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.
He was never disingenuous. A thing was black or white and sometimes it changed from one to the other. The change was sincere and it was absolute. He described himself as superhuman and worked hard to make it true. He was fit, did well at study once he started. He had been badly injured in his mid-twenties when a fire extinguisher he was disarming blew up. The doctors wanted to amputate his arm but he said no. He rehabilitated himself and regained almost full use.
To the girl I was, my teacher’s husband was larger than life. I believed he was as powerful as he made himself out to be, but even so he wasn’t a hero. We had nothing in common.
I am reminded just now of Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and the story of the ugly duckling who approaches all manner of creature before she finds her pack. I had no idea who my people were.
My teacher’s husband had a temper. I don’t know how much was his nature and how much was his experience in Vietnam; he turned twenty-one there and while he seldom spoke of his experiences, a youth spent in a war is no youth. One lunchtime he lost his temper with me. I disagreed with something he said and I remained firm in my disagreement as he became annoyed. I don’t remember the subject. I’m sure I provoked him. I think I wanted to see what would happen.
His face drained of colour except for a vein in the middle of his forehead that pulsed slowly. He set his eyes on me and walked over to the chair where I was sitting. Without saying a word, he picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder, just like that. I called out to him to stop, half laughing with the shock of it. Then I struggled to get away but found I could not. He carried me into the bathroom and put me into the tub and turned on the cold shower tap and said in a quiet voice, ‘There, that will cool you down, you bitch.’ He left me there.
My teacher came and helped me out of the bath. She didn’t say anything to him. My clothes were wet and clung to my body and I felt self-conscious. I also felt the aftermath of fear, catching my breath. And I felt ashamed. I had never made anyone this angry. It was shocking to me. My teacher’s husband was so strong, superhumanly strong. He was a grown-up, in charge. If he was this angry, it must be my fault.