JUDI: Well, in my case, I did.
GAYLE: Yeah, but who was the adult, Judi?
JUDI is silent.
Who was the adult?
JUDI: No, I can’t blame him.
GAYLE: Who was the adult?
JUDI: I knew what I was doing.
GAYLE: At sixteen?
JUDI: Yeah. But I’ve forgiven myself.
GAYLE: Who was the adult?
JUDI: It’s not that simple.
GAYLE: It’s always that simple. They want to make it all grey and complicated. But, really, it wasn’t different in those days. It wasn’t that times have changed. It doesn’t matter if it was ten years ago or fifty years ago or a thousand years ago. It has never been right to sexually abuse a child. Never. Don’t let them tell you it’s complicated.
JUDI: It was wrong?
GAYLE: It was wrong.
JUDI sits for a long moment to consider, understand, and accept what GAYLE has said. Finally, she seems to come back into herself. She leans forward and embraces GAYLE.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
SCENE THIRTEEN
All the other girls come on stage.
CORAL: Listen to me. [She stands on steps or something that raises her up.] Can all of you listen to me? Especially you Parramatta Girls. I know you’re women, but you’ll always be girls to me. My name is Coral and I was here in the sixties. About ten generations of girls was locked up in ’ere. And after they spat us out we became the mothers and sisters and wives of Australia. Sometimes there was an ’undred of us in here, sometimes there was two ’undred. Well, my maths has never been very good and you know why that is. But maths or no maths, two hundred girls by eighty years is a lot to answer for. We’ve got something in common, ladies. Something in common and we’re gonna share it today. Some of you have come from Queensland, England, all over, to be here. Some of you are here alone, some of you have brought your families. On behalf of the Reunion Committee I want to welcome you.
The girls clap. MARLENE wheels a copper onto the stage. All the girls ooh and ah.
When I was in here, we washed everything in a copper. So what we’re gonna do is this. Lynette here, is gonna give you a small sheet, we got them from the Department, and you’re gonna tear them up, into small pieces. You’ll enjoy that. When you’ve got your bit of sheet, I’m gonna come round and give you a texta and you’re gonna write on it something you wanna let go of. Maybe a memory. Maybe a person you want to honour, but put to rest. Maybe you want to give thanks for one of the staff who was kind to you. You decide. It’s your bit of sheet. Then you’re gonna put that in this copper, stir it around a little, and then ring it out through here. And then you can hang it up here, on this clothesline we’ve put up. So after we leave today, the black of the texta will still be on the copper and the dirty laundry will be washed clean. Simple as that. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. But if you wanna do it, get over here and get yourself a piece of sheet.
All the women, in turn, take a sheet. They have fun tearing them into small strips.
CORAL hands them textas and they silently write on the pieces of sheet all the things they want to let go of. KERRY jumps up and takes the microphone.
KERRY: I was in here. I was part of getting this GTS closed down. That came about… I found out later through the interview. The girl’s name was Shirley Donlan. She was in the isolation cell next to me. She came from a pretty well-to-do family. Now when she went home, she was complaining of a sore jaw to her mother. Her mother took her to a doctor’s. The doctor said she had gangrene in her jaw. And her mother’s gone, well she’s just come from Parramatta Girls Home two days ago, could that have happened in the last two days? And the doctor’s gone, no, this must have been going on for months. So that musta started an investigation, like. And when I was called in to the office to do the interview, I went in and the room was just full of cops, you know. Okay, ‘Kerry, do you remember being in an isolation cell?’ And they gave me a date. And I said, ‘Look, I’ve been in isolation a lot of times.’ ‘Well, tell us about the day you were beside Shirley Donlan. What happened?’ Well, I remember hearing the door open, Shirley and I let one another know that they were coming in. We didn’t know whose cell he was going into. He went into Shirley’s. She sung out to me, ‘My turn.’ And next minute I started hearing thud, thud, and about five minutes of it before I could hear her crying and screaming to stop, that’s enough. And I remember hearing him asking an officer, ‘Don’t forget to tell me if someone’s coming.’ And then I was asked, ‘Have any of the male officers ever hit you more than a father would hit his child for doing something wrong?’ And I’ve gone, ‘What do you mean? How hard does a daddy hit his little girl? I don’t know. I’ve got no mum and dad, I’ve only ever known this life. This system. I’m a Ward of the State. How hard does a daddy hit his little girl?’
