Snake Circle

by Roberta Sykes

  In those first few weeks at Peabody Terrace, I was hailed several times as I crossed the courtyard which separated the buildings in the complex and asked by co-residents, mainly by women from the Indian subcontinent, if I was looking for work. ‘What sort of work?’ I had initially inquired, curious about being approached in this way.

  ‘I am looking for a maid,’ always came the reply.

  When a notice came around that there was to be a meeting in the Peabody common room of Peabody women, I decided to attend. As the women introduced themselves around the circle, I was surprised to hear, repeated with variations, many times over, ‘My name is Jane Doe, my husband is doing a Master’s degree at . . . the Kennedy School, the Education School, the Business School.’ It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to be the only woman present at that meeting who could follow up their name with ‘. . . and I am doing a Master’s degree at the Education School’. The Indian women present were particularly taken aback.

  I would later learn that there were other women, scattered throughout the complex, several of whom were Black, who were themselves Harvard students. Perhaps because they were already aware of the composition of these Peabody women’s groups, they had not bothered to attend.

  After that meeting, no one again asked me if I would be their maid.

  Naomi had always had difficulties at school in Australia. On one occasion, when she had been a primary student at North Sydney Demonstration School, I had been called to the phone in the middle of a class I was teaching at the Aboriginal and Islander Dance School. A teacher had told me, ‘Come over immediately and pick her up.’ When he was addressing the class, he said, Naomi was attentive. But whenever he turned to write something on the blackboard, she upped and moved to any other desk in the classroom, and he had to search the room all the time to find her. It was a chronic problem, but on this day she had been warned twice that if she disrupted the class once more, she would have to go home. She had, of course, jumped up and moved again.

  I had spoken to the teacher at length, telling him I was not prepared to see her punished for this behaviour because she was not responsible for the environment in which she lived. Chemicals in the food, chemicals in the air, colourants and additives in everything she came into contact with—how could he find her guilty of being over-active when everything around her only served to over-stimulate her?

  Naomi had been to more than half a dozen schools, mainly because we had had to move so often before we found a permanent home. When we moved into our Naremburn house I had, with great difficulty, enrolled her at a Catholic school thinking she would receive a more charitable reception. This had not turned out to be the case. Her first teacher there told the other teachers what a problem Naomi was considered to be. Attitudes had hardened against her, and eventually my daughter had internalised their view of her and her limitations. She begged me to let her repeat a year because ‘I’m not very smart, Mummy’ The pervasive idea that, for whatever reason, Black children can’t achieve, which then turns out to be a self-perpetuating prophecy, was alive and well.

  I had agreed with her request to repeat because I had planned that we would leave for Boston that year anyway, although I was still deeply concerned and had attended parent meetings and teacher conferences in an effort to get these things straightened out. Naomi had been made very unhappy at school, and it was obvious to me that she would demand to leave school the moment she was old enough. This was unless ideological changes were made to accommodate her.

  Martin Luther King Junior School turned out to be a blessed relief. All new students are placed in D-class, which is only a category and not a ranking, until they demonstrate by their abilities where in the system they can perform most comfortably. In the first week, Naomi came home and told me she had been asked to give a presentation to the class on Australia. When we unpacked our suitcases, I found that Naomi had brought with her absolutely everything she owned, right down to tiny glass ornaments she saved to decorate her room. I had been annoyed at the time, but now she was able to use her treasures to illustrate her presentation. She staggered off under a load of books, maps and Aboriginal items, some of which I had brought as host-gifts, and came home glowing with pride at being awarded an ‘A’.

  She moved up in their system and was asked to give a presentation on the entire Pacific. After that she again changed classes. Suddenly, no doubt heartened by the reception she was receiving for her work in social studies, she began to bring home reports of her excellent performance in every subject. Without the awesome burden of having to respond to negative expectations, Naomi flourished. She threw off her depression about school and achieved the marks I had always known she was capable of.

  I also came to realise, slowly, slowly, that not everyone in my classes was a genius. Some were no doubt smarter and had more focused book-learning, but my wide experience counted for at least as much as their theory. I was gaining good grades, and eventually I saw that it was not necessary to read absolutely every book on my reading lists, or every book made reference to in those readings. Instead, I learned to read more selectively and, consequently, smarter.

  In lectures I sat as close to the front as possible, to hear as best I could, especially with those teachers whose American accents I found difficult. During Shopping Week, I had eliminated from my proposed schedule any courses taught by people who spoke too softly or whom I regarded as mumblers. My hearing wasn’t all it could be, and I was determined not to make this difficult program even harder for myself in any way.

  The intensity of the learning experience, the book work, and which courses I took at exactly what time, blur in my mind. But many things stand out. Foremost amongst these memories are valuable insights and experiences shared with other students in Conroy Commons, the Education School lunch and coffee room in the basement.

