A Woman of the Future

by David Ireland

  What isn’t trivial? Greatness? What is greatness? Power, strength, goodness, beauty, originality, dignity, judgment?

  I suppose mother’s choice of words had spoken to the pride that filled me, yet when I could not answer such questions as these I began to despise myself. If the word meant so much to me, why was everything not plain?

  If I did something no male had ever done—or female either—would that be greatness?

  The Purpose of School

  Our teachers thought we were there to learn things and to relate to the community and to each other, and they were right. But relate: that’s a word and a half. One teacher wanted us to be open, not just in open classrooms, but open: to be honest, to show emotion, not be afraid of opening up to others.

  He didn’t know what we already knew: that we weren’t there to learn to be “with” our fellow kids, we were there to master them. Mastering our environment, our fellows, our teachers, our parents—that was us. Whoever showed emotion left a nice big gap in her defenses—a sharp word could fly, straight as an arrow, into that weak bosom. Whoever was honest left himself at the mercy of the rest of us; honesty was another floodgate—not to let things out, but to let missiles in. Any kid that was open and confessed to something, had to wear that thing round her neck forever. Just like my father still remembered the kid at his school who confided to him that he shoved bits of stuff up his bum. My father told me he never let on to the other kids, but he always pretended he was going to, and he could get that kid to do anything he wanted. He mastered his environment.

  Kids that were open and honest like that wouldn’t hesitate to give all their guts to anyone wanting to put them in a databank; they wouldn’t even ask who had access to the information.

  When they tried to get our group to break up according to the different interests we had, we developed the same interests. Once you let them break you up as children they can do it even easier later when you’re grown-ups, because then you don’t even have the shared community of school.

  People Who Love Me

  I like them very much. I know the theories; others can do as they like and why should it concern me; but it always affects me that people are fond of me and show me love: I find them better people, in a way; they have a better sense of humor than others. As a matter of fact, that sort of person laughs so much more than anyone else I know. Even in their poverty or their idiocy at school work, they laugh. I laugh at them laughing, I have developed a high ability to laugh, so that I can immediately laugh at anyone.

  Remember, my reader, before you judge me, that I was always the one that was loved: it can’t surprise you that I laughed at people.

  But I owed it to those kind, beautiful, gentle people who had a tremendous sense of humor and a great feeling for life and for vitality and strength.

  Of all the things I miss now, being loved is the greatest.

  Innelda

  One dress I loved—it made itself my favorite because it always had older females gushing—was red, with some white and rust and black and gold, and I was only a child. I still can feel my love for the Innelda dress.

  Innelda hung inside a special cover to protect her and to keep her separate from other clothes.

  I was the only girl that didn’t complain when I had to wear the same dress to different birthday parties and school concerts. My father did his reputation in our family no harm when he helped me choose Innelda.

  Out of Line

  In the lesson on Wednesday where a few religious items were mentioned, the thing that repelled me was a tenet of Christianity.

  “You could say its essence is the ability to stand back and let others go first. Blessed are the meek. Turn the other cheek when someone hits you. Do not try to be first all the time, but give your neighbor every chance.”

  At the age of eleven, I was already out of line with the theoretical basis of Christian civilization. Turning the other cheek did not fit my formula of the world. I rejected it.

  Neither could I renounce my own will, which I looked on as my freedom; nor seeking; nor did I have a taste for that peace so prized in the East. Religious virtues sat on me like a drop of water in midsummer.

  I Think Constantly of the Perfect Child

  Mrs. Brown of Darwin Parade came close to my idea of a Christ-like woman. She was so very good. Her fifty-nine-year-old son Bernie was an idiot. He had come from her body in the same way as her other children, none of them idiots as far as the usual tests showed, though sometimes only strangers can tell. She kept him at home with her all his life, he was so different from the ordinary run of children that he was useless in any capacity other than helpless idiot. He was polite, but his politeness was expressed in halting, roaring syllables. He looked normal from a distance, except for an extreme slimness, as if a thirteen year boy was encased in his grey-blue suit; his face, with its glasses, looked human enough from a distance, but close up his mouth sagged into a hideous lower lip that yearly seemed to get bigger, and exposed all his lower teeth as well as his gum and the trench beneath it that ran round the length of his jaw where the lip joined it and carried the clear juices of idiocy round the mucous surfaces, ready to be drawn on, and sucked up, to lubricate other mouth parts. It was strange to have him look at you and not know if he saw you, or come on him thinking and not know if he could think.

  Mrs. Brown had another child, which issued from her body in another way. This child’s arm began to grow forward from a place below her navel. When the fingers appeared she cut its nails regularly; when the hand had grown outward she had to take special precautions not to knock others in queues or shops or knock it on furniture round the house; and of course she washed it religiously.

  Nothing that happened to her disturbed the impression of goodness and serenity that she radiated; they were an aura, coming in a steady stream from her.

