LIFE GOES ON as if I’m watching it through a fish tank. Routines unfold apparently as normal, but everything’s deformed, larger, blurry.
I get out of bed and squeeze into my uniform. I eat cornflakes sprinkled with sugar in the dining hall. Boarders swell and smile around me, radiating attention, catcalls and well wishes. Lou-Anne looks on, silent and worried. Olivia, in spite of Lou-Anne’s not-too-subtle hints that it would be better if she got lost, hovers. I get the impression that she’s waiting for me to do something, but that she’s also afraid of what I might do.
The bell rings and I walk as if mired in jelly to my roll call room. Jenny’s there. She double takes when I enter the room.
‘Shauna!’ she sings, her voice ringing with tones of surprise and false cheer. Why is she so shocked to see me? I realise before I’ve even sat down that she’s the little birdie who cheeped to Miss Maroney. She’s the mole who got me expelled!
I hesitate near the front row where Jenny’s seated but then continue to the back of the room. Jenny swivels around in her chair and sends a dramatic shrug in my direction.
‘I know it was you,’ I say.
Jenny turns back to face the board. I watch her ears go red. She doesn’t move.
Why, I wonder, would Jenny have done such a thing? How, I wonder, could she have proven to sink lower than Keli Street-Hughes, that’s to say, lower than a snake’s belly?
‘Bean, Jenny?’ calls out our roll call teacher, Mrs Doyle.
‘Present,’ croaks Jenny.
Soon Mrs Doyle arrives at ‘Harding, Shauna?’
‘Yes, Mrs Doyle,’ I bray, ‘I’m present, no thanks to certain people in this room.’
Mrs Doyle looks at me quizzically over her reading glasses and then continues her clinical reading of the roll.
Jenny’s ears go purple.
French is my first class of the day. Miss Larsen eyes me carefully as I walk into the language lab. Jenny sits behind me.
‘Bonjour, la classe,’ says Miss Larsen.
‘Bonjour Mademoiselle Larsen,’ says the class.
‘I’m going to hand out your papers of Camus’s L’Étranger now. Congratulations, Jenny.’
She lays down Jenny’s paper first. I try not to gasp. Jenny turns it over and I sneak a peek. Nineteen point five out of twenty. At least she lost half a mark.
I wait in poker-faced agony as three more papers are given out before mine hits the desk. Sixteen point five out of twenty. A crap mark for me. The comment in the margin says: Not your normal lucid standard, Shauna. Careful not to paraphrase other commentators’ analyses. She’s written a large question mark at the end of the essay, where I see that I’ve repeated the same word three times.
Tears sting my eyes. I hate to make mistakes. Is this the way it’s going to be from now on, I wonder? Will I keep sliding backwards until I’m just average and I have to get a job somewhere like the post office in Barraba?
Disappointment must be splashed across my face, because Mademoiselle Larsen addresses me directly, right in front of the class.
‘It’s one essay, Shauna, and you’ve got legitimate distractions. Don’t worry.’
A humiliating silence falls. Jenny’s completely still. I feel like she’s enjoying this, like she’d be happy to get rid of me because she’s been afraid I’ll take out the French prize. Maybe the maths prize, too. She wants them for herself. She was happy to be my friend while I was coming eighth or ninth in those subjects, but once there was a danger that I’d overtake her, she decided to rub me out any way she can.
After French, I accost Jenny in the quadrangle.
I put on my widest poo-eating grin. It seems to terrify her.
‘Shauna, let me explain . . .’
‘Oh, let me take a wild guess. You’re trying to get rid of me because I’m a contender for the French prize! Or was.’
‘That is ridiculous.’
‘Then why?’
‘Look, I did tell Miss Maroney. Only because I thought you were being irresponsible.’
‘What’s it to you if I’m irresponsible or not? Who are you to judge me, Jenny Bean?’
I thought Jenny would just shrivel in shame when confronted, but she’s not backing down, not one step.
‘You don’t seem to have given any thought whatsoever to how you’re going to look after this baby. And what about pre-natal care? What if there’s something wrong with the baby that can only be fixed while you’re still pregnant? And that’s just the baby! What about you, Shauna? Do you think you can just rock up at a hospital once you’ve gone into labour? You have to have tests done before you have the baby. You could have gestational diabetes. I mean, you can die of that, you know.’
Put like that, her betrayal seems reasonable – well, almost. It did get me expelled.
‘You should have told me, Jenny. You should have at least warned me that you were gonna blab to Miss Maroney.’
‘And what would you have done? Would you have gone and had all the tests?’
‘Well . . .’ I consider the question sincerely. Well, would I? Or would I have coaxed, threatened or cajoled her into shutting her mouth? ‘Well, who says I wouldn’t have had all the tests?’
Even as I say this, I know I wouldn’t have had the tests if Jenny hadn’t let the cat out of the bag. But so what? It’s still not a good justification.
