THE COUNTRYLINK TRAIN service is a peculiar beast. I’m used to catching the train to Tamworth, so I’m comfortable with the kind of rabble you find on a country train on a weekday.
The weirdest thing is that all the poor people and boarding school students (such as moi) can travel in the first-class cabin. This leads to an interesting cross-section of society, from tourists and wealthy older people, to poor people visiting family, to skid-row drug addicts who come to Central Station to buy cheaper gear than they can get in the country. There are always Aboriginal people in the first-class carriage when I’m travelling on the Tamworth train. We nod and smile at each other and the older women ask ‘where you from?’ That’s how Aboriginal strangers start conversations with one another. Those words, when uttered in a soft, sweet, slow voice, are like music to my ears.
People generally behave themselves on the country lines, even the junkies, but every now and then something terrible happens. On the Tamworth train, for example, I’ve witnessed some fairly harrowing scenes, caused mostly by drug or alcohol addiction. Once I saw an old man staggering out of the bathroom with a tourniquet still tied and a needle hanging out of his arm. Another time I saw a woman who’d overdosed on heroin being brought back to life on the platform next to my window. I remember her sitting up and abusing the paramedic because he’d given her Narcan and wrecked her high. The worst thing I ever saw was an ice-addicted mother with green foam at the edges of her mouth swinging an unresponsive newborn baby by its little bootied foot. The green-foam woman upset me the most because, apart from the unconscious baby, she was Aboriginal.
I don’t know why I, Shauna Harding, seventeen-year-old high school student, feel the need to take on the sins of other Aboriginal people, but I do. And I don’t think I’m alone. Aboriginal people behaving badly scare and embarrass other Aboriginal people behaving well. Watch the black passengers in the first-class carriage when another black person’s making an ass of themselves. Watch the cringing and headshaking and downcast eyes. Watch the relief on their faces when the black behaving badly gets booted off the train at the next station.
Sometimes I think it’s a survival mechanism, acting good and quiet and smiling while silently eating shit. It hasn’t got much to do with being good people, though I swear we are. It’s more serious and more basic than that. It’s got to do with keeping our race alive. The older folk, the aunties and uncles, are more awake to it than the young. That’s why they’re still alive while the other people of their generation, far too many of them, have died and turned to dust. If you want to stay alive you shut your mouth, smile and remain in a seated position. Those of us who don’t do that end up biting it in the back of a police wagon, hanging in bedsheets from the door of a jail cell, crucified on a bottle or needle, or tied to a dialysis machine. Or wrapped around a tree, like my big brother.
So people sit down and stay alive. If you want to stand up and stay alive you’d better have a good education, a quick mind and a lot of white friends backing you up. And most Aboriginal people don’t have all those advantages. I intend to have all those advantages, and when the time is right, I intend to stand up.
I’ve been racking my brains for solutions to the problem of going to university next year. I know I’m going to have to live at home in Barraba with the baby. There’s no way I’ll be able to afford to live in a big city and pay for rent and childcare, so I’ve been investigating online university courses. There are plenty of universities that offer Bachelor of Languages and Bachelor of Arts degrees online. It’s do-able, if I stay at home.
The upsetting thing is, I don’t want to stay at home. I’ve been looking forward to leaving Barraba and Oakholme for ages. Recently I’ve been looking forward to leaving Australia for a while too. The arrival of the baby slams most doors in my face, for the foreseeable future anyway. While I know that I will still be able to get a university degree and study the subjects that interest me, it makes me sick to think that my dreams of living in a big city, going out with my friends and travelling to Europe will remain just that – dreams. I already really, really regret getting pregnant so young. The only way I can deal with the heartbreak is to tell myself that I will end up where I want to be eventually. I will be a journalist or work in communications. I will find a platform to say the things I have to say, but I’ll do it with a baby. The people who judge me and want me to fail will be bitterly disappointed.
And so will the people who love me.
