Shauna's Great Expectations

by Kathleen Loughnan

  By the time breakfast is served, the article from The Australian has been circulated around the entire boarding house. The powers-that-be must know by now. They just must. I eat my breakfast surrounded by chattering friends. Everyone wishes me well. I have no idea what lies in store for me today.

  ‘I’m going to start a campaign for you on Indiegogo,’ says Bindi.

  Indu rolls her eyes. ‘You’re going to crowdfund Shauna’s baby?’

  ‘What do you think we should do, Indu?’ Bindi replies. ‘Put in a special request to Sai Baba?’

  ‘Works for me,’ sniffs Indu.

  I go to roll call with a strange sense of calm. I sit next to Jenny. She turns to me and smiles tentatively. I smile back, even though this could be my final roll call.

  It doesn’t surprise me when a note arrives. It comes stuck to the front cover of a great paving brick of a book called Sex and Destiny:

  Board meeting this morning following Australian article. Keep you updated. Chin up. SRF.

  I go to English class with Jenny by my side. Our English teacher, Mrs Arnold, gives me a cautious, curt ‘Hello, Shauna’ as we take our seats. She begins the lesson, never quite taking her eyes off me. I wonder what the executive order to the teachers has been? Keep Shauna Harding in sight at all times.

  Instead of following the lesson, I dive into Sex and Destiny. (I’m thoroughly sick of John Donne and Charles Dickens anyway.) In its opening pages, the author, Germaine Greer, says that in the industrialised West we have created a society that does not like children, and more than that, children who don’t like their parents.

  The book was written over thirty years ago, but so much of what I’m reading rings true. It rings particularly true for me because I’ve been on the pointy end of other people’s fear of children. Greer says that rich, greedy, infertile Caucasians are afraid that their standard of living is threatened by the economic demands of the over-fertile poor (Say thanks to your dad for me, Keli). She says that mothers, children and old people in the developed world are marginalised, and that we may never return to the riches of a family-centred world.

  I realise that I am one of the over-fertile poor, part of a family-oriented black culture that white people are afraid of. It’s not that I believe that white Australians are actively, consciously out to get me or Bob, but I do agree with parts of Greer’s theory. When I read that opening chapter, I feel like she’s talking directly to me. And what she’s telling me is that I’m right to want my baby. I also know that Reverend Ferguson thinks that I’m right to want my baby. That’s what she’s telling me by giving me this book.

  ‘Shauna?’

  Mrs Arnold says my name for a third time before I look up from the pages of the book.

  ‘Mrs Green would like to see you.’

  Jenny squeezes my arm and mouths ‘good luck’. A bit rich coming from the person who put me in it. Though I understand her reasons, I still feel raw about what Jenny did. I don’t like it when someone else decides what’s good for me.

  At Mrs Green’s office, a battle scene awaits. I swear the whole school board is crammed in there, between the door and the delicately bubbling tropical fish tank. They all stand as I enter the room. I know that the article has made a big impact. Why else would they have called in Oakholme College’s infantry, cavalry and artillery? In fact, they look like relics from the First World War. It’s like ANZAC day lunch at the old folks’ home. They’re all ancient, all crotchety, all dour. And, it goes without saying, all white.

  Mrs Green, the young gun, tells me to take a seat, and as usual, I refuse. Everyone else sits back down.

  ‘Am I expelled or not?’ I ask her. The urge to get out is very strong. The sheer number of people in the room is making me very nervous.

  ‘We think we can come to an arrangement,’ says a doddery, blue-rinsed man I vaguely remember from chapel services. Reverend Bennett, maybe? I don’t know. I’ve always just thought of him as the Blue Rinse Guy.

  ‘What kind of arrangement?’

  Blue Rinse clears his throat. ‘Obviously, you were very upset by the school’s decision, or you would never have approached the media.’

  ‘My lawyer approached the media. I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘But you must have agreed to the article being written.’

