The task of enrolling another member of our family in school the following year fell once again to Mum. I was pleased Jill was starting school. I felt sure I would not be so lonely with her there.
As we joined the small groups of children and parents walking to school that morning, I watched Jill curiously. She seemed neither excited nor daunted by the prospect of being away from home. I put her calmness down to ignorance, and felt sure that, once our walk led us within sight of school, Jill would break down.
‘Hasn’t the school got a lovely garden, Jilly?’ Mum commented as we rounded the last corner and approached the entrance.
‘Yeah, we’ve got roses like that.’
I narrowed my eyes and looked at her, not a tear in sight. Oh well, I thought, wait till it’s time for Mum to leave, then it’ll be on.
Mum deposited me at the door of my new class, then, taking Jill’s hand, she said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you the toilets.’
‘Are you coming, Sally?’ Jill asked.
‘Naah, saw ’em last year. Ask Mum to show ya the boys’ toilets, I’ve never been in there.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Sally, Jilly doesn’t want to see the boys’ toilets.’
‘Yes I do!’
I watched as, a few minutes later, Jill emerged from her tour of the toilets.
‘What do I do now?’ she asked as she trotted up the verandah to me.
‘Aah, ya have to wait for the bell. That’s your class down there. Go and sit with Mum on the step, she’ll be with you till the bell goes, but she won’t be here all day.’
‘Okay.’ I scanned her face. Poor kid, I thought, it hasn’t sunk in yet.
Jill walked back and plopped down on the verandah step. I watched as Mum smiled at her in exactly the same way she’d smiled at me the previous year. Jill grinned back. Mum had actually convinced her she was going to like school. She was so gullible, sometimes.
Within a few minutes, the bell was ringing loudly. Mum waved and began moving off. I was shocked when Jill calmly took her place in the queue that was forming at the front of her class.
Just before Mum disappeared completely from sight, I saw her cast an anxious glance towards the Grade One line. Now, Jill, now! I thought. It was the perfect moment. For some reason, Jill sensed my interest, and turned and waved happily to me. I groaned in despair. She was obviously dumber than I’d suspected. ‘Mum’s going now!’ I called out, but she was too busy chatting to the boy in front of her to reply.
I watched with a mixture of envy and surprise as she continued talking to the other children. They were all strangers to her, and yet she seemed to fit in, somehow. I knew then that, when it came to school, Jill and I would never agree.
My daydreaming was suddenly interrupted by a deep, grumbly voice calling, ‘You girl, you with the long plaits, come here and pay attention.’ I felt so embarrassed. I’d been so busy watching Jill that I’d failed to notice my classmates had also formed a line.
My new teacher began slowly walking down the line, carefully inspecting each of her forty charges. ‘Don’t slouch. Stomach in, chest out, chin up!’ She tapped my chin lightly with her wooden ruler. I attempted to follow her instructions, but found myself leaning so far backwards, I nearly fell over.
We moved quietly into class and the presence of each one of us was duly recorded in the roll book. When that was finished, our teacher drew herself up to her full flat-chested height of five foot eleven inches and said, ‘I … am Miss Roberts.’ Apart from her pause after the word ‘I’, she spoke quickly and very, very clearly.
‘Now children, I … am going to hand out some reading books. You will all remain as quiet as mice while I’m doing this. Then we will check to make sure you have all brought the things you were supposed to bring.’
I smiled to myself, it wasn’t going to be so terrible after all, my new book was on its way.
I waited expectantly as Miss Roberts walked first down one row and then another. By the time she finally reached my desk, I was practically brimming over with excitement. She placed my book on my desk, and I couldn’t help groaning out loud. It seemed that Dick, Dora, Nip and Fluff had somehow managed to graduate to Grade Two.
In a way, I felt sorry for them. None of them lived near a swamp, and there was no mention of wild birds, snakes or goannas. All they ever did was visit the toy shop and play ball with Nip. I resigned myself to another year of boredom.
There was no comparison between Miss Roberts and my Grade One teacher. If Mum had felt awkward about approaching Miss Glazberg, she was positively terrified when it came to Miss Roberts.
‘Has Miss Roberts ever been in the army, Mum?’ I asked her one afternoon.
‘What a strange question, whatever makes you ask that?’
‘Well, sometimes she acts like a man.’
‘When?’
‘When we line up for school. She won’t let us in the class unless we’re all straight and stiff. She pokes you in the stomach and says, “Stomach in, chest out, eyes forward”. Dad told me they do that to you in the army.’
Mum laughed, it was obvious she thought I was exaggerating again. However, the following week, she confided to me over tea that it seemed Miss Roberts had, indeed, been in the women’s army. One of the cleaners at the school had told her. I found this information very interesting. Dad often talked about the army. He’d been too much of a nonconformist to take naturally to army life. Now, I understood how he felt. I didn’t like being told what to do either.
From then on, whenever I marched into class, I would silently sing an old army ditty Dad had taught me.
I’m in the army now
I went to milk a cow
the cow let-off and I took off
I’m out of the army now!