Dad’s waiting for me when I walk out onto the platform at Tamworth station. The first thing I notice is that he’s let his beard grow bushy, all the way down to his chest. It makes me hesitate for a second or two before I dive into his open arms and trampoline off his belly before settling into the cuddle.
‘My little scholar!’
‘Hey, Dad. Did Mum come?’
‘No, I came straight from Brisbane. I’ll take you back home and then head on down to Newcastle.’
‘You got the truck?’
‘Nah. Walked.’
He roars with laughter, so loudly that everyone around us on the platform stares. Obviously we have the same sense of humour. And a healthy appreciation for our own jokes.
It’s a warm autumn afternoon in Tamworth. Even though I had lunch on the train, Dad insists on taking me out for a pub meal. We walk down the main street looking for a joint with its lunch board still out, Dad in his stubbies and singlet, me with my prim Oakholme College backpack slung over my shoulder.
We settle on the Standard Hotel because it doesn’t look too rough and there’s a twelve-dollar deal on steak and chips.
I feel so comfortable in a country pub, it’s crazy. All the old drunks slumped at the bar turn as we walk in, and I know exactly how to handle them.
‘Good afternoon,’ I say, gazing casually straight at them.
They all nod and say ‘Good afternoon’ in unison.
Dad orders himself a schooner of beer and me a glass of Coke, and we move along the tatty red carpet to the brasserie area.
‘So how’s the university subject going?’ Dad asks after we order our steaks.
That is about the all-time pinnacle of Dad’s understanding of my academic life. It might be the most insightful thing he’s ever said about my education. And I’m not even pursuing it anymore.
‘Ah, I decided not to do it. It seemed like too much.’ Dad nods slowly like he understands everything.
‘Focus on the important things,’ he says, stroking his beard.
‘That’s right.’
I’m planning to tell my parents about the pregnancy sometime in the next two weeks. I know they won’t be happy about it, not because they don’t love babies, but because they’ll be worried about school and uni. And those are reasonable worries. Even I don’t know exactly how I’ll manage it. I just know that I will.
Mum’s not well enough to look after a baby. I wouldn’t expect her to care for mine while I went off to uni. Anyway, I don’t want to be separated from my child. I’ve seen what Lou-Anne’s like during those first days of separation from Charlotte and Chelsea, and they’re just her nieces.
I ask Dad who’s coming to stay with us over Easter. We always have Easter and Christmas at our place because we’ve got the biggest house. If we’re having a big shindig, then I won’t tell my parents that I’m pregnant until after everyone’s left.
‘Just Julie and family.’
Just Julie and family add up to ten people if everyone comes. Dad’s sister, Julie, her husband, Mick, and my cousins, Stephanie, Andrew, Jody and James, plus my cousins’ boyfriends and girlfriends if they’ve got any.
‘Does Mum want me to cook?’
‘Oh, I don’t think she’s expecting that.’
‘I’ll do the pavlova at least.’
‘What about the Toblerone cheesecake?’
‘Won’t be a problem.’
After Jamie died and my parents went crazy, I learned to cook. I got sick of pasta and jar sauce and frozen pizza, so I taught myself. The secret to cooking, I swear, is nothing trickier than reading a recipe and practising it over and over again. Whenever someone says to me, ‘I don’t know how to cook’, I say, ‘Well, do you know how to read?’ Maybe I’ve got tickets on myself, but I’m prepared to say that I’ve become a fairly handy cook by just reading and practising. Dad says that Mum’s not expecting me to cook, but I bet she is. The first thing she’ll ask me to do when I get home is to write her a shopping list.
I enjoy every second of the trip to Barraba in Dad’s truck. Riding up high in the cab with a steak in my belly and my hand on the radio dial reminds me of being a little kid, when all I wanted to do in life was become a truck driver like my father. Jamie and I would both sit in the front seat fighting over the music and whether one of us had spent more time than the other in the middle seat. We both wanted to be next to Dad, because when he was in a good mood, he’d let us change the truck’s gears. I don’t care about changing gears anymore, but I still like sitting next to Dad.