  “She’s a saint,” father said unequivocally, but I knew that he often gave an opinion right away when he didn’t want to be bothered much, so I knew it wasn’t meant to be taken as a definition right from the summit of wisdom.

  “I wonder if you can feel the same things coming from her if you stand behind her,” I said. But he had his head bent over a paperback book of new plays, looking for some play that might take him from the security of Changes out into the manly adventure of risk and uncertainty.

  I tried it. But it wasn’t fair. True, I felt the goodness, and I stood still while I felt the calmness round me like a nice cloud, but I knew her, so it wasn’t a proper test.

  The arm grew out until there was a length of twenty-five centimeters of it, which included an elbow. The arm stopped growing, the elbow allowed the arm to fold back against her abdomen; there was only a slight lump when it was folded, easily masked by her clothes.

  It stayed the same age, always a child’s arm. The only distress it caused her was when it straightened out and collided with something in the summer, or when she was warmly dressed and could feel it wanted to straighten out.

  Cruel animals that we are, and with the most helpless young; but Mrs. Brown’s potential child would be always helpless, always need protection. It would never see out of its warm prison—if indeed there was anything more to it than an arm. It would never have the chance to be cruel.

  My Last Composition In Primary: The Letter.

  Dear Cornelia,

  I am hoping you can come and see our school. I am in the top class in the Primary section in a noiseless schoolroom with our teacher Mister Heathcliff pacing up and down, shouting one minute and laughing the next. Our clock, which Mister Heathcliff bought for seventy cents, will soon register three-twenty pm, which is stampede time. The classroom, one of the oldest in this section of the school, is adorned with plenty of space, unlike other rooms, which have pictures, rolls, boards, nature tables, models, etc. It doesn’t even have: Why do fish swim in the sea? We’re supposed to know now.

  There goes the bell! In a few seconds there is no one at school except the gardener and me. He is
a nice man and talks very pleasantly and quite a lot, but that is all right because I am a qualified listener.

  The gardener goes home and so do I. There is only mother at home. On the way I stop at the bridge and spit into the water, which breaks my reflection into lots of pieces and makes ripples. The ripples spread out to hit the banks, then bounce back toward the middle again; you can see them, lower and wider than the ripples that come from the middle, crisscrossing and making a pattern that’s hard to follow and keep track of.

  When I reach home I unpack, clean my shoes and then have a bite to eat and a drink of something.

  I am eleven years of age and I have no brothers or sisters.

  Next day is just like so many other school days and all are like today.

  Yours sincerely,

  Alethea Hunt.

  One more day and we will be

  Out of the gates to liberty.

  No more pencils, no more books

  No more teachers’ dirty looks.

  Extracts From Class Compositions

  These brief passages were put in our school magazine:

  David Bilbul:

  A journey to the Park is a memorable occasion especially when one goes by ferry from Circular Quay. One obtains the feeling of complete tranquillity as one glides over the waters of the harbor and views the Opera House on Bennelong Point on the one hand and the changing skyline of Sydney on the other.

  Angela Testoni:

  We went through a cave seemingly filled with the whisperings of many people but on second look it was only a cave with water dripping from the roof.

  Krismi Choudhury:

  A round piece of green glass, smooth and polished by decades of movement in the raging surf, was lying on a rock like the ones upon which it had crashed for such a long time and which had formed the pit-marks on its once gleaming surface. It was so like a marble that I put it in my pocket and I have kept it to this day.

  Chinhua M’aksombo:

  The gulls were dipping and soaring above the water, watched by the golden sun rising languidly above a jeweled waste of water. The horizon began to form as I watched.

  Richard Wansdale:

  I never wanted to kill another rabbit again but I knew someone had to kill to provide food for the human race.

  Challenger Lutherburrow:

  We were in a hurry that night, mum and dad were angry and it was late, so our tea was meager; toast and cheese were the elements.

  Autographs

  We passed round our autograph books before school broke up. Shanthi Subramanian wrote:

  Some write for fortune

  Some write for fame

  But I write in autograph books

  Just to sign my name.

  Sylvia Strickland put:

  By hook or by crook

  I’ll be first in this book.

  Griselda Cadbury:

  When you get married and have twins

  Don’t come to me for safety pins.

  Chrismi Thambyrajah:

  Can’t think brain numb

  Inspiration won’t come

  Can’t write bad pen

  Finished now amen.

  Angelika Weidemann:

  If this book takes to the track

  Box its ears and send it back.

  And I wrote words of similar wisdom in theirs.

  High School

  Hopscotch, oranges and lemons—with its “Last man’s head head head head head (as you waited for the one you wanted) head head OFF!”—skippings, Handies, Sir, the Clue Chase where you put notes down and sent the searchers off to the next point to read the next direction and on until they got to the treasure: all were gone. You don’t play hopscotch at High. We stood around talking. There were lots of kids from surrounding suburbs. We got our textbooks and kept an eye out for people we might like to be friends with.