MARLENE makes an encouraging thumbs-up motion to KERRY to keep her going.
So then they said, ‘Okay, thanks Kerry, you just sign this. I signed something. God knows what I signed, and I was told to go to my dormitory. I was not to repeat any of the things I said to any of the other girls. Two weeks later I was sittin’ on Parramatta Road with twenty-one dollars, which was what was equivalent to the dole then, the address of two girls hostels and two foster families that were willing to um… let me board. And goodbye. Two weeks after I signed those statements. Why? About six months after that, the home closed down altogether.
The women all clap. KERRY looks chuffed.
LYNETTE: I wanna say something too. I want us to take a moment, ladies, for our friend Maree Seddon who hung herself off the end of a doorknob in Dormitory Two. This one’s for all the women who didn’t make it through because of this place, and those who didn’t make it to today because of the scars that Parramatta left on them.
As the women each complete their task of ‘washing out a memory’ LYNETTE sings ‘The Singing Bird’, then it is taken up by MAREE singing, just visible on the opposite side of the stage.
[Singing] I have seen the lark soar high at morn,
Heard his song up in the blue,
I have heard the blackbird pipe his note,
The thrush and the linnet too.
But there’s none of them can sing so sweet,
My singing bird as you.
If I could lure my singing bird
From his own cosy nest.
If I could catch my singing bird,
I would warm him on my breast.
For there’s none of them can sing so sweet
My singing bird as you.
They finish singing.
JUDI goes to a door on the set and tries to open it to go out. The door is locked. She looks around and gives a little laugh, then tries the door again. She becomes agitated and tries to open it using more force. Then she begins to bang on it and wrench it back and forth.
JUDI: Hello? Hello? Someone? Is someone there? I need to get out of here now. Hello? Hello? Will someone please let me out of here? Please? I’m not supposed to be in here. Let me out. Let me out. Please let me out.
She bashes on the door and then stops and checks her elbows. She hurriedly begins to unwrap the bandages, unravelling them desperately from both arms. She gets bound up in the bandages and begins crying and rocking, jolted out of her self by the panic attack she is experiencing. CORAL comes over to her.
CORAL: Come on, Judi love.
JUDI: I can’t get out, they’ve locked us in.
CORAL goes to the door and opens it.
CORAL: Look.
JUDI goes over and sees that she can get out.
JUDI: Silly old girl.
CORAL: Look, you can go out anytime you want.
JUDI: And then my elbows.
CORAL: Your what?
She checks her elbows but there’s nothing wrong with them. CORAL rolls up her sleeves and shows JUDI her healed elbows. Behind them all the women roll up their sleeves and check their elbows and wave them in the air. JUDI laughs. GA
YLE steps forward.
GAYLE: I’ve done a lot of good with my life. I had a hotel at Lakemba—we managed a hotel for a very, very famous boxer, Vic Patrick. He was the world lightweight champion a long, long time ago. Lovely, lovely man. Anyrate, I was walking with my Amanda, in the stroller, Belinda wasn’t born then, and I was approached by a scout from the Lovely Motherhood Quest. Can you believe it? Well, get this for a joke, I did it. I entered the competition—I had… because by then we were so well into the surf club—so we could have lots of functions to raise money for the deaf and blind kiddies. And do you know what? Do you know what? I bloody won it. I won it and to this day I think that’s my greatest achievement… Not for the Motherhood Award but for being the Charity Queen and raising the most money. And that was the thing that I really felt proud of myself. I worked like a dog, you know. But I did it, Loveliest Mother. How about that? [Pause.] Loveliest Mother. And me a Parramatta Girl.
The lights fade.
THE END
Copyright Page
CURRENCY PLAYS
First published in 2007
by Currency Press Pty Ltd,
PO Box 2287, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012, Australia
[email protected]
www.currency.com.au
Published with Eyes to the Floor in 2014
First digital edition published in 2014 by Currency Press.
Copyright: Home Girls Have Their Say © Rosalie Higson, 2007; Parramatta Girls © Alana Valentine, 2007.
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Printed ISBN: 9780868198118
ePub ISBN: 9781921428739
mobi ISBN: 9781925004533
Cover design by Kate Florance, Currency Press.
Front cover shows Roxanne McDonald as Coral and Jeanette Cronin as Melanie. From the 2007 Company B production. (Photo: Heidrun Löhr)
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Parramatta Girls Page 8