‘Honestly, Shauna, I don’t think you would have. I think you’re so caught up in your own righteousness that you’re not paying any attention to your health or the health of your baby.’
‘And who the bloody hell are you to interfere?’
‘Who am I? I am your best friend!’
‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Lou-Anne’s my best friend.’
‘Well, you’re my best friend and I felt like I owed it to you and your baby.’
I can’t bring myself to forgive her or even to admit that she has a point. So I say, ‘Thanks a lot, Jenny,’ pretty nastily, and rush off to my next class.
By lunchtime I’ve had a chance to calm down and think about what Jenny said. I find her sitting by herself under the library stairs eating a sandwich. I sit down next to her and for a few minutes neither of us says anything.
‘Will you help me, Jenny?’
Jenny chews slowly and swallows before replying. ‘Yes.’
And that’s how I get put in touch with the maternity ward at the Royal Hospital for Women, where Jenny’s aunt is a midwife. I make an appointment for Friday morning, and no matter how things turn out at school, I know I’ll show up. Jenny’s going to come with me.
Just before English class, which is my final period of the day, Reverend Ferguson comes looking for me. She takes me outside to deliver the news. I know from the look on her face that it isn’t good.
‘The school board met over lunch,’ she tells me, her brow pulled into multi-directional creases, ‘and they’ve decided to let the expulsion stand. I’m so sorry.’
‘Can I go to my English class?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’ll take you back to the dormitory now. We haven’t been able to contact your parents, but Mrs Green sent a letter by express post, so they should receive it tomorrow.’
By now I know that Reverend Ferguson is on my side and doesn’t deserve to have pieces of my mind hurled at her. In fact, when we get back to my room, I thank her for standing up for me.
‘It’s really the least I could do,’ she says. She sounds like she’s about to start blubbering like a baby. ‘Can I touch it?’ she asks, in a splintering voice.
I nod and she puts her bejewelled hand to my rock-hard bump. As if on cue, Bob the baby kicks.
‘I felt that,’ she says, tears welling in her eyes.
‘He’s naughty.’
‘Do you know it’s a boy?’
‘Not really. I just have a feeling. I call him Bob the baby. When he was little, he was Fred the foetus.’
She laughs. ‘Fred the foetus. That’s cute.’ She strokes my belly for a long time, which is kind of creepy and nice at the same time.
‘I tried to have a baby,’ she says, ‘but I couldn’t. I had endometriosis, only no one knew what it was back then in the seventies.’ She keeps stroking me. ‘I think you’re very lucky to have this baby.’
‘It was kind of bad luck, though. I took the morning-after pill.’ I can’t believe I’m talking like this to Reverend Ferguson. Who would have thought she’d have any inkling about how babies are made?
‘And you fell pregnant anyway,’ she says. ‘Obviously Bob the baby wants to be born.’
‘I think he really does.’
‘God wouldn’t have let it happen if He didn’t think you could handle it.’
This is the first time anyone has mentioned God in relation to my baby. Reverend Ferguson, in spite of her job description, doesn’t usually bring up religion during personal conversations. In our early pastoral care sessions when I first arrived at Oakholme, we just talked about my family and my old school and friends. Far from forcing God down my throat, she always waited until I asked a question.
‘Do you think God wants me to have the baby?’
‘Oh, yes, Shauna. Of course He does.’
‘Then why is Mrs Green so dead against it?’
‘Because she, like you, lives in the real world. We’re all caught up in the middle of tensions. You’re going to have to forgive her, no matter what happens.’
Since our first meeting, SRF’s always been telling me that I have to forgive this person or that. Jamie. My parents. The police. Australia. Myself. It’s so much easier said than done.
We sit on my bed and talk until the final bell rings. Self-Raising Flour tells me about her soul-destroying attempts at pregnancy and how she felt when she finally realised that it was never going to happen.
‘I felt worthless. I don’t feel like that anymore, but at the time I felt like I had no value. I was so angry.’
‘I feel like that sometimes, too,’ I tell her.
‘It’s not fair on women, the Western attitude to babies. Babies are a blessing and sterility’s a curse. When will people realise?’
‘Realise what?’
‘That motherhood is feminism’s best-kept secret.’
‘I think that my people already know that,’ I tell her. ‘They know that having a baby turns you into a better person. My parents were happy when I told them I was pregnant. Well, once they got used to the idea.’
That’s when Reverend Ferguson tells me about a book called Sex and Destiny by a feminist called Germaine Greer. She promises to bring it to school tomorrow and give it to me if I’m still here.
‘I’m not leaving,’ I tell her. ‘They’ll have to lever me out the window with a crane.’
Reverend Ferguson gives me a great big hug, and as soon as she’s gone, I go to Miss Maroney’s office to call Sarah Hogan-Doran.
‘The expulsion stands,’ I tell her. ‘The school board’s not giving an inch.’
‘Do you want me to call my friend at The Australian?’
I don’t have to think for too long about that.
‘Yep.’