Shauna's Great Expectations

by Kathleen Loughnan

  I’ve told my parents to stop worrying, and for God’s sake stop calling. They want to know if I’m having any problems (no) and when I’m going to see a doctor (when I have time). I have consulted Dr Google a few times on the computers in prep. hall. The first time I did it, a couple of Year 8s walked in and I had to slam the tab closed. The next time I looked up ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’, I found a website which said that at this stage of the pregnancy I should be seeing a specialist obstetrician every week! Of course this completely freaked me out because it’s impossible. How could I ever get out of school that often without arousing suspicion? Where would my parents or I get the money to pay a specialist? So I’ve stopped looking up that rubbish, assuring myself that women have been giving birth for thousands of years without the help of doctors. As for the birth itself, I don’t want to think about it because it terrifies me.

  Recently I’ve taken to googling ‘Nathan O’Brien’ and staring for ages at an online photo of him leading a cow at the Tamworth Show. He’s so handsome that I long for him, but I’m also angry with him. I need to stop googling him – longing and anger are an unpleasant combination.

  It’s Nathan I’m stewing about while I’m in the bathroom with Lou-Anne (in separate showers) early one morning before class. I’m replaying my mental tape of that scene at the Easter Show, the sidelong looks of his scrubchook mother. It’s all too easy to remember the ugly implications in her gaze. And then Nathan’s pouty, out-of-line reaction at Tamworth Plaza. Could he have made me feel any worse?

  When those feelings spit and sizzle to the surface, I feel totally justified in enforcing my scorched-earth communications policy against Nathan. After a few unreturned messages and telephone calls, he appears to have given up. I don’t care. I want Bob the baby to have a family, but not that family.

  I have no idea how long I’ve been in the shower when I hear someone come into the bathroom.

  ‘Showers are full!’ Lou-Anne calls out beside me, but I don’t hear the bathroom door shut again.

  A few seconds later my shower curtain is ripped open. Keli Street-Hughes is standing inches from me in her school uniform. She has her contraband iPhone in her hand and she’s pointing it right at me. Annabel Saxon is beside her. I hear Lou-Anne scream as Annabel pulls her curtain aside.

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ Keli gapes at my obscenely rounded belly. She’s so shocked that she lets her phone drop to her side. ‘Annabel! Look!’

  I pull my shower curtain back across before Annabel gets the chance.

  ‘Get out of here, you bloody perverts!’ squeals Lou-Anne. ‘Bloody lezzos!’

  I hear Keli gasp, ‘She’s lathering up for two!’ before they both run giggling out of the bathroom.

  ‘It’s none of your business!’ I shout after her.

  Lou-Anne and I dive out of the showers and grab our towels.

  ‘She’s going to tell everyone, you know!’ I shriek, realising that the moment I’ve been dreading is about to arrive. My chest feels tight, my head is spinning, and my fingers are so thick and clumsy that I drop my tunic on the floor three times before managing to pull it on.

  ‘What should I do?’ I ask Lou-Anne.

  ‘Put your blazer on.’

  ‘I mean, what should I do about Keli and Annabel?’

  ‘Well, we could kill them, but that’s the only way I can think of shutting them up.’

  What else can I do but finish dressing and go to roll call? I’m not about to beg them to keep it quiet. I know that within ten minutes, every boarder at the school is going to know about Bob.

  ‘Remember that it’s nobody’s business but yours,’ Lou-Anne says as she walks me to my roll call room. ‘Nobody has any right to know or even to ask.’

  Keli’s not in my roll call class, but Annabel is. I stare daggers into the back of her head, willing her to keel over and die before she can do any more damage. I look around the room, searching for huddles of gleefully gossiping girls, but no one seems to be looking at me.

  ‘Are you okay, Shauna?’ Jenny asks. ‘You look worried.’

  I lean in and whisper into her ear. ‘Keli and Annabel know.’

  ‘Know what?’ asks Jenny at regular volume.

  I widen my eyes at her.

  ‘Oh. Well. No one’s said anything to me.’

  ‘Tell me if they do,’ I say, though God only knows what I’m going to do with the information. What can I do? Anyone who takes a long, hard look at me is going to know it’s true. All I can do is wait. It’s torture.

  I spend the day slumped over my work, pulling in my blazer to cover the bump. I meet Lou-Anne in our dorm room at recess and then again at lunch.

