No Stars to Wish on

by Zana Fraillon

  The real Number 49 had lots of injections from the doctor. Lots of Results in doctor talk. But the last time he was given an injection there weren’t any letters or numbers in Results. Just a red cross. A red cross as if he’d failed or got a question on a test wrong.

  There were a few red crosses in the book.

  I am ready now. I have great big Evidence. I can get help. I can show the police the doctor’s book, tell them about the shoe and all the other clues, and what I saw the doctor do to Anthony, and what Charlie said, and how Samson agreed. Then the police will come and see what’s happening to everyone here. Then everyone will get to go home.

  Even the Nuns.

  I need to get out of here before the doctor finds his black book missing. Before he puts two and two together, as Gran says.

  Everyone is still at lunch. I need to be quick, before the Nuns finish their lunch and wonder what I’m doing down at the Holes. That’s my plan. I’m going to hide in the rubbish tip.

  As soon as it’s dark time, I’m going to climb right up that drainpipe and creep straight across the branch bridge, just like that clever mouse. I’ll drop down the other side, and I’ll be gone. And once I’m out, I’ll run and run until I can see the stars again, and then I’ll follow those stars all the way home.

  That was the last clue I left under my bed. I drew a picture of the rubbish tip and a picture of the drainpipe and the branch bridge and the stars. Because even if the branch has blown away by the time the next Number 49 finds my clues, he should be able to find something else to use as a bridge.

  I think I’m better at leaving clues than the real Number 49, but then he wasn’t really trying, was he? He did what he could, though. Great great-aunt Bette always says, ‘You do what you can.’ We all ‘do what we can’ and ‘It is what it is’.

  I can’t wait to get home.

  BEFORE I can get to the rubbish pile, Sister Catherine bustles me into the Eating Hall for lunch.

  ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ She makes sure I can see her say that. And she smiles, though I’m pretty sure she isn’t joking.

  It’s never good when the Nuns say they will deal with you later. Usually it means they’re saving your punishment until they can think up something really bad.

  I’m not worried today, though, because I won’t be here later to be dealt with. And even if I was, I’ll already be dealt with for spilling hot soup on the doctor.

  But when Sister Catherine smiled, even though she wasn’t joking, it reminded me. I realise where I’ve gone wrong. Some time, I stopped telling my jokes.

  But now I know how to fix it. I’ve finished my soup. It was a cracker of a soup today, as Great-great-aunt Jess would say. It tasted just like the ones Amrei used to make. Cook must have found some extra good crickets for all of us.

  EVERYONE is ready. Our tummies are full and warm from the first good soup we’ve had in ages. So now is the time. I think maybe my brain has exploded a bit, because I’m not frightened any more. It’s time to spread some smiles.

  To start it all off, I’ve remembered the Nun jokes from my joke book.

  What is black and white and bounces? A Nun on a pogo-stick!

  What is black and white and screams? A Nun on a slippery dip!

  What is black and white and flies? A Nun in a helicopter!

  What’s worse than raining cats and dogs? Raining Nuns!

  Why did the Nun cross the road? It was the chicken’s day off!

  Why did the Nun sleep under the truck? She wanted to wake up oily!

  Ha ha!

  The boys at my table are laughing. Gus laughs so hard soup shoots out his nose. That makes Anthony and the others laugh.

  My plan is working. The laughter is catching. All over the Eating Hall kids are smiling, even though they can’t hear me. I stand up on the bench and shout more Nun jokes, though I throw in my favourite animal joke, too:

  When did the fly fly? When the Spider spied her! Ha ha!

  Now everyone is laughing. Max is cheering. Charlie is standing up and clapping and giving me her thumbs up. Every face I look at is happy, a crazy, for-the-moment kind of happy.

  I have at least five more Nun jokes to go before I have to switch to teacher jokes.

  Suddenly, Mother Superior is in front of me. It’s spooky how she can do that.