  I also spent many pleasant hours with Tony and Mina Siaguru. It was refreshing to be able to make jokes and have them understood without having to explain ourselves to the Americans, who did not understand our points of reference. Still, I knew it would be a mistake to become too dependent on the companionship of Tony and Mina as their tour of duty was quickly coming to an end.

  One day I received a letter from my bank in Australia through which I had organised my affairs, including my traveller’s cheques, before leaving Australia. It said that since I was no longer in my house, but renting it out, I was required to pay investment, rather than homeowner’s, rate of interest for my mortgage. Henceforth the payments would be considerably more than they had been previously.

  I was so angry I sat down immediately to reply. On one of my visits to their bank in the process of making my travel arrangements, I had been surprised when a teller had brought over to the counter a file with my name on it. When she opened it in front of me, out spilled all manner of newspaper clippings about me, including the front page article from the Sydney Morning Herald. I had been upset by this, but remained silent, wondering if the bank kept files of this nature on all their clients, or just the Black ones.

  How, I asked them now, since my son, a student, continued to live in my house in my absence, could they write that my home was an investment property? Russel was going personally to the bank every few weeks to make the regular payments from his student allowance, so why hadn’t they asked him? I was affronted that these bank officials felt they could piece together what was happening in my life and within my family on the basis of whatever they read in the newspapers. And that they could make arbitrary decisions related to my house payments. If the increase in the payments had been left unchecked, I probably would have lost the house altogether.

  I heard nothing back from them for months. At last, a notice of a reversal of their decision arrived, having been sent by sea mail and taken over three months to reach me. More angst, I thought, and for what?

  I joined meetings of the Black Students Union and was also invited to participate in the Native American Program. The latter, to my knowledge, did not hold
regular meetings as such. Instead they had their own building and people were welcome to drop by at any time. There were always helpful people on hand and, at times, visitors had access to the Program’s resources. Talking to people there I gained a very useful perspective on how to use the experience I was gaining at Harvard. The Native American Program quite aggressively recruited students from around the country, and supported them as best they could throughout their studies. Anyone who received their help was expected to ‘give back’, becoming mentors themselves once they had learned their own way around.

  The Black Students Union, on the other hand, held meetings, although it seemed to me that only a fraction of the potential membership attended. Of those who did, a significant proportion began a rush to change the group, from ‘Black’ to the ‘African-American’ Students Union. I listened to several debates about this proposal before offering my own opinion. ‘If you go ahead with this name change, do you understand that you will be excluding people like me? Black people from Australia, from New Guinea and the Pacific?’

  I was followed outside after this meeting by a young Black man.

  ‘Well, if you keep hanging around with those Indians,’ he said, ‘why do you want to bother coming with us?’

  I was shocked at this blatant display of racism. The Native American friends I had made, who were aware that I shared an interest in both groups, had never indicated they had even the slightest problem with this duality of identity. Indeed, they had encouraged me.

  Before arriving in America I had made an effort to read up on the history and contemporary situation of Blacks in that country. I had even included some comparative comments in articles I had written, and published reviews of some of the recent books by Black American authors that had made their way to Australia. I had learned, to my dismay, that many of the most prominent Black organisations, as part of their policy, demanded that the government fulfil a promise it had made to Blacks upon emancipation, of ‘forty acres and a mule’.

  This subject came up several times in Conroy Commons, when groups of us were talking together, and the reaction from Blacks was sometimes quite heated. Our conversations often went along these lines:

  ‘I’m trying to understand—forty acres and a mule? I have no problem with the mule, but it seems to me Black organisations here are demanding a larger share of what they know the white man stole off the Indians.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Our forefathers were dragged here in chains.’

  ‘I do understand that. But you are not in chains. you’re sitting here in one of the elite universities of the world. You even told me you went to Europe for your holidays during your school break. So obviously you could have gone to Africa if you had wanted to.’

  ‘Yes, but it was our forefathers’ blood that built this country up to what it is today. We deserve to inherit our share of this land.’

  ‘Yes, and I have a problem with that, because the last time I heard someone say exactly the same thing, it was a white South African, trying to justify their occupation and ownership of that land.’

  Almost without exception, the speaker would then tell our assembled group that his or her grandmother/father or great grandmother/father had been an Indian.

  ‘Then why don’t you ever identify yourself as being Indian? Even part-Indian? Do you ever go by the Harvard Indian Program to see how you can help?’

  The question of identification and dual identity began to intrigue me, as it did many of the students on campus. And many long and fruitful discussions were held on the subject. Indeed, students even wrote theses on this very theme.

  One of my companions was Eber Hampton, a Native American teaching fellow who taught in one of the classes I was taking, Community Psychology, under the stewardship of Professor Richard Katz.