He drops me out the front of our house without getting out of the truck.
‘I’m already running three hours behind, love, but I’ll be back early tomorrow. Be nice to your mum, okay?’
‘I’m always nice to her, Dad.’
When I get inside, Mum’s in the kitchen chopping onions. She seems to become aware of me slowly, looking up from the chopping block as if I’ve caught her in a daydream she’s reluctant to break from. I’m so relieved to walk in and see her doing something as normal as cooking that I feel like I could cry.
‘Hey!’
She keeps on chopping as I go to her to kiss her cheek.
I look a lot like my mum in the face. Chubby, with a wide, turned-up nose and a fleshy mouth shaped like a bow. Jamie used to say that we look like black versions of Miss Piggy. That’s the kind of backhanded compliment he used to give before resorting to flat-out insults.
Mum’s put on a lot of weight over the last few years because of the anti-depressants she takes. She gets the munchies at night and pigs out on chips and biscuits. She sleeps a lot, too, often passing out on the lounge in front of the TV and not getting up until eleven or even midday the next day.
‘Julie and the family are arriving on Saturday,’ she says. ‘You’d better give me a shopping list. If you want fancy ingredients, I’ll have to drive into Tamworth.’
Ha! I knew it.
‘What are you making now?’
‘Spag bol. But I’m just getting started. You can finish it, if you like. I’m sure you know better.’
‘I like your spag bol.’
‘The last time I made it you said it didn’t taste like anything.’
‘Aw, Mum. C’mon . . .’
Mum’s got it in her head that I don’t think she’s good enough for me anymore. It doesn’t matter what I say or do, that’s the conclusion she always comes to. Mostly it’s because I’m away in Sydney getting an education at a fancypants school, and the other side is this idea that I blame her for Jamie’s death. She’s edgy and defensive before I even open my mouth.
‘How’s the painting going?’
She puts her hand in the air and motions so-so.
‘We sold one to the bank a few weeks ago. Dad’s been talking to an art gallery in Tamworth about putting on an exhibition – you know, a show with my work only. Maybe it’ll happen. Probably not.’
‘I bet it’ll happen.’
Mum stops chopping. ‘Well, how would you know, Shauna?’
‘I know how great your paintings are, Mum.’
‘Nothing compared with what you see in Sydney, I’m sure.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about art. That’s your department.’
‘So your opinion that my paintings are great . . .’ She starts firmly and then trails off. Even when it comes to putting her own daughter in her place, her confidence fails her.
I start helping her in the kitchen, even though I know she’ll do her best to take it the wrong way. I heat up some oil in a saucepan on the stove. Mum throws in some chopped onions.
‘Beef mince is in the fridge,’ she says, ‘and before you ask, let me tell you that I didn’t look at the fat content.’
I pull the plastic container of mince out of the fridge and lay it on the bench. The general whiff of the fridge is enough to start a small wave of nausea, but the sickness I feel when I peel the plastic off the mince knocks me off my feet. I haven’t handled raw meat since the morning sickness started. I overbalance and fall backwards against the bench, dropping the mince on the tiles.
‘Oops,’ says Mum, as if nothing serious has happened.
‘Mum, I need help,’ I say.
‘The dishcloth’s in the sink.’
Faint, dizzy and exhausted, I sink to the floor.
Finally Mum twigs that there’s something wrong. She shrieks and skids heavily to her knees by my side.
She asks me if I’m okay and I say no.
She asks me why not and I just can’t keep up the charade until after Easter.
I tell her.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my mother mad. Not since Jamie was walking these halls. In the last few years I’ve seen her sad and grouchy and nutty, but never angry.
‘You little idiot!’ she screams, leaping to her feet. Her hands are clenched into fists at her sides, as if she might finally break her stance against corporal punishment. ‘How could you let that happen?’
I grab the edge of the kitchen bench and hoist myself to a standing position.