  All the Nun jokes run out of my head. Scaredy-cats. But one last Nun joke sticks with me:

  Why did the Nun frown when she passed the henhouse? She heard fowl language! Ha ha!

  Even the other Nuns are laughing. Well, some of them, anyway: Sister Beatrice and Sister Theodora. They’re laughing into their sleeves, trying to hide it, but they can’t.

  Sister Mary and Sister Frances look surprised. Probably the way we look when they throw water on us.

  Sister Augusta looks scared.

  I don’t have any more Nun jokes. But I can still remember the one about the zoo keepers. ‘What’s a zoo keeper’s favourite veg—’

  Mother Superior whacks my face so hard with her cane that the words get whacked right out in a kind of Oomph! One of my teeth goes with it. The tooth fairy will have a hard time finding that one.

  Mother Superior drags me off the bench by my hair. I trip, but she just keeps pulling. These Nuns really are strong. I can’t get my feet on the floor, so she has to drag me herself.

  Can someone’s whole scalp just slip off their head if it’s pulled hard enough?

  We’re at the door now. She’s still whacking me as she drags me along. I get to my feet, finally, but that just gives her more whacking space.

  It’s funny, because even though I know I should really be hurting, I’m not. It’s as if I’m floating on a cloud. I know it will hurt later, but for now my bubble keeps me safe.

  I look back at the room full of kids. They’re frightened and angry at the same time. That wasn’t part of my plan. Perhaps they’re all waiting for the punchline.

  I manage to twist around. I smile. The greatest, biggest smile I’ve ever smiled. ‘A ZOO-chini!’ And I can’t help it. I’m laughing now, as much as Samson was before. It’s a real laugh, too, because I do really love that joke.

  I only get one more glimpse of the room, then. Some kids are cheering, some kids are clapping, others are busy talking to each other. I bet they’re telling jokes. Charlie gives me a small wave, and a thumbs up.

  We’re at the stairs. I know where we’re going. I suppose I will be scared when that door shuts, but at least it will be clean down there. Unless it’s the third Hole, the one I never got to.

  Mother Superior stops, and pushes me up against the wall. She bends down low so I can see her lips. For the first time ever, she speaks slowly and clearly so I can understand.

  ‘You are nothing,’ she says. ‘Your family is nothing. They are worthless. They don’t even care about you. They think you are dead. And you might as well be. Because you are never, ever going to see anyone from your family again. You are going to stay here, and I am going to make you very, very sorry.’

  And I know that this is meant to scare me, to make me feel bad and sorry and worried and, more than anything, terrified. But it doesn’t. It just doesn’t. I know my family isn’t worthless. Her saying all that makes her seem not so much like a monster, more like a very confused person. And all her non-sense makes me think of senses of humour all over again.

  ‘It’s because, Mother Superior, zoo keepers—’ I don’t get to finish because she slams my head back into the wall, and for a second everything goes fuzzy in front of my eyes.

  Then the craziest thing happens. When my eyes unfuzz, I see a small grey mouse racing up the stairs towards us. Mother Superior sees it too and stops to watch what it will do. Perhaps she thinks it’s the Ghost Mouse, coming back for revenge. But I know this mouse. It’s got silvery whiskers and a white dash on its tail.

  Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the beginning of the Mouse Army swarming through the Home and setting us all free. The beginning of the Great Mouse War. Mo
ther Superior’s eyes go small, and her mouth screws up. I can see the hate. It’s close to the way she looks at me, but meaner. She might not be part monster, she might just be a very confused person, but a very confused person can also be very mean.

  This mouse doesn’t stand a chance.

  Mother Superior raises her cane. I know what will happen. I know the cane will snap the little mouse’s back just as surely as a mousetrap would. And without really thinking, I pop out my free arm. The cane smacks onto my arm, but it misses the mouse.

  It must have got a fright, though, because soon Mother Superior starts jumping about, hopping on the spot. The mouse has somehow found its way up her skirt! Perhaps she smells like cheese. That makes me start laughing.

