watch out for. He was so sure of himself, so confident in knowing right from wrong. As for my teacher, she continued to listen to me and provide advice. I believed everything she told me. I thought they were the best people I’d ever met. I felt lucky. I loved going to their house with its fabric softener smell.

  Sometimes we went for trips in their car. My teacher’s husband had an interest in cars and drove fast. We went to Toowoomba with another of his friends from the army and my teacher’s husband drove at over a hundred miles an hour. His friend followed but couldn’t keep up. On the way home, they took me to a restaurant for lunch. It was the second time in my life I’d been to a restaurant. The first was with my friend Wendy’s family. That was a Chinese restaurant. This was a buffet restaurant in Toowoomba. I had never seen so much food.

  There were stories my teacher’s husband told about himself. Once, he told me, he pulled a pistol on the driver of a car full of young men who yelled something suggestive at my teacher. He forced the driver off the road, got out, put the gun to the man’s temple and said, ‘Did you want to say something?’

  He also told me that army officers would never wear their uniforms in a magistrate’s court because they might embarrass the magistrate. Everyone had to stand for the magistrate, who had a certain rank in relation to the Queen, but the magistrate’s rank was not a commission like an army officer had. Technically, my teacher’s husband said, the magistrate would have to stand for an army officer. I believed everything he said.

  My teacher’s husband had strong views, black or white, and when he changed, the change was total. Black became white. He eschewed formal education until he enrolled at university and then it was the best thing a person could do. He owned expensive Italian sports cars until he had a serious accident, not his fault, and then he bought a Holden and lost interest in cars. He moved to music, which he’d had no interest in before. He bought a stereo that took up most of the lounge room and cost thousands of dollars. My teacher and I listened to John Denver. Her husband listened to The Firebird Suite and the theme from Apocalypse Now. He bought records that tested his speakers and listened to those.