  I shrug. ‘I suppose I could get my lawyer to withdraw my complaint and put out a more positive press release. You know, if the right arrangement were reached. I’d need to speak to my lawyer first, though.’

  All the old people turn to look at the guy sitting next to Blue Rinse. He introduces himself as David Sachs, Oakholme’s lawyer. He gives me his card and tells me to have my lawyer get in touch.

  I nod solemnly while quietly crapping myself. I wonder how tiny Sarah Hogan-Doran will stack up against someone as experienced as Mr Sachs. But she hasn’t let me down yet, has she? Her strategies have hit their target every time.

  I go back to the dorms, call the Aboriginal legal centre, and leave a message for Sarah. The receptionist tells me that she won’t be in the office until the afternoon.

  Then I get Bindi to text my dad to let him know I’m about to call. He answers after a lot of ringing.

  ‘Shauna?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Is everything all right? We’ve had about thirty missed calls from the school. And yesterday we got a letter via express post telling us we’d better pick you up or they’d call social services!’

  ‘Ignore it. Everything’s changed since then. I’ve got a lawyer now, and I think they’re going to let me stay.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  I explain how I went to the Aboriginal legal centre and met the cleverest, most devious law student on the planet. Dad says that he hopes I sort it out soon, because they’re dying of worry. Then he puts Mum on the phone.

  ‘Shauna, love! How are you?’

  Mum sounds emotional, but also excited and clear headed. She doesn’t sound like she’s talking under the weight of antidepressants. I assure her that I’ve got an appointment with the hospital, that I’m being responsible. She wants to know if I know the baby’s gender.

  ‘I’ll probably find out tomorrow. I’m going to the hospital for some tests.’

  I tell her that I’ve been calling it Fred the foetus and now Bob the baby.

  ‘No grandson of mine’s going to be called Fred or Bob, Shauna,’ she says.

  Just before we hang up, Dad gets back on the phone and asks about Nathan.

  ‘He’s being a jerk, Dad,’ I rage, knowing damn well that I’m being a bit of a jerk, too. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘I could speak to his parents—’

  ‘Jesus, don’t do that.’

  ‘I think they’d want to know. If it was my son . . . well, I’d wanna know. Then they can talk to him. It’ll give them all a chance to do the right thing.’

  ‘I don’t want to give him a chance.’

  ‘Shauna . . .’

  He’s never quite been able to stand up to me, my old man. Sometimes I wish he would.

  For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, I lie on my bed reading Sex and Destiny and waiting for Sarah to call. Lou-Anne brings me a chicken burger and we eat on our beds, which is a big no-no, but at this point, who cares?

  ‘If you want to know my opinion, I think you should never speak to Jenny again.’

  ‘Try to see it from her point of view, Lou-Anne.’

  ‘She couldn’t hack getting beaten by a black chick.’

  ‘It wasn’t about that.’

  ‘Promise me you’ll whip her butt in every subject, Shauna. Just to teach her a lesson.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I told you from the beginning that she was bad news.’

  ‘You did.’

  Knowing how peeved Lou-Anne gets when she’s talking about Jenny, I change the subject. I ask her how she’s feeling about her Opera House audition, which is later this month. A well-known Aboriginal soprano
called Deborah Cheetham is on the judging panel. Deborah is Lou-Anne’s idol, which adds an extra layer of pressure on top of her already frayed nerves. She’s too shaky to even call back her beloved Isaac, who’s left three messages.

  ‘I’m feeling bloody jittery.’

  ‘At least your mo’s grown back. That’s one less thing to be in a funk about.’

  She punches me in the arm.

  ‘Is that how you treat a pregnant woman? You bash her?’ I demand in mock outrage. Then I ask her how she’s going to deal with her stage fright.

  ‘Indu’s aunt’s going to smuggle me some Xanax.’

  ‘So you’re an opera drug cheat?’

  ‘We’ve tried everything else! If I go out on stage and get nervous and my throat clams up, I’ll be barking like a frog!’