  ‘No one’s said anything to me, Shauna. Maybe Keli and Annabel are going to do the right thing and keep their big mouths shut?’

  ‘When have they ever done the right thing?’ I reply shrilly. ‘If they’re holding out, it’s only to torture me!’

  Lou-Anne slings an arm around my shoulder. ‘You stay strong, Shauna. They’re not gonna get anything out of me, not even if they waterboard me.’

  ‘Maybe I should just go ahead and admit the truth to stop the suspense.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. Just keep quiet.’

  Nothing unusual happens for the rest of the school day.

  The hopeful side of me, the part of me that could believe that Keli Street-Hughes has a shred of compassion or decency in her soul, thinks that maybe she won’t tell. Maybe no one will find out. Maybe I’ll have the baby during stuvac and no one will be any the wiser.

  But then Miss Maroney’s waiting for me in my dorm room after the final bell.

  ‘Shauna,’ she says soberly, ‘we need to talk.’

  Fucking Keli Street-Hughes. She’s Satan, Lucifer and Jezebel rolled into one giant ranga super bitch demon.

  I grit my teeth, suck in my gut, and follow Miss Maroney into her quarters. I remind myself that I’ve gotten through my brother’s death and many anniversaries since, and I can get through this, too.

  She comes right out with it. ‘A little birdie told me you’re pregnant.’

  I shake my head. ‘Little birdie doesn’t know what little birdie’s talking about.’

  ‘Come on, Shauna. You’ve put on so much weight over the last few months. I thought you’d been overeating due to the stress.’

  I shrug. Miss Maroney crosses and uncrosses her long, athletic legs. Because she’s so young and nice, and she’s been a confidante to me in the past, I have an urge to unload on her. But I know I mustn’t.

  ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘No, you can’t. This is not a problem that’s going to go away. How far along are you, anyway?’

  I set my jaw and shake my head.

  ‘There’s simply no point in denying it. You should look into getting appropriate pre-natal care. You can’t just go to a hospital when you start having contractions. You need to have scans and tests first. For your baby’s good as well as your own.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Have you been to see a doctor about it? I know you went to see Dr Baker a while back.’

  She’s trying to hook me, but I won’t bite.

  ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘You’ll probably be asked to leave the school, you know. You can’t stay at a school like Oakholme College when you’re pregnant. It’s a religious school. Sex before marriage is a good reason to expel you. They won’t let such an embarrassing situation continue out in the open. Especially not in your case, when the school has been so generous to you. You’ll bring the whole Indigenous scholarship program into disrepute.’

  I meet her eye. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Well, that might not be your decision to make.’

  ‘Oh, I’m staying here, no matter what. I’m finishing the HSC. I don’t care what you try to do to me.’ I glare at her. ‘If you think you can get rid of me as easily as you got rid of the other scholarship recipients, you’ve got another thing coming.’

  �
�Do you really think we tried to get rid of the others?’ Miss Maroney frowns deeply at me. ‘You’re so mixed up, Shauna. You are such a disturbed young person.’

  ‘Can I go now?’ I ask again.

  She nods. I go back to my room and pick up some books to take to prep. hall. The battle I’ve been dreading has begun. Let them try to get rid of me. I’ve toughed out this gig for the last five years. I’ve had it in my head ever since Elodie bailed out that I was going to be Oakholme College’s first Indigenous graduate. I’m not giving up that honour without a fight.

  My pride in what I have and the fear of losing it sit boulder-like on my chest as I go through the motions of study and going to bed.

  ‘Can I feel your belly?’ asks Bindi just before lights-out. She takes a seat on the edge of my bed.

  I expose the belly in question and she prods it as if it might nip her.

  ‘You did such a stellar job of hiding it,’ she whispers.

  ‘The breasts were a giveaway,’ Indu says casually.

  ‘You knew?’ Lou-Anne and I shriek in unison.

  ‘No one’s bazookas get that big that quickly without surgical intervention or pregnancy.’

  The way she says ‘bazookas’ is just so funny that we fall apart with laughter. Then, suddenly, we start frantically shushing each other.

  ‘Guys,’ announces Lou-Anne. ‘Lights out. This is serious.’

  After lights-out Bindi whispers ‘bazookas’ in Indu’s accent and it starts all over again.

  23

  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 understan
d. ‘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.