‘We used a condom,’ I scramble to explain, ‘but it didn’t work. I took the morning-after pill, but that didn’t work either.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘New Year’s Eve.’
‘I should never have let you go to that music festival! Where was your cousin while all this nonsense was going on? He was supposed to be supervising you!’
‘It wasn’t Andrew’s fault, Mum. I got carried away.’
‘It certainly sounds like it!’ My mother’s voice is high-pitched and hysterical, like I haven’t heard it in ages. She’s practically squealing at me and her eyes are burning. I can’t remember the last time I saw her quite so awake. ‘This is a disaster, Shauna!’
‘I know!’
‘You’ve got no business having sex. You’re a child. How are you going to look after a baby? How are you going to finish school?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve considered all that, Mum?’
‘I don’t know what you’ve considered!’
She asks me if I’m sure I’m pregnant, and whether I’ve been to see a doctor, and I tell her about Dr Baker and the awful Dr Goldsmith.
‘You were planning to have an abortion without discussing it with us first?’ she gasps. ‘When were you going to tell us?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’ I start to cry and so does Mum.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she sobs. ‘I can’t believe that a smart girl like you could be so stupid. You’re throwing your life away.’
‘Is that what you did, Mum? You had Jamie when you were nineteen. Did you throw away your life on us? Was it all a big waste?’
Mum looks at me with dark, blazing eyes.
‘My opportunities were nothing like yours. There’s no comparison. I had terrible parents, and so did your father. They didn’t care what we did. But I care about you. I didn’t raise you to have one-night stands.’
‘You didn’t raise me to do anything, Mum. Half the time you left me to raise myself.’
‘Shauna!’
‘It’s true, Mum. Kids grow up whether you raise them or not. Look at Jamie. Did you raise him to become a thief and a liar and a drunk?’
‘Stop it, Shauna!’ She grabs at her chest as if I’ve just stabbed her in the heart. ‘Please don’t use your brother against me. I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.’
She staggers into the lounge room and collapses on the couch. I follow her in there and stand over her with my hands on my hips. I’m suddenly furious with her and I’m not even sure why. Is it because she’s criticising me? Or has it got more to do with Jamie? I’ve never had it out with her like this, not once. I’ve never felt so free to hurt her feelings.
‘Jamie should never have been allowed to drive that night,’ I tell her. ‘You and Dad should have stopped him.’
Mum’s face breaks and she holds her palms out in surrender. ‘Please. . .’
‘He had no respect for either of you. You did nothing to make him respect you. You did nothing to make him respect himself.’
‘I loved that child!’
‘Of course you did. And he probably loved you too, but love just isn’t enough.’
‘Please don’t blame me, Shauna. I already blame myself. I already beat myself up every day.’ She curls her fists, clutches them against her body, which is tense and bent forwards. ‘But if I’m such a terrible mother, how do you explain the way you turned out?’
‘The way I turned out? Look at me! I’m seventeen and pregnant!’
‘And that’s my fault? You didn’t have to carry on the way you did. You know that sex leads to pregnancy. You came second in biology last year, if I remember your report card correctly. You got ninety-three.’
Jesus, she remembers my individual marks from last year. That takes me down a notch. The fact that she’s standing up for herself is a surprise. She is right, though. I didn’t have to sleep with Nathan on New Year’s Eve. I knew I was evading Andrew and having too much fun, but I did it anyway. Mum seems to know what I’m thinking just by looking at me. Her face and body soften. She sinks back into the couch and sighs, exhausted.
‘We all make mistakes, love. Especially when we’re young. Some of them have tougher consequences than others.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
‘We’re so proud of you,’ she says, her voice faltering. ‘Because of you, we’re respected around here.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s rubbish. You and Dad were always popular in Barraba. You’ve been here forever. Look how many people came to Jamie’s funeral. The whole bloody town. Nothing to do with me.’
