A NOTE ARRIVES at roll call the next day:
Shauna, see me. SRF.
The message’s brevity bothers me. It’s got to be about Bob.
Jenny reads the note over my shoulder. ‘Is it . . .?’ She grimaces.
‘I’ll deal with it.’
‘Good luck.’
I don’t know whether it’s my hormones or the stress of my situation, but I don’t like the way she wishes me luck. Still, in the scheme of things, Jenny’s tone isn’t important. I excuse myself from class and head to Reverend Ferguson’s office.
Self-Raising Flour takes me in deeply when I appear in her doorway, especially around the midsection. I pull my blazer closed.
‘Do your parents know?’ she asks softly.
‘Know what?’
Reverend Ferguson purses her lips and closes her eyes, sighing. I can tell that she’s trying to be calm about this, but it’s not easy for her.
‘You were my special project.’
‘I haven’t ceased to exist, you know.’
‘Mrs Green knows about your circumstances. She’s giving you a chance to leave willingly so that you don’t have an expulsion on your school record. Otherwise your next stop is her office. She’ll hand you your expulsion papers. Your parents will be called to come and pick you up.’
‘I’m not leaving.’
Reverend Ferguson leans back in her leather chair, arms folded over her gigantic jugs, head hanging, as though she’s examining something in her lap. She speaks slowly, as if each word is causing her pain.
‘You’ve worked so hard to get where you are both academically and personally. I don’t know why you didn’t tell someone sooner. I thought you would have had more self-respect than that. And to be in the situation in the first place . . .’
She opens the notepad on her desk and writes something on it.
‘I’m giving you the number of a colleague of mine who works in TAFE. You can complete your HSC there. I think you should at least try to do that much.’ She rests her elbows on her desk and then her head in her hands. ‘You’d come so far and now this. It just makes me want to scream.’
With another huge, sad sigh, she rips the page out of the notepad and pushes it across her desk. I don’t take it.
It’s not easy to resist Self-Raising Flour’s will like this. Every cell in my body wants to please her. It’s in my culture to go with the flow, to speak sweetly and to agree. Even though I have a strong personality, I’m not immune to the temptation to assume that white people know better. I want to let go. I want to give in. I want to get along.
But I’m not going to get along.
‘I want to see a lawyer.’
‘A lawyer? You’re not on trial.’
‘But I have rights.’
‘What rights are those?’
‘You said that Olivia Pike had a right to privacy. Well, so do I.’ I’m unsure if what I’m saying is true, but I try to channel Lou-Anne. ‘What goes on inside my body is my private business. Mrs Green’s got no grounds for expelling me.’
‘The school board met last night. It’s been decided. I’m sorry, Shauna. You are the last person I would wish this situation on.’
I get up. Self-Raising Flour rises, too, hot and dishevelled, busting out of her baking tin.
‘I’ll take you to Mrs Green’s office,’ she says.
‘Can I call my parents?’
‘You can call them from her office.’
‘I’d rather call them from the phone in Miss Maroney’s office.’
Reverend Ferguson looks uncertain, but she lets me go.
On the way to the dormitory building, I realise that I’ve been preparing for this crunch for a while. I had a plan about how I’d handle myself and I’ve managed to stick to it. I know that I have to keep going.
But then I get my mum on the phone and I break into tears at the sound of her voice. I tell her that they’ve found out and that they are about to expel me.
‘Oh, Shauna, please come home, love. Just come back.’
How much would I love to do that! To wake up in the same house as my parents. To have the comforting knowledge that everyone living under my roof loves me.
‘I want to, Mum, but I can’t.’
‘Of course you can. Dad could pick you up tomorrow morning. He’s driving the truck back from Melbourne.’
The idea of going home is so seductive. I think about my predecessors in the Indigenous scholarship program, who all got a taste of privileged white life and then went skidding back to their families. Talking to Mum, I have this feeling that I was never meant to be at Oakholme College in the first place, that I was cockeyed and naïve to believe I could ever have fitted in here. It would be so easy to just go home and complete the HSC either through TAFE or at Barraba High. It probably wouldn’t even make a difference to my marks. So why don’t I do it?