  Mother Superior lets go of me, to fight off the mouse. Its furry face pokes over her shoulder before disappearing into her habit. So Mother Superior starts in with her cane, whacking herself to get to that mouse. Tears are pouring down my face, I’m laughing so hard. This actually is the funniest thing I have ever seen. And if I don’t think about what’s going to happen, or about anything that has already happened, it might just be the funniest moment in my whole life.

  One little mouse can make a difference, after all. Even against the Nuns. Thank you, Mouse.

  Mouse pops his head out one more time. He looks straight at me, and I realise: now’s my chance.

  I’ll have to go upstairs and through the halls and outside.

  I take a leap up the stairs. I think I’ve made it.

  But then I feel Mother Superior’s robot grip on my ankle. My shoe comes off. One down, one to go.

  I feel the air leave my lungs. A sigh that seems to last a lifetime. They say people’s lives flash before their eyes, but for me it’s my life whooshing out on that one sigh. All the things I’ve seen and felt and wondered at are pushed out of my lungs and disappear into the air. All the laughter and jokes and smiles are gone. I am empty.

  In my head I fight her as hard as I can. My foot with a shoe still on crashes against her face, and she lets go long enough for me to scramble upstairs, where she can’t reach me.

  In my head, all that happens.

  But I don’t think my body has even moved.

  It’s the strangest thing, because watching her, thinking all that, I don’t hate her. I don’t hate any of them. I just feel a heaviness in my body. A sort of sadness, at them, at us, at everything.

  But at least my plan worked. At least, for a few moments, I spread enough smiles to make everyone happy. Even the Nuns.

  Perhaps now they’ve remembered how to smile they’ll try it out more often.

  I don’t think I’ll be around to find out.

  AMREI didn’t remember walking down the hallway. She didn’t remember opening the door and starting down the stairs. All she could remember was hearing Jack’s laugh. That sound called her from the kitchen, and pulled her through the crowded Eating Hall towards her cousin. She caught sight of him just before he was yanked through the door and down the stairs.

  And if what Jack remembers is true, Amrei came floating towards him with open arms, like some Angel of Mercy, her face a mask of such intensity that he had to look away.

  But Jack doesn’t remember much else until the moment his bare foot hit the frost on the grass outside the Home, and he realised no one was following them yet.

  He stopped and took off his remaining shoe. It had blood smeared on the sole, and a single strand of wiry grey hair stuck to the canvas. He wondered how it had got there.

  Jack was smiling as he threw his shoe high over the fence.

  If anyone had been watching, they would have seen Jack and Amrei pause on the hill. They might have noticed the questioning look on Amrei’s face, and Jack’s slow shake of the head.

  And as Jack and Amrei ran through the grass, anyone watching would have seen how focused on each other the two had become, so much that they didn’t even notice the swarm of mice heading towards the Home.

  THE Greats ran out of waiting. The very same afternoon I was run run running with Amrei across the wet grass, my mum woke in a house with no sound. She didn’t even have to look. She knew what had happened.

  Gran reckons the Greats knew. She reckons that somehow they found out that we were out and were coming home. The Doctor said spider bites must have killed them, but he didn’t have much Evidence. Just that each Great died with a little spider sitting inside her right ear.

  Amrei smiled when she heard this. She said they had been Called.

  I hope Gran and Amrei are right. I hope the Greats were happy when they died. I hope they didn’t die waiting for their family to be by their side. I hope they died from a laughing heart, rather than a broken one.

  I don’t know how long it took us to get back home. We never stopped for long. Every time we stopped to rest at camping grounds and caravan parks, Amrei made a meal for everyone in the camp. She sang our story into the soup as she cooked.

  I’m the first of us kids to make it home. I ask Amrei when the others are coming, but she doesn’t answer.

  Maybe sometimes it’s best not to know the future. That way you can hang on to your hoping.

  When Mum saw me, her whole body froze. Then she stood up and hugged me. It was the longest, deepest hug I can remember. I wished we could be stuck like that forever.

