The Broken Book

Ymay amenay siay Ressidacay Orleymay anday Iay atehay Istermay Unterhay. Istermay Unterhay illway ebay evengedray. Otnay odaytay, utbay neoay ayday.

Ampay has promised to help me. We don’t know what we will do yet, but we reckon we will know what to do when the time comes. I tried to tell Mum when I got home but I could tell she was thinking it was my fault. ‘What are you saying, Cressida? Calm down! Please! Now, where did you see Mr Hunter?’

‘He’s allowed to sit next to you, isn’t he? What do you mean exactly?’

My name is Cressida Morley and when I am sixteen my words won’t come out properly. I have a whole army of words in my mouth, a populous country, but none of them will march out to order. I am a dreaming head, a teeming multitude, a continent of unuttered letters.

Her face is shutting its doors! Her eyes are covered up against the coming storm. I am her worst dream, a grown-up girl of soft bosoms and hidden crevices, a girl of dangerous currents and oozing scent. I am all closet invitation, warm breath, a clearing house for every man’s worst intention. ‘I’ve got the curse,’ I will say, ‘I’ve got the curse and Mr Hunter knows.’

‘Oh, Cressida, how on earth would Mr Hunter know you’ve got your period?’

‘He was …’ My words are balking! They won’t reach the air, they won’t emerge into the light. My words are stuffed inside me, inside my head which is my world; I cannot get the world of myself into the air of the earth.

‘You weren’t flaunting yourself about the place so he could see your underpants, were you? I’ve told you about sitting and standing up properly.’

‘A lot of men will try to kiss you. You have to learn to put a higher value on yourself.’

I will not cry. I will turn and make for my room and my mother will grab my hand. ‘Cress,’ she will say, her face cracked, ‘you are a very pretty girl and men will try and take advantage of you. It’s going to be up to you to win their respect. You have to show them that you respect yourself first of all.’

I don’t know what this means: respect myself. What am I supposed to respect: my perfect toes? Am I supposed to carry my body as if it is a prize to be won, a jewel destined only to be bestowed upon the highest bidder? Would respecting myself more have stopped the fatal trajectory of Mr Hunter’s penis, faultlessly aimed at my choicest prize?

I am a pretty girl with a rosy site, at which all the penises of the world are aimed.

Now I understand. I understand both that I need to be vigilant and that I have discovered the biggest secret which I did not know I possessed.

The same summer that Mr Hunter tries to rape me I will play a lot of secret tennis. Secret attempted rapes! Secret tennis! That summer I will be one big secret, setting the template for the rest of my life, that upcoming life which will mostly be lived inside my head because the words inside it will continue to fail to come marching out.

I will not buy my own tennis racket but I will borrow a lovely new one, the wood still golden, from my friend Dorothy (Dot) Barker, who has a handsome brother called Gordon who will grow up to die in the war. I will borrow, too, a white tennis outfit from my friend Dot and play doubles with her and Gordon and his friend Harry. Sometimes Ampay comes along, but only to watch, because she says she has never played tennis and is now too old to learn. ‘But Ressidacay’s a natural,’ she says and I cast her a filthy look for using my nickname in public. ‘The only sport Aboriginals like is boxing and only boys can do that,’ she adds. Ampay often makes remarks about Aboriginals, which are sort of like jokes, but when she does Harry and Gordon look embarrassed. They have never known an Aboriginal so intimately before. ‘What did you call her?’ Gordon asks, ignoring Amp’s remark about boxing. The oybays tease me for the rest of the day.

Oh, the sun on the lawn! Grass courts at the back of the Barkers’ wonderful house! The power of my arms and legs, the cushioned swell of my calves! You would not know to look at me that I am indulging in a forbidden act, the playing of organised games: I am the family revolutionary, the player of sport, the asp in the sports-loathing bosom. I am playing a match, winning or losing, I am partaking of sporting civilities and rules. If my father finds out, will he cast me out? Will he feed me to the lions or bruise me with stones?

I leave the house furtively whenever I go to play, for I have not yet completely lost the childish impression that my father can see right through me. Somewhere inside myself I still believe he can read my thoughts, see into my soul as if I were the clearest glass. Somewhere inside myself I believe he knows if I am telling a lie; in fact, I am still not entirely sure that I have the right to a private existence. I believe he made me, that I am a kind of perpetual limb grown from the trunk of his tree, and that I will never exist independently of him. I am born of my father and my mother and I do not yet know whether I exist as anything other than genetic DNA, like spit from their mouths, a mutant offshoot whose finished shape is already predetermined.

Look at me: I might as well be the kind of girl who visits the Chinese opium den which still exists on the outskirts of town (public distaste will force its closure sooner rather than later, but for the minute it is the worst place of vice imaginable, where it is rumoured young girls are lured and lost). I could be the girl who too easily gave up her jewel, a girl who has already opened the floodgates to that most secretive of channels.

But instead I am the kind of girl who is playing secret tennis. I am hidden by the hedge which runs down the back of the wire fence bordering the grass courts, where no one can see me indulging my secret vice. Oh, my brown arm swinging the racket! The thwack of the ball! The hypnotic play of tennis balls pushing through the air!

That same summer when I am sixteen my father will lead a campaign against the Blowhole County Council. His paper, the Blowhole Examiner, will run a series of articles and leaders arguing that public money should not be spent on yet another sporting venue, the proposed Kevin Beatty Oval.

Now is not the time to be spending public money on sport. Events in Europe should make us mindful of the very real possibility of another war. But even leaving aside the large issue of an impending war, we might ask ourselves this: do we really need another sporting venue? Our community already supports a large number of sporting organisations, and there are numerous ovals, cricket grounds, tennis courts and football fields in and around our town already. If we have to spend public funds at all at this time, why couldn’t the money go towards the establishment of a community orchestra? Our own dance company? Enlarging our already beautiful library? This newspaper gives over a disproportionate amount of space every week to the listing of sporting results and it is time to ask ourselves why.

‘Because human beings love sport, Perce,’ Dusty Road will tell him when he reads this editorial. ‘They don’t want to sit around in poncy suits getting bored listening to music they don’t like.’

‘Nonsense, Dusty,’ my father will snort, ‘which comes first, the chicken or the egg? You have to live with things in order to love them. The French have this expression, la bain de culture, which roughly means the culture in which you live. What is it that surrounds you? The latest league results?’

‘People will always love games with clear winners and losers. The Frogs will never fill a football stadium with art lovers. Even in bloody Paris.’

‘You’re a nong, Dusty—you don’t know what you’re talking about. When Victor Hugo died, you couldn’t move for ordinary Parisians trying to join the funeral. Workers, washerwomen—the whole of Paris came out to mourn, thousands of’em. Can you imagine Australians giving a stuff about Banjo Paterson? Look at the way they treated poor old Henry Lawson.’

But Dusty knew that Dad wasn’t going to win. Dad had already had to back down from his stance against the sports results: he had tried to cut them by half but Mr John Griffith had made him put them all back in. ‘It’s what people want, Percy. You can’t always swim against the tide.’

Dusty gave him a pat on the back when he came out of that sombre meeting. ‘Mate, you’re in the wrong country. If you want culture you’d better move to bloody Paris.’

At which point Miss Doreen Evans, long suspected of having plans upon Mr Dusty Road’s person, let out an unladylike guffaw.

Miss Evans complained to Mr Griffith, Dad made his apologies, and by the time Dusty put his lead story in that week, Dad did not change a word. It read: ‘There were cheers, tears and of course beers last Saturday as the Blowhole’s premier rugby league team won against some quality opposition, the Wollongong Bears.’