Because it would make a difference to me.
I remember what I said to Olivia. You deserve to be here, you know. I can’t let her down. I have to follow my own advice.
I know that I deserve to be here too. And I know that I’m going to fulfil my rights and merits and potential by trying to stay here, as tricky and uncomfortable and embarrassing as that might be.
‘Mum, I need to speak to a lawyer.’
‘We don’t have the money for that. What can a lawyer do, anyway?’
‘Well, I don’t know. That’s why I need to speak to one.’
‘A lawyer never did people like us any good, Shauna.’
The moment she says that is the moment I know that I must speak to a lawyer, and that I’m going to find one today, right now, even if it means wandering around the city from law firm to law firm. Something else occurs to me. In fact, it’s something I’ve suspected for a while. Now I know it, though. I know it like I know I’m alive. The hand on the door that slams in every Aboriginal person’s face at some stage – the hand on the machete that my cousin Andrew says is poised to chop off the heads of high achievers – is sometimes a black hand.
If I listen to my mother, I’m going to lose my dignity. If I listen to my own sense of what’s right and what’s mine for the taking in this life, then I will keep my dignity, even if I turn out to be wrong.
I tell Mum that the school’s going to try to call her and Dad. I tell her they can’t answer their phones. She agrees they’ll stay under the radar, but she begs me one last time to come home. I tell her no, even though I know she doesn’t understand. ‘This is something I have to do, Mum.’
From Miss Maroney’s office, I head for prep. hall, passing the giant portrait of the Reverend Doctor Sterling McBride in the foyer. His expression of tight-lipped, beady disapproval seems magnified today. I stop in my tracks and turn to face him head-on, something I’ve never done before because he’s just so creepy. I look at the small cross around his neck. I notice the way his robes fall around his shoulders. I see how straight he is sitting. Daring to look into his eyes, I notice for the first time that they’re green, and that while they are narrowed, they are more watchful than reproachful.
‘Please don’t let her get rid of me,’ I say softly, and of course I’m talking about Mrs Green (to a painting). ‘I know I’ve been rude to you in the past, but please don’t let her throw me out.’
Then I skip to prep. hall, log on to one of the computers and google the words ‘free lawyer’ and ‘Sydney’ and, reluctantly, ‘Aboriginal’. The website for an Aboriginal legal centre in Redfern comes up. I call the number from Miss Maroney’s office and try to make an appointment. The receptionist tells me that there are no free slots until next week, but they have a duty legal officer who sees people ‘off the street’. If I’m willing to hang around and wait, I’ll probably get seen this afternoon.
Before I leave, though, I have to face whatever music is playing for me in Mrs Green’s office. I head back to the admin. building, and by cruel coincidence, I run into Keli Street-Hughes. She changes her direction across the quadrangle and loops around to avoid me, eyes to the ground, but I lunge right in front of her.
‘What?’ Her mean, yellowy eyes settle on my face.
‘You’re a cesspit,’ I hiss.
‘I beg your pardon. I’m a what?’
‘A cesspit. A hole in the ground, full of shitty sludge.’
‘You’d better get out of my face. And get that baby out of my face, too, while you’re at it. Skank.’
‘You told Miss Maroney, didn’t you? You’re the one who told her that I’m pregnant.’
A flash of confusion passes over Keli’s face. She looks disoriented for just a fraction of a second before smiling tightly, but it’s long enough to make me wonder whether or not she is the one who told on me. Or maybe no one told? Maybe Miss Maroney just worked it out.
‘I don’t care what you think I did or didn’t do,’ she says, ‘but do I really strike you as the suck arse type?’
‘Yes, you do.’
