Shauna's Great Expectations

by Kathleen Loughnan

  ‘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.

  24

  THE DUTY LEGAL officer at the Aboriginal legal centre isn’t even a lawyer. She assures me that she’s a law student, but she looks and sounds like she’s in Year 8. She’s a tiny, mousy thing with blue-framed glasses and a red nose that won’t stop dripping.

  ‘I’ve got allergies,’ she explains.

  Her name is Sarah Hogan-Doran. I’m sitting in her ‘office’, which is a table and two chairs pushed into the corner of a room full of filing cabinets. So far she hasn’t exactly filled me with confidence.

  ‘I’ve never come across a case like this before,’ she said after I’d explained my situation, ‘but I think there are laws that stop institutions like schools discriminating against pregnant women.’

  Now she’s doing research on her laptop while I sit opposite her, wondering where I might find myself a real lawyer who can give me a real answer.

  Finally, after about fifteen minutes of clicking and frowning at her screen, she closes her laptop.

  ‘So . . .’ she begins.

  ‘So?’

  ‘The Sex Discrimination Act forbids educational institutions from denying enrolment to pregnant students.’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘There’s a catch, though. If the school is a religious school, then it can discriminate to its heart’s content, if it does so to avoid offending the people who are part of that religion.’

  ‘So where does that leave me?’

  Sarah looks down at my expulsion letter. ‘Well, it’s a church school, isn’t it?’

  I nod. It’s certainly a religious school.

  ‘So they can do whatever they like?’

  ‘That’s what the legislation seems to say. I can try to find a court case about it, but I don’t think that there have been any.’

  ‘So mine would be the first.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend going to court,’ she says, shaking her head gravely.

  We talk about other options for finishing the HSC, but I tell her I’m not interested in going quietly.

  ‘Have you got a bone to pick with the school for some other reason?’

  That’s a question I have to think about before answering.

  ‘Well, they’ve been pretty good to me, but there have been some problems . . .’

  Then we get into the whole Olivia Pike affair and the other scholarship recipients who’ve left the school.

  ‘Do you think the Indigenous girls get discriminated against?’

  ‘It’s not always deliberate, but yeah, I do. I overheard the principal Mrs Green say that they’re gonna scrap the scholarship because we cause too much trouble.’

  Sarah nods. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘She said I’m going to be on welfare for the rest of my life.’

  ‘She said that to you!’

  ‘Not to me. I overheard her.’

  Sarah opens her laptop. She launches into her furious clicking and typing again.

  ‘A religious school might be able to discriminate against you for your pregnancy,’ she says after a few minutes, ‘but it can’t discriminate against you because of your race. Or vilify you. Saying that you’re going to be on welfare for the rest of your life – well, that sounds like
racial vilification to me.’

  ‘So I can sue them for racism?’

  ‘Well . . . yes. But I’m not recommending that. The way the discrimination law works, you have to make a complaint first. You can’t bring a case to court until the complaint’s been dealt with.’

  She explains more about the process, reading from a government website. It seems like she doesn’t really know that much about it, but at least she knows where to go looking.

  I spend another two hours in the dank corner of that filing closet, writing a statement of everything bad that’s ever happened to me at Oakholme College. I feel like a first-class ingrate complaining about a place that has overall been very good to me, but what other option is there? Slink off home so they can pretend I never existed, so the Indigenous scholarship program can just be an unfortunate historical blot on Oakholme’s otherwise unsullied copybook? Forget that! I’m complaining. It doesn’t come naturally to me, but so what?

  Sarah goes online and files a complaint on my behalf, based on my statement. She prints out a copy of the complaint and hands it to me.

  ‘I’m not saying that you should go to court, Shauna, but I think you’ve really got something here. Something that might make them think twice about what they’ve done. I wouldn’t be surprised if they revoke your expulsion letter once they get wind of this.’

  ‘Why would they, though?’

  ‘Embarrassment. The possibility of the complaint being leaked to the media. Which you’re quite within your rights to do, by the way. In fact, if they don’t revoke the termination of enrolment, you call me, okay? And I’ll talk to them. Tell them about my journalist friend who works at The Australian.’

  I really can’t see someone like Mrs Green being intimidated by someone like mousy Sarah Hogan-Doran, but maybe she has some tricks up her sleeve I don’t know about. Appearances can be deceptive. I, of all people, know that to be true.

  I catch the bus back to school with Mrs Green’s expulsion letter and my complaint in my hot little hand.

  When I get back to the dorm, all hell has broken loose. Everyone had assumed I’d gone back to Barraba in a Pike-style walkabout incident. A large group of boarders crowd around me.

  By now everyone knows I’m pregnant. I have nothing to lose by standing on my bed and reading aloud Mrs Green’s expulsion letter. As I read pompous-arse phrases like ‘inconsistent with the moral and religious ethos of Oakholme College’, the girls all shake their hands in the air and shriek, ‘Oooooh!’

  Then I start reading the complaint. I’m only about halfway through the paragraph entitled ‘Nature of the Complaint’ when Miss Maroney and Reverend Ferguson burst into our already packed-like-sardines dorm.

  ‘Go back to your rooms!’ barks Miss Maroney.