‘Your father’s been invited to run for Tamworth Regional Council next year. That’s because Reg Daley’s niece went to that fancy school of yours. When he found out that you were there he encouraged Jim to run as the first black councillor. Now we’re the kind of black family that even white people like.’
‘Who cares what white people think?’
‘You do. Or else you wouldn’t bother with all those airs and graces and big words.’
‘Well, I’m going to have this baby, and I don’t care what anyone thinks. Bugger anyone who looks down on me. They can go to hell.’
‘Of course you’ll have the baby. Of course you will.’
‘You don’t want me to have an abortion?’
‘Abortions are for white middle-class princesses. I would never let you have an abortion. Not on my watch.’
I sit on the arm of the couch and reach for Mum’s hand. She lets me take it. We say nothing for about thirty seconds. We’re both thinking, thinking.
‘Do you know the father?’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Well, who is he?’
I give Mum a minimum of details about Nathan.
‘And what does he think?’
‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘Aren’t you gonna tell him?’
I shrug.
‘We need to talk about this, Shauna. So you’re three months gone, at least.’ Mum shakes her head. ‘You’re still so young.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I knew you and Dad would be disappointed.’
‘We have such high hopes for you.’
I slot in next to her on the couch and lean against her.
‘I’m still going to go to uni. I don’t know how, but I’m going. See if I don’t.’
Mum goes quiet next to me, but straightens up and rests her elbows on her knees. I can tell she’s thinking hard. She burns and buzzes against my side.
‘Do the teachers at school know?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Don’t say anything about it. If they can find some way of snatching that scholarship back, they’ll do it, you know. There’s nothing people love more than to watch a privileged Aboriginal person fail. There’s probably people there who are already hoping for it.’
I think about Keli Street-Hughes and Annabel Saxon. ‘There are, Mum.’
Mum covers her face with her hands. ‘I knew this would happen,’ comes her muffled voice.
‘The pregnancy? How could you have known?’
She lifts her face out of her hands. ‘Not about the pregnancy. I mean I knew that they’d find a way to tear you down eventually. After building you up so high, of course they’ll try.’
We both smell smoke at the same time and she jumps up and runs to the kitchen.
‘I’ll be doing the cooking from now on, Shauna!’ she calls out. I stretch out on the couch with a pillow clutched to my chest, swallowing desperately as the smell of browning onions, which smells like dog food to me now, wafts from the kitchen. I’m desperately hungry, but I also feel like I could never eat another bite. It’s a weird and sickening contradiction.
Talking to Mum has worn me out. Though confessing has been a relief, I feel like there are new things to be afraid of. I’ve never heard my mother speak about Oakholme College in anything but glowing terms and I wonder whether her theory could be true. Are they really waiting for me to fail? Maybe the likes of Keli Street-Hughes and Annabel Saxon are, but why would the school have started the Indigenous scholarship in the first place if they wanted the recipients to fail? It doesn’t make sense. But then you look at the dropout rate of the Indigenous scholarship recipients and it’s seventy per cent. There’s just me, Lou-Anne and Olivia. I understand why girls get drawn back home, even when home isn’t very good. Even when home isn’t safe, what feels safe is what you’re used to. Home is home, and no matter how good the other place is, it isn’t home. But do people at the school actually enjoy seeing us come and go?
I know that’s not the way it is with Reverend Ferguson. She’s been my cheerleader from the get-go, since back when I was almost as ragged as Olivia Pike. When she finds out I’m pregnant, she might change her tune. She might have to. I can’t see Mrs Green turning a blind eye. I just can’t.
When Mum and I sit down for dinner, I feel the same heat and energy come off her as I felt when we were on the lounge. I haven’t seen her this sharp for ages. Maybe not ever.
We start to work on the problem, which is not something I’ve been able to do with anyone so far. With Dr Baker and Jenny, there was no problem that couldn’t be solved with a quick curettage. With Lou-Anne, there was no problem at all. But Mum and I talk about delivery dates and exam dates. If I have the baby before my exams start, she’ll come to Sydney and take care of the baby while I study and do the exams.