Keli rolls her eyes and steps around me. She only walks a few paces before turning and calling, ‘Green’s going to serve your arse up to you on a platter. You know that, don’t you?’ Her tone is matter-of-fact, not smug for once, which makes me doubt again that she’s the one who got me pinched.
‘What the hell do you care, Keli?’
‘I just don’t think you deserve it, that’s all. What country girl hasn’t had a wild night at a B & S or a race day or a music festival? Most girls would have gone to the doctor and gotten rid of the problem.’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
She nods at me seriously, and I think it must be the first time she’s ever related to me. Over a one-night stand at a country music festival. Shit. Maybe she had a close call once? I go to the admin. building and pause outside Mrs Green’s office. The door’s ever so slightly ajar and I can hear her talking to Reverend Ferguson.
SRF: . . . go quietly. There are certainly no signs so far she’s going to cooperate. Surely we can find a way of allowing her to continue with some conditions—
Mrs Green: It’s out of the question. The board won’t have it. It would be a scandal.
SRF: It’s going to be a scandal anyway, Libby!
Mrs Green: As long as she didn’t fall pregnant while at school, I think we can contain the damage. But if this incident doesn’t convince the board that we should discontinue the Indigenous scholarship, I don’t know what will. It’s been a disaster from the outset, and now this. . . We went into it with the best of intentions, but it’s the same old story. No good deed goes unpunished. These people can’t be helped.
SRF: I couldn’t disagree more. Shauna has been transformed. Don’t you remember what she was like when she arrived?
Mrs Green: She wasn’t pregnant. I remember that much. Now she’ll probably be on welfare for the rest of her life like the rest of her family.
SRF: Libby!
Mrs Green: I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. I didn’t sleep at all last night. . .
SRF: We’re only six weeks from stuvac. Even if she didn’t attend classes, we could. . .
Mrs Green: Sally, it is out of the question. I know you are very fond of this girl, but she’s brought this on herself. She’s had so many chances. She’s had every opportunity.
SRF: I just don’t see how expelling her is going to help her or the school.
Mrs Green: What are we supposed to do? Turn sick bay into a maternity ward? She has to go. Has someone called her parents?
SRF: I just tried all their numbers and there’s no answer. They haven’t responded to my email.
Mrs Green: Where’s Shauna?
With shaking hands and legs, I push the door open and walk in.
‘I’m here.’
Mrs Green smiles thinly. In spite of not having slept a wink – oh, the poor duck! – she’s cool and controlled in a way that SRF could never be. Probably because she hasn’t got a heart, but a cold little stone where her heart should be.
‘Have a seat,’ she says, but I don’t.
‘Reverend Ferguson’s right. I’m not going to cooperate. And my parents aren’t going to pick me up. I’ve already spoken to them.’
‘Shauna, the board’s decided to revoke your scholarship,’ replies Mrs Green.
‘I know that. And you’re inviting me to leave, too, and if I don’t accept the invitation, you’ll expel me, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, go ahead.’
‘Sorry, I—’
‘Go ahead and expel me.’
She blinks at me as she pushes a letter across the table with the embossed Oakholme College letterhead. In big, bold letters at the top, it says: NOTICE OF TERMINATION OF ENROLMENT.
I pick it up off the edge of her desk.
‘I’ll see what my lawyer has to say about this.’ I feel like I’m acting, but the words seem to have some effect on Mrs Green. She doesn’t know how to respond. She looks at Reverend Ferguson, who shrugs, and then back to me.
‘Reverend Ferguson will take you to the dormitory and help you pack your bags. You’re to wait there until your parents can be contacted.’
‘If I’m expelled, then you have no say about what I do. So I’ll do as I please.’
I turn on my heel and stalk out.
Reverend Ferguson comes trotting out a few seconds later. ‘Shauna! Shauna!’
I break into an ungainly run, but even at seven months pregnant, I’m like a Kenyan compared with a fat, seventy-year-old pastor in high heels. By the time I’ve reached the school’s front gates, I’ve lost her.