  She asked me about the others. About Baby Sal and Janey and Phin. I told her what Charlie said about Janey and the foster home and escaping and being caught and put in the Girls’ Home. I told her about Baby Sal in the truck and what Sister Augusta had said and how she looked when she said it. I told her what Janey said about Phin and him forgetting to smile. And then I showed her my Evidence.

  Mum nodded. She picked up her bag and took my Evidence with her to show the police. She’s going to do what needs to be done. I know she won’t stop because her eyebrows crept together like the biggest caterpillars you ever saw. No one would cross my mother when she looks like that. Not when she has Evidence. Some things just can’t be ignored.

  Now we’re home, Amrei cooks soup every single day. She sets up a table on the side of the road, and feeds anyone who comes along. She sings our story into the soup, just as she did on the way home.

  These days I sleep in Mum and Gran’s room. When I’m lying there waiting for Mum to come home, I hold tightly on to my bear that Great-great-aunt Annie left for me to find. I try not to think about why she didn’t leave anything on Janey’s bed, or Phin’s bed, or in Baby Sal’s cot. When my brain thinks about it anyway, I like to suppose that she left things for them in a special place where only they will find them.

  Some nights I hear the Greats in my head chatting away out on the verandah, swatting at moths and talking to the stars. ‘It is what it is,’ Great-great-aunt Bette tells Amrei. ‘We’ll all be together soon, you mark my words,’ Great-great-aunt Jess agrees. ‘Everyone has their own path to follow,’ Great-great-aunt Annie adds. Great-gram nods along, and tells Amrei the story of how she felt when her Visions stopped, and how she still found her path without them. They keep on chatting in my head. I hope they never stop.

  Some nights I wake thinking that I can feel Baby Sal tugging at me from her cot, or I wake up grumpy because Phin has jumped on me, even though it must only be my rememberings because, as soon as I open my eyes, I’m all alone again in the room, except for Gran, who has shrunk so small that sometimes I don’t even know she’s there. It’s funny, but I almost miss sleeping in the hall with all the other boys and the noise. I definitely miss Samson.

  The Nuns were wrong. We weren’t forgotten at all.

  No one is ever totally forgotten. No one. We leave our traces. Like the smells that sneak down from the tip. Tiny bits and pieces of ourselves are scattered wherever we go. Treasure. Clues for others to find and remember, to listen to, and learn from.

  Number 49 knew that. Jack. His name is Jack. Just like me.

  Jack knew the truth. Janey knew the truth. And I know the truth.

  We’
re just waiting for the rest of the world to figure it out.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS story is a work of fiction. None of the people or places described are based on real people or places. However, the kind of events that took place in the story are an all-too-real part of Australian history; a part of our history that until recently was forgotten, along with the children who suffered.

  From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Australian government decided that many children from poor families would be better off in care. These children were removed from their families, often by force, and many were made wards of the state.

  In many of these families, the father was absent or out of work. Men returned from army service only to suffer from war-related mental illnesses when they got home. There was a shortage of jobs, so many men struggled to find employment, and women’s wages were not taken into consideration when calculating the ability of families to provide for their children. Migrant children from England were also placed in orphanages around the country.

  One might argue that the policy of removing children from their families was formed with the children’s best interests at heart. In practice, however, it was a different story. While some institutions (both government and church) were well run and staffed by people who cared deeply for their charges and did not harm them in any way, this was not the case for many of the children removed from their families. Many suffered physical, emotional and mental abuse. They were also forced to work, and denied access to education or proper medical care – basic life opportunities that we now consider a child’s right.

  Some of the children who were placed in homes were used in illegal medical experiments and research. This included trials of vaccines that had previously not worked, or had failed to pass safety tests in animals. There has since been a call for a royal commission into the use of the vaccines, after suggestions that some contained a strain of monkey virus, traces of which have now been discovered in cancer cells in humans.