  ‘No one wants to see that.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Sarah Hogan-Doran calls while we’re still having lunch. Miss Maroney comes to fetch me with a hoity-toity expression. Once in her office, I shut the door firmly behind me and tell Sarah how the school board ambushed me and I give her David Sachs’s number.

  ‘I think they want to make a deal,’ I say, trying to sound tough.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. That article must have scared them.’

  ‘It has. Nothing seems to scare them more than embarrassment.’

  Sarah promises to call me back when she’s spoken to Sachs.

  After the call, I start to feel jittery and anxious, so I go for a walk outside. One of the first people I see is Keli Street-Hughes. I don’t know which of us looks the more sheepish after our tête-à-tête in the early hours, but we make eye contact.

  ‘Shauna,’ she says stiffly.

  ‘Keli.’

  ‘My dad saw the article in The Australian.’

  ‘Did he?’ I’m going for a façade of nonchalance.

  ‘He’s really disgusted by what the school’s trying to do to you. He and some of the other parents are threatening to pull us out if Mrs Green doesn’t change her tune.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yep.’

  I’m knocked over flat with tyre tracks by this development. It’s hard to know what to say – or what to do. Forgive her for all the hurtful shit that’s gone down over the years and become her best friend?

  Suddenly it hits me. With tongue in cheek, I grin at Keli. ‘Say thanks to your dad for me, Keli!’

  My words could be taken either way, but I’m hugely relieved when we both burst into uproarious laughter.

  While I know I can never be friends with this girl, I marvel at how help and support can come from the most unexpected places. Imagine the man who spawned a piece of work like Keli Street-Hughes being outraged by the injustice of my situation! He doesn’t even know me, but he’s decided to do the right thing anyway. It’s easy to forget that often people do the right thing, the brave thing, without being forced or even asked. Not to prove anything, but just to be good. Sometimes even people like Keli Street-Hughes are capable of that.

  Later that afternoon, Reverend Ferguson sends a note with Lou-Anne up to our room. It says:

  Shauna, please see me in my office. SRF.

  I go to Self-Raising Flour’s office, but it’s empty.

  ‘Shauna?’ Reverend Ferguson calls out to me from the doorway of Mrs Green’s office. That’s when I find out that Mrs Green’s resigned and that SRF is the new sheriff in town.

  All the board members are gone. The only sign of them ever having been there is seven extra chairs and the unmistakable whiff of old person. In a tone so different from Mrs Green’s intimidating coolness, Reverend Ferguson explains that she’s now the Acting Principal appointed by the board. She tells me that I’m no longer expelled, and that a letter to that effect has been sent to my parents.

  ‘I am sorry for all the stress and offence this school has caused you,’ she says. ‘It’s been very upsetting for all of us.’

  She asks me when the baby’s due and I tell her around stuvac.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay in the dormitory until the baby’s born,’ she says, ‘but we can’t accommodate the baby. It would be too disruptive for the other students. You’ll still be enrolled at the school, and you’ll still graduate, but as a day girl. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.’

  ‘That’s great.’ I break into a huge smile.

  ‘I’ve spoken to your lawyer, Sarah, and she says that provided that you’re happy with what I’m offering, she will release a statement to the effect that the school is supporting you. She says that with your permission, she can also withdraw the complaint against the school.’

  Asked nicely by Reverend Ferguson, I’m raring to fulfil my side of the bargain.

  ‘Okay, I’ll call her and tell her to take care of it.’

  I can hardly believe it. I’ve won. I’m still standing, and Mrs Green is gone. Maybe I should feel sorry for Mrs Green, but I don’t, not after hearing the way she spoke about me and the Indigenous scholarship in general. How can someone who holds those attitudes, even privately, be trusted to act in the interests of vulnerable people? It doesn’t matter how politically correct you present yourself to be, if you’ve given up on a particular race of children before they’ve even finished school, then you obviously don’t understand much about education. It’s all about transformation. I don’t think Mrs Green ever saw me as transformed.