  Olivia starts a chant, ‘Shau-na! Shau-na! Shau-na!’ Within a few repetitions, about twenty girls have joined in. The sound is deafening in a room with such fine acoustics.

  Miss Maroney puts her whistle (still hanging there from netball training) to her mouth, and blows it to full effect.

  ‘Back to your rooms now or you’re all on Wednesday detention!’ she growls.

  The crowd gradually falls quiet and begins to file out.

  ‘Shauna, get off that bed,’ says Reverend Ferguson calmly. ‘If you fall, you’ll do yourself a mischief. Not to mention what you’ve got on board there.’

  When there’s no one but my dorm buddies left in the room, Reverend Ferguson asks them to leave, too. Miss Maroney escorts them down to the prep. hall.

  SRF sits on the bed in an unprecedented state of puffed-up upset. Her face is flushed, her blouse is untucked, and her grey bob has kinked the wrong way. She looks like she’s been crying.

  ‘We called the police, you know! We thought you might have done yourself some kind of harm.’

  I get down from the bed and stand in front of her.

  ‘Wouldn’t Mrs Green have been happy then!’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’

  ‘I’m going to cause her a lot more trouble alive,’ I tell her confidently. ‘I’ve been with my lawyer, writing this.’ I hand her my copy of the complaint. ‘If Mrs Green doesn’t retract that expulsion letter by dinnertime, I’m going public!’

  Reverend Ferguson reads the complaint, taking her time, in spite of my threat.

  With a frown that could kill butterflies in Tasmania, she folds the letter and puts it under her arm.

  ‘I’ll pass this on, but please, Shauna, if you’re going to leave the school grounds, let us know. You took years off my life this afternoon.’

  When she leaves, I take a shower, which I desperately need, and spend a good twenty minutes stroking and talking gently to Bob the baby. I feel like he’s been with me the whole time, and that we’re going to stand up to the powers that be together and for the benefit of both of us. Everything I’m doing now is for him, and that thought gives me strength.

  Dinner in the dining hall is raw and raucous, which totally beats the crap out of silent and ashamed. Everyone wants to pat my belly and congratulate me. Indu asks me whether I’m going to name the baby after her. Bindi ribs me for hiding my pregnancy.

  ‘You deserve an Oscar, Shauna.’

  Olivia asks quietly if I’m scared to give birth.

  ‘I’m trying not to think that far ahead,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry, Shauna,’ says Lou-Anne, ‘it’s just like doing a big poo!’

  We all fall about in disgusted laughter.

  ‘My sister had two at the same time,’ replies Lou-Anne.

  ‘They came out at the same time?’ I joke.

  ‘Yeah,’ adds Lou-Anne. ‘Sideways.’

  Olivia’s eyes get wider and wider.

  ‘It’ll happen to you, too, someday, Olivia,’ I say.

  After dinner, Miss Maroney corners me in the staircase and tells me that Mrs Green wants to see me in her office.

  ‘She’s still here?’

  ‘Under the circumstances, yes,’ replies Miss Maroney stiffly. ‘You’re not making life easy for her.’

  Normally a comment like that would make me feel bad about myself. But today I won’t allow it.

  ‘Mrs Green could do the right thing,’ I say, ‘and then everyone’s life would be easy.’

  ‘Yes, Shauna, we could all do the right thing, couldn’t we?’ she replies in a bitchy tone that I just can’t let fly.

  ‘I have done the right thing. I did the best thing I could ever have done when I said no to an abortion.’

  With that, I take off in the direction of the admin. building, full of righteous indignation about the hypocrisy of this school and its staff. If I’d had an abortion, which must be at least as offensive to the religious teachings of the school as out-of-marriage sex, I’d be Oakholme College’s irreproachable star student. Some pious little speech in this vein forms in my mind as I make my way to Mrs Green’s office. I want to argue with her, to give her a good telling-off.

  But the reality of our meeting is pretty banal.

  ‘Please sit, Shauna,’ says the exhausted-looking woman seated on the other side of the room. Her hands are clasped together and I notice that they’re trembling.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ She sighs heavily. ‘I’ve had a chance to read your complaint. I want to let you know that while you’re still formally expelled, I’ve decided to let you stay on as a guest of the school until the school board meets and the matter has been resolved.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘That’s as much as I can offer for the time being,’ she says. ‘I can’t do anything else until the board’s met.’

  I nod curtly. ‘I’ll call my lawyer tomorrow.’ I turn to leave, but Mrs Green asks me to stay.

  ‘Please understand that our decision to expel you has nothing to do with your ethnic background. Our reaction would have been the same no matter who the student was.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘If one of
our non-Indigenous girls was in the same boat, we’d make the same decision. Of course we would.’

  ‘I’ll bet there are at least five girls at this school who’ve been pregnant at some stage. Only they don’t get punished for it because a dead foetus doesn’t embarrass you.’

  Mrs Green grinds her jaw. She looks like she’s aged about fifteen years since the last time I saw her, which was this morning.

  ‘I resent that’ is all she can think to say.

  ‘You resent it because it’s true.’

  ‘You can leave now, Shauna.’

  I go back to the dorms, thinking what a good job Oakholme College has done on me. When I arrived four and a half years ago, I couldn’t look Mrs Green in the eye, let alone stand up to her, let alone stand over her.

  Look at me now.

  25

  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?