Jill, Billy and I loved rude songs. We often marched around the yard singing that one. Billy beat on his old tin drum and Jill and I pretended to blow army trumpets. I could play reveille, too. By placing a piece of paper tightly over a comb and blowing on it, I could produce a high-pitched, farty sort of sound that I could then manipulate into a recognisable tune. I learnt to play many tunes on the comb, but reveille was my favourite.
Towards the end of first term, I had an encounter with Miss Roberts that wiped out any confidence I might have had for the rest of the year.
Our school seats comprised a heavy metal frame with jarrah slats spaced across the seat and back. This proved unfortunate for me, because one day, after what seemed hours of holding my arm in the air trying to attract Miss Roberts’ attention, I was unable to avoid wetting myself.
Miss Roberts had been intent on marking our latest tests and had failed to notice my desperately flailing arm. But one of the clean, shiny-haired, no-cavity girls next to me began to chant quietly, ‘You’ve wet ya pa-ants, you’ve wet ya pa-ants!’
‘I have not,’ I denied hotly, ‘it’s just water under my chair.’
‘Oh yeah, well then, how come you’ve dumped all those hankies on it?’ She had me there.
By this time, most of the surrounding children were starting to giggle.
Miss Roberts raised her horn-rimmed eyes and said firmly, ‘Quiet please!’ She stared at us a few seconds longer, obviously waiting for her eagle-like gaze to have its usual effect. When the last giggle was giggled, she pushed back her solid wooden chair, breathed deeply and said, ‘I … have an announcement to make.’
We were very impressed with Miss Roberts’ use of the word ‘I’. For the whole term, I had been convinced Miss Roberts was even more important than the headmistress.
‘I … have finished marking your test papers.’ There was complete silence after this statement. Under Miss Roberts’ reign, our weekly tests had assumed great importance. We all waited anxiously to hear who had missed the mark this time.
‘I … must commend you all on your efforts. All, except Rrrodney.’ She always rolled her R’s when she said Rodney. You’d think he was her favourite with the amount of attention she gave him. In fact, the opposite was true. Rodney could do nothing right.
‘Rrrodney,’ she continued, ‘how many times have I told you bottom is spelt b-o-t-t-o-m not b-u-m!’
Rodney grinned, and we all snickered, but were instantly checked by Miss Roberts’ look of disgust. She disliked anything even slightly earthy. I had a grudging admiration for Rodney. He’d been spelling bottom like that for three weeks now. He was my kind of person.
‘Now,’ she said, in a way that made us all straighten up and give full attention, ‘where is Sally, hmmmn?’ Resting her chin on her neck, she peered around the class in an attempt to locate my nondescript brown face amongst a sea of forty knowing smiles. ‘Oh, there you are, dear.’ I had been cowering behind the girl in front of me, with my hands stuffed between my legs in an attempt to prevent further trickles.
‘Sally has, for the first time this year, managed to complete her test correctly. In fact, this week she is the only one to have done so.’ Pausing, she allowed time for the greatness of my achievement to sink in. Everyone knew what was coming next, and, mistaking the smothered raspberries and giggles for eagerness, she said, ‘Well, come on Sally. Come out to the front and hold up your book. I … can tell the class is anxious to see your work.’
Miss Roberts waited patiently as I rose carefully to my feet. I hurriedly twisted the wet part of my dress around as far as I could, holding it tightly bunched in my left hand. With my knees locked together, and my left elbow jutting out at an unusual angle behind my back, I jerked spasmodically forward. Fortunately, Miss Roberts was gazing in amazement at my test book, and so was not confronted with the sight of my contorted body.
‘I … want you to hold it up to the class so they can all see it. Look how eager they are to see a test that has scored one hundred per cent!’
Clutching my book in my right hand, I leant as far from Miss Roberts as possible, lest she smell my condition.
My misshapen body must have alerted her to the fact that something was wrong, because she snapped impatiently, ‘Hold the book with two hands! And put your dress down, we are not interested in seeing your pants!’
A wave of giggling swept over the class. As I patted down the full skirt of my blue cotton dress, Miss Roberts’ large, sensitive nostrils flared violently, and she snorted in disgust.
Grasping me by the elbow, she hauled me back to my desk and, pointing to the offending puddle, demanded, ‘And where have all those handkerchiefs come from?’ Flinging back the lid of my desk, she shrieked, ‘Oh no! There are more in here!’ I felt so embarrassed. It was obvious she didn’t know what to attack first, my pile of dirty handkerchiefs nestled near my overflowing jar of pencil shavings, my collection of hardened orange peel, or my old apple core turned brown and on the brink of mould.
Shaking her head in disbelief, she muttered, ‘You dirty, dirty girl.’ She dragged me back to the front of the class and shoved me out the door.
‘Out you go, you are not to enter this class again. You sit out there and dry off!’
I sat alone and wet on the hard jarrah bench.
My attitude towards school took an even more rapid downhill turn after that incident. I felt different from the other children in my class. They were the spick-and-span brigade, and I, the grubby offender.