Saturdays

On Saturday mornings I would watch Rage, an 'Australian Broadcasting Commission' music video show on tv. I really wanted to learn piano. Back in Newcastle I had been given piano lessons for 2 years. I was supposed to practice every day for an hour but didn't. Instead I got Mum to sign my book saying that I had done my practice.
I asked to take up lessons again. Stephen was taking singing lessons and Sebastion was learning to play trumpet. Mum wouldn't let me do piano. She thought I should try another instrument. The closest I could think of to piano was piano accordian. I was booked into a studio for lessons on a saturday in melbourne.
I would catch a bus at the end of our street, a train from Ferntree gully Station then a walk up Swanston Street to the studio above a shop. The lesson lasted half an hour. I sometimes wandered around shops, browsed record stores. The whole round trip took about four hours. Once, a boy who liked me at school and had taken me to the pictures once already, came with me into town. He tagged along with me, surprised and not that happy at my rigid routine that I wasn't budging from. He wanted to look at better music, not just pick up the latest top 40 list. He wanted me to share his broad experience of music, and for me to open myself to appreciating what he liked. My rigidity put him off. After that trip, to my dismay, he avoided me at school ever after.
The accordian lessons lasted about a year. I had my own accordian and carried the heavy thing with me each trip. It came in a beautiful blue case with pink crushed velvet on the inside. The instrument itself was pitched slightly off key so that it couldn't be played with other instuments. It didn't matter to me, and I participated in the end of year concert in a big group rendition of Dr Chivago's 'Somewhere My Love', even though I had hardly practiced.
During those school years I joined a 'one off' out of school orchestra organised by one of Sebastion's friends mothers. I played the triangle. It seemed like the best experience to be part of an orchestra. I also joined the chorus of two musicals at school and made two new friends Gay and Angela. One of the new friends Angela victimised the other new friend Gay whose place I had been to once and we rubbed each others breasts until we were both excited. But she said we couldn't do anything else or go any further, which I couldn't undrstand but had to accept. Not that I knew what else we would do, but I couldn't see any reason for frustrating that feeling of excitment. I had been staying over at her house for the night so we just went to sleep after that. At the same time I had fallen totally in love with the other friend Angela. The incident between me Gay was not mentioned by me to anybody. Angela had a mean streak and tried to send Gay away from us by being cuttingly nasty to her. Gay would sit meditating during rehearsal breaks, in a Swarmi position with her hands praying and eyes unblinking. We would try to make her blink but she never would then we would go off laughing. Angela said I could hang around with her at school after that musical was over. I could think of no-one and nothing but her. When school started again and I did try to hang out with her I discovered that she already had a long-term friend who she was hanging out with. I tried for a while to be with them but in the end I stopped loving her and hung out on my own again. Gay was victimised by Angela at school too until she went back to her own long-term friend to hang out with.
Another friend I had at school's name was Sonya. I had been to her house once, but by the end of year nine, our friendship had become strained. When school started the next year and I saw her in high ponytails and perky breasts, my anger bubbled over. I marched up to her, interrupted the bright conversation she was having with some other girls, grabbed her arm and spun her around. "Have you got a bra on?!" I said, accusing her.
She looked at me scaldingly, "yeah!".
She shook me off and turned back to the girls she was talking to. That friendship ended right then.
I was never given a bra, nor did I get a proper fitting one until I bought one for myself. One of Mum's friends passed on some huge, wrinkled second hand bra's to me once, but they looked ridiculous on.

By years ten and eleven I would sit by myself behind the sports pavillion and try to eat my sandwiches which were huge salad sandwiches. The other girls would always swap a peanut butter or vegemite sandwich with mine then walk away. So that every day I never ended up eating any of my sandwiches.
Once I was given the remnants of some potato crisps in a bag and a girl from my street pursued me all over the playground to get me to share with her. I wouldn't share. She was rarely given treats and neither was I. But sharing was an alien concept to me. I didn't know how or why I should.
I was a slight, pretty girl with a good body. Some boys like me. I fell madly in love with one boy, but pretended to like his mate instead. On school camp though we exchanged chewy's mouth to mouth going to Wilson's Prommentory by bus. I did not have my period but thought I was probably going to get it, all the other girls had theirs. So I took a big pack of pads with me on camp, but didn't use any of them. At sixteen my period arrived. It came every three months for years after that. On one excursion, I had an encounter with a boy who felt me at the beach with gritty, sandy fingers, I thought, but maybe I had sand in private places from doing a wee in the dunes.

Another boy allowed me to borrow his flippers on an excursion to the beach and I lost one of them in the surf. He was good about it, even though it didn't wash up before we had to get back on the bus.
I had a party and some of the tough boys came, staged a mock fight then left early. One of the tough guys even came to my house before the party. Mum and Dad weren't home. I showed him around, even taking him into my room which I called a storeroom, curtained off in the loungeroom. He said 'I thought you said this was a storeroom."
"It is." I said.
I thought this boy may have had a soft spot in his heart somewhere. This caused me to not respect him. Cold, hard, flint is what I was becoming and what I respected.

Mum worked in a factory in Ferntree Gully. I also worked there over one school holidays. By Year eleven, Mum decided we had to move. We moved to Box Hill. From then on we caught the train to school. Sebastion had to leave school and get a job to help make ends meet because they weren't going to sell the other house which meant two mortgages. Sebastion studied maths at night school but gave up because it was too hard.
I caught the train to school. Some of the girls wagged some of the classes. I decided to drop maths, so if they were free I'd go with them back to one of their homes that was closest. We'd raid the biscuit barrel and sit around in the pleasant loungeroom and kitchen. I soon became not welcome there. Perhaps by eating and drinking too much always.
During the evening at one girl's house we sampled the liquor cabinet. I became quite drunk on straight gin.
I failed year eleven and would have had to repeat if I was going on to year twelve. But my marks were good enough to get accepted into nursing training.