‘If worst comes to worst, you could go back to Barraba High.’
‘I’m not going back to Barraba High, Mum. I’d rather be dead. I don’t mean to be a snob, but it’s a jungle.’
I sleep like the dead that night. Between the train trip, the truck ride, spilling the beans to Mum and the eight-centimetre energy sapper growing inside me, I’m wiped out. After so much stress, it’s wonderful waking up in my own lumpy bed. Even if it’s to the terrifying sight of my father standing over me.
‘Get up!’ he spits.
I sit up and see Mum standing in the doorway behind him. It’s eight o’clock in the morning and she’s up and fully dressed, an anomaly in itself.
‘Calm down, Jim,’ she says.
‘Is it true? You’re pregnant?’
Honestly, I thought Mum and I had gone over all this yesterday. Now I have to justify myself to Dad, too?
‘Of course it’s true. Do you think it’s some kind of April Fools’ joke?’
‘Don’t you dare talk like a smartarse to me, Shauna. This is disgraceful.’
I get out of bed and face him. He’s never spoken to me with an acid tongue before. I didn’t feel ashamed when Mum was telling me off, but now I feel heartily ashamed. It’s different with dads.
‘I’m sorry. It was an accident.’
‘How do you plan to go to university now?’
‘I don’t know, Dad.’
‘Is the father going to do the right thing?’ he asks.
‘The father doesn’t know,’ Mum pipes in.
‘I’m asking Shauna.’ He forces me to look him in the eye. ‘Will he do the right thing?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know what the right thing is.’
‘Well, let me tell you what it is,’ he says in a raised voice.
‘Jim . . .’ starts Mum.
‘Jackie, let me say my piece!’ he snaps. Then he seems to make an effort to calm himself. ‘I’m far from happy about this situation, considering your age . . .’
‘I know.’
‘. . . but I’d feel a lot more comfortable if the fella stepped forwards and took responsibility. I’m not saying you have to get married – I don’t even think that’s a good idea – but the man has to pay for raising his own child.’
‘I don’t want to ask him for money, Dad. I don’t want him to think I’m just another Aboriginal teen mother with her hand out.’
‘You’re the mother of his child.’
‘I don’t want him to think badly of me. And his mother’s a racist pig.’
‘If you won’t tell this kid, Shauna, I will.’
‘He’s not a kid,’ I say. ‘He’s a man.’
‘So let him stand up and be one.’
I sway and topple back onto my bed. I can’t stand it when Dad’s pissed off with me.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m really sick. I just can’t do anything at the moment.’
Dad gives me one last, long look of total disappointment before tears fill his eyes and he leaves the room. Mum leaves too, but returns a short time later wielding a glass filled with evil-smelling orange liquid. She holds it in my direction.
‘Carrot and ginger juice,’ she says, proudly. ‘It’s meant to help with the morning sickness.’
I take the juice to be gracious, and when I’ve finished it I go out to the kitchen table. As Mum fusses around me with butter toast and eggs, I realise that she must have already been shopping this morning. There were no eggs in the fridge last night, and Mum’s just not the type to have a fresh piece of ginger hanging around the house. I know it can only be my baby news that has given her this shot of energy. She’s happy. It’s a catastrophe, but it’s made her happy.
I’m not particularly happy, though I assure Mum that I will both see a doctor when I get back to Sydney and let Nathan in on the news. The truth is that I’m swinging between never talking to Nathan again, because I’m frightened of what he’ll think, and wanting to fall into his arms. I know his family will think that I’m just a lazy, greedy boong who’s trying to hitch a free ride on a white man. They’ll think I’ve trapped him deliberately. I’m sure that’s what they’ll think. And I’m afraid that’s what he’ll think, too.
I say I don’t care what white people think, and sometimes I really believe it, but when it comes to white people I care about, it’s simply not true.