  But I have been transformed. And so has Lou-Anne. On the basis of our transformation alone, the Indigenous scholarship program should be considered a success, not a failure. Why couldn’t Mrs Green see that?

  27

  ‘I THINK IT’S a girl,’ says Dr Jacobs, the obstetrician at the Royal Hospital for Women. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘No dingle-dangle?’ says Jenny, which makes me crack up. That’s exactly the kind of word she’d use for ‘dick’. I can just imagine her seeing her first lover’s penis and exclaiming, ‘Oh, what a lovely dingle-dangle!’

  Speaking of lovers and dicks, it turns out that Jenny is love’s dark horse. While we were in the outpatient waiting room before my appointment, she revealed that she’s been having a secret affair with Tom from St Augustine’s! Over the last three weeks she’s gone from kissing virgin to practically all the way with Stephen Agliozzo’s way less handsome friend.

  I can’t really blame her for not telling me sooner. Things have been tense between us and I haven’t been there for Jenny. I’ve been one hundred per cent focused on myself. To be fair, though, I do have something worth focusing on.

  ‘No dingle-dangle,’ confirms the doctor. ‘And a very healthy baby as far as I can tell.’

  Jenny and I share a look of relief. We both know that I should have seen a doctor a long time ago, but it’s so good to be reassured that, luckily, there have been no consequences for the baby. I feel elated seeing images of my daughter’s squished little self straining for room in a part of my body I could never really imagine. And to think that I baked her!

  Dr Jacobs measures my baby’s head circumference and length. ‘She’s a lot bigger than average,’ she says.

  ‘Everyone in my family’s gigantic,’ I say.

  After the appointment, I fill out a lot of paperwork to book in for my delivery, which is just weeks away. Then Jenny’s aunt Coralie, a midwife, takes us for a tour of the delivery suites. In a matter of months, I’ll be giving birth in one of them. There’s going to be a little girl, who didn’t even exist before this year. It’s incredible when you think about it, yet it happens every day. I can’t get over the wonder of it, and also its everydayness. As we walk around, a smile comes over my face and I just can’t shift it.

  ‘You look excited, Shauna,’ Coralie says.

  ‘And scared,’ I add.

  ‘There’s not much to be scared of at your age,’ she says. ‘The risks of just about everything that could go wrong for you or your baby are much, much lower than those of someone older. Even a woman in her late twenties.’

  This
is news to me, good news. I wonder why people act as though teenage pregnancy is the end of the world. I begin to wonder whether there is anything so terribly wrong about it for anyone other than perhaps the teenager involved.

  After the appointment, Jenny and I go to the hospital café for a snack. We’re dressed in civvies, so I get some funny looks. When I’m in my built-for-purpose school uniform, I get far fewer. People can’t hide their shock at the sight of a pregnant teenager in regular clothes. Why is it any of their business?

  ‘I still can’t believe you’re going to have a baby.’ Jenny sips her hot chocolate and looks over the froth at me in wonder.

  ‘I still can’t believe you’re going to France without me,’ I reply.

  Jenny has decided to start a degree in romantic languages at the University of Sydney next year. Not only will she go to Paris for a holiday during the sumptuous European summer, she’s also going to do an exchange for a year at the Sorbonne or another European university. It’s something I just won’t be able to do, probably not ever.

  As we chat about where she plans to live and her possible travel plans in Europe, I feel a deep, burning envy that I could never admit to Jenny. She’ll get to remain a footloose child, while I’m forced to grow up. I’ll go through the motions of being a university student. I’ll research for assignments and sit exams. But the real essence of being a uni student, or at least what I’d imagined it to be – getting contentedly lost in library research for hours, meeting new people with similar interests, and going out with friends – will be for others to savour. I’ll be a student in my spare time, which won’t be abundant. And if I meet a man, which will be far less likely because I’ll be stuck at home a lot of the time, I’ll be meeting him as a single mum. I’ll have to be really careful about who I let into my life.

  ‘So?’ Jenny looks at me expectantly. ‘Shauna?’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘You will come and visit me in Paris, won’t you?’