  Professor Katz, who by this time had become ‘Dick’, asked me just a few months after my arrival if I’d be interested in moving from the Master’s to the doctoral program. I had discovered, by then, that there was a hierarchy amongst students, with doctoral students virtually considered the princes and princesses of the campus.

  What other differences existed, I had yet to learn, and his question had confused me. I knew doctoral students were on campus longer, but how long, and what were they actually doing there?

  Dick answered my first question. ‘Well, it normally takes between five and seven years, but students can take as many courses as they can handle, if they want, which means they can complete the coursework requirements faster, even in half the time. After that, it depends on how long they want to take to write their theses. Students don’t have to be on campus to write their theses, though many do. They can even write them in their homeland, it’s up to the individual.’

  ‘Five to seven years? And you’re asking if I want to be a doctoral student? Heavens, you’ve got to be kidding. I’m already concerned about whether I’ll be able to survive this winter. I’m from a tropical climate, you know!’

  My relationship with Dick had not started out too well, so his frequent encouragement and candour always came as a surprise. Some comments he had noted on the first essay I had handed in for his class had caused me to seek him out in his office.

  ‘The content is fine, but your writing style is too journalistic,’ he had told me.

  I had brooded about this before returning again to see him. ‘For the last ten years I have in very large part earned my living and supported my children by my journalistic style. For most of the academic writing I’ve read, a person needs a dictionary constantly on hand to make sense of it at all, and people outside universities barely read it at all. Are you asking me to change from a style which has earned me a living, to adopt a style that hardly anyone can make a living from?’

  We had talked and over time had reached a compromise. As long as I continued to demonstrate that I understood the content of material set for our readings, he would overlook my practice of never using a long word when two small words will do and always writing to be clearly understood. Still, I had wondered whether my boldness and adherence to what I believed had created a gulf I could not cross.

  Another friend, Art Zimiga, an Oglala-Sioux and also a doctoral student, helped with my second question, what doctoral students actually did, although his reply didn’t offer complete clarification.

  ‘Bachelor students have a “batch” of information or knowledge, Master’s students are considered to have “mastered” the subject matter, and doctoral students are supposed to be so familiar with their subject that they can “doctor” it, that is, write down everyone else’s opinion, add their own opinion, and put their own name on the cover’

  Winter descended upon us swiftly. When Naomi heard on the television news that it was due to start snowing at about ten o’clock that night, she pleaded to stay up and see her first snow flakes. I hadn’t seen snow either, except at a distance, so we sipped cocoa and waited. Right on the dot of ten, we saw shimmers outside her bedroom window where we were sitting, so we rugged up and ran outside. By the time we reached the courtyard, the specks of snow had grown and were coming down heavily. Naomi shrieked with glee, and we gathered what we could in our hands to take back inside for inspection.

  Next day, snow and slippery ice lay everywhere. The air had turned so cold that it hurt to breathe. Marjorie Baldwin, an Aboriginal nursing sister, with specialist skills in midwifery and ophthalmology who had worked with Fred Hollows’ trachoma team, had studied in England and been overseas many times. She had pressed upon me her kangaroo fur coat to take to Boston, far more aware than I of what awaited us. I shook it out now, and was glad of its warmth. The coat was a slim link between myself, my community, and my country, and for that reason it was so much nicer to snuggle into its fur.

  Out came the leggings and sweaters which had been knitted for me by Redfern and other supporters. None of them were colour coordinated of course, but that was the least of my concerns. With many scarves wound around my head and neck, and leather gloves�
�a farewell gift from Elaine Pelot—I prepared to stride off along the icy streets to get to school.

  Naomi, however, had picked up some idea that, in order to fit in, she had to wear canvas tennis shoes, the dress code of the early teenage set. How many times that winter I tried to argue with her to have sense, to put health above ‘beauty’, I do not recall. Still she persisted, refusing to wear leggings or virtually anything she was offered. A few scraps of light underwear, T-shirt, jeans and a light parka flying open, was the most I could ever make her wear.

  Winter proved to be the most persistent cold I had ever encountered, but I didn’t fare too badly. All Harvard buildings, including our accommodation, are centrally heated, and often over heated. We’d joke that all we should have been required to wear was a big fur coat and a bikini. I recall on Christmas day skidding and sliding over the icy streets towards Harvard Square, where I saw a clock with a temperature gauge mounted on the wall of a building. The clock said 12 noon, and the temperature gauge showed 0 degrees Fahrenheit, the ‘warmest’ part of the day. I shuddered. The wind chill factor often took the temperature down into the minuses. After experiencing -15 and -20, I decided that the only difference was in the time it would take for a human to freeze to death. Otherwise, piercing cold was just piercing cold, whatever the temperature.

  Naomi’s first term report came in. Excellent. My marks were posted, I had achieved four As and a B. More relaxed now, I set about choosing my spring semester courses. Another three would complete my Master’s degree coursework, but I took four anyway.