  The lavatory set—the ones that got round in groups behind the wash sheds—had already started to form. The toilet block was near the street: sometimes strangers talked to them through the fence. Things passed in and out while no one was looking—no teachers, that is.

  The Head was Miss Fish. At assembly in the playground she re-instituted “lines”—standing in lines—and waited for silence and stillness before anything got under way. The first day she waited nine minutes; in the end the kids got tired of standing in the sun and kept quiet just to get inside and sit down. In the corridors you had to give way to teachers—they were privileged traffic. And at intersections of corridors you gave way to the right. All the corridors in the buildings were narrow, and traffic was one-way. You could be fined if you were caught going the wrong way in a one-way corridor. There were special assemblies called and the Riot Act read if there was a logjam at an intersection On Purpose: that was the crime of crimes.

  It was easily done. All it needed was a crowd already at the intersection, largely ignoring the keep left rule. With a knot in the center your four groups joined it from the four arms of the intersection; pushing, crowding, keeping up the pressure, being joined at the back by more pushing bodies.

  There was a lovely evil feeling about that sort of pushing. You knew the others would never give in or stop pushing, so there was no way you were going to go anywhere, you were just pushing others into others, and the enjoyment of doing something that was nasty, full of malice and energy, and all in such large numbers that you were anonymous and could get away with anything, was so intense that I, for one, got the beginnings of a lively feeling down there, and for a while after I had a kind of pain.

  Our second assembly the Fish told us about the things she lived by, called principles.

  “I believe in the power of the spirit over things. I believe there are certain principles whose violation makes life not worth living.” She took a breath after this, the sort that conceals a wary look around the school to see if enough of us showed signs of following her. “I believe this approach has implications for human personality as a whole throughout the world and that this conviction is rooted in the very core of man’s being.”

  “There is something common to the human spirit, the human species: what Mumford called—‘The self that we share with our fellows.’ ” (Who was Mumford?)

  And she introduced us to the school code.

  “The School Code, girls and boys. C-O-D-E. Co-operation, Obedience, Dignity, Effort-and-Enthusiasm.”

  Lessons Where We Sat and Watched

  Lessons where we sat and watched the visual aids, told us of the poor of the world, of what humans were and how they behaved, and always, though I didn’t make a point of saying anything in class, it struck me that the behavior and the people and the poor were all around us. Outside the school windows, admittedly, there was nothing to be seen but the street up to the traffic artery, and no one walked there. For the space of the intersection vehicles were visible: apart from that, only the odd delivery man or an old person walking could be seen. But the world was there: all we learned about was out there waiting to be seen. But it wasn’t to be taken seriously, and that seemed to be the message. We were being taught to take it from the written word or the illuminated picture on the face of a tube. When it was a picture or when it came dressed as a word, it existed. What we saw in the alleys of the city from our parents’ cars after dark, and off the highways on weekends had less existence. How would we ever be able to see the world when it was around us, when it supplied no handy pictures or encapsulating words? How could we rely on something inside us to make the connection between the panorama out there, and the reference words and formal pictures we had in stock in our memories beforehand?

  Sometimes I caught behind the actions and words of the teachers, and the rituals and routines of the school, hints of a reckless algebra no one knew was there.

  Just When I Was Considering

  I was bewildered. I was upset. I couldn’t get to sleep. Instead of counting sheep while I waited to go to sleep, I kissed sheep. My imagination makes me sick at the thought.

 
; Back into my imagination I go, head down, ruthless, and mark out the sheep in black. Hundreds of them; it takes me ages; but in black I mark them all out.

  I mark them out in the cuts the butcher will make, but stop short of making the first cut. To grip the sheep between my knees and have it twist and squirm between my thighs while I pull its head back with my left hand and pierce its throat with the knife is momentarily beyond me. And to push—or is it pull?—the knife so that the throat is slit like a letter, that too is beyond me. And to have the sheep’s blood all over me as it gushes and squirts and squishes underfoot, that is beyond me.

  And to peel the woolly coat back from the ankles and off the shoulders and find it stick at the head, hands and feet so that

  I am compelled to cut them off to take the coat right off, that is beyond me.

  Everything is beyond me, but imagination.

  Imagination takes everything in its stride. Before I go to sleep I begin to shoot my beloved pony. Again and again. The side of its soft head blows out, and its legs fail under it. It collides with the earth in a disgusting heap and I wait for the miracle of imagination that will stop its blood pumping out, that will pull its shattered bone and arteries back together and fill its heart with strong red blood and set it on its feet again so that its wonderfully soft eyes look at me and its chin rests on my shoulder in that way it has as it comes up to me from behind, breathing in my ear.