Take Three Girls

by Cath Crowley

  Back at the boarding house, Old Joy has set up a crafternoon. We’ve been making bunting for the Winter Fair, personalising little cloth triangles. The fair is a big fundraiser for the school – it’s all fuss and jostle and parental involvement.

  I sit in a hub with Jinx, Iris and Kate. Iris isn’t speaking to me. Kate’s in her own world. Jinx is making me laugh by decorating her bunting with vulva-esque motifs.

  Old Joy strides around with her hands in her poncho pockets.

  ‘Lovely, girls, lovely. I’m seeing patterns, and inspirational quotes.’

  A morose-looking girl puts her hand up.

  ‘Miss, I can’t think of anything to draw.’

  ‘Just draw what makes you happy.’

  I raise my hand.

  Old Joy comes over. ‘Clem?’

  ‘Can I use a photo as a reference? It’s on my phone.’

  Jinx groans. Iris is glowering at me.

  ‘Nice try,’ Old Joy says.

  After ten minutes it’s like a calm bomb has descended and we’re absorbed in our sketching and colouring. Stu does this sort of stuff at his work – creative therapies. He told me he had one client, a teenage boy who had violent outbursts, couldn’t stand being touched, and was a whole packet of trouble, but if he had paper and pens he’d draw amazing unearthly worlds. Stu said they were crazy beautiful.

  Stu is crazy beautiful.

  I’m trying to draw his face from memory. I should be able to do this, but my hand and mind aren’t communicating. His brow’s too big and his chin’s too small. His head looks like an alien’s egg-shaped dome and his lips are pushing up a sinister moustache. I cover the mess up with swirls and add his initials and mine, entwined. I’m obsessed, I know. If I don’t stop thinking about him I’m sure I’ll explode from repressed desire.

  ‘Hey.’ Jinx leans on me. ‘Are you getting excited about Canberra?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘When are you going to come back to us?’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ Iris says peevishly. ‘Are you still not swimming?’

  Kate paints tiny dots. ‘Does she have to swim?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jinx says. ‘She’s good.’

  Iris is staring at me. I refuse to look at her.

  ‘I don’t get you,’ Iris says in a small voice. ‘Swimming’s your thing. You love swimming. What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s about a boy,’ Jinx says.

  ‘What boy?’ Iris wants to know.

  ‘Jesus!’ I snap. ‘Stop sticking your nose in it. My life has nothing to do with yours. And don’t even think about telling Mum and Dad.’

  ‘What boy?’ Iris persists. ‘Is that where you went today?’

  I get up and take my bunting with me. It looks shit, so I chuck it in the bin on my way out. I go up to my room, find my old pilled bathers and put them in my bag. I take the key to the new pool from Jinx’s drawer, and head down there. It is true that the water feels like an old friend; I remember at once the pleasure of slipping under, the dreamy darkness when I close my eyes, submerged. I swim by myself, up and back, up and back until I can’t feel anything but froth and churn and my heart feels too big for my rib cage, and my throat is tight and my legs feel like sandbags, and when I finally get out it’s late. The night seems to press against me. I thought swimming would make me feel better, clearer, but in the end, all I feel is exhausted.

  WEEK 4

  SELF-ESTEEM

  Week 4: Nurturing self-esteem

  Provocation

  What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

  Henry S. Haskins

  Self-esteem is confidence in one’s own worth or abilities. It’s made up of the thoughts, feelings and opinions we have of ourselves. Today we reflect privately on how we see ourselves, and discuss methods to improve our sense of self-worth.

  Points for discussion/reflection

  • What are your five best qualities?

  • What do you see as your greatest talent? If you can’t decide, ask the people in your group.

  • What factors affect your self-esteem? (Consider family, peers)Does your self-esteem ever fluctuate? When is your self-esteem at its highest? When is your self-esteem at its lowest? What factors might be lowering your self-esteem?

  • Discuss some practical ways you could improve your self-esteem.

  Task

  Complete the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Developed by sociologist Dr Morris Rosenberg, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale measures self-esteem by asking you to reflect on general feelings about yourself. Indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with each statement.

  Scoring

  ‘Strongly Disagree’ 1 point, ‘Disagree’ 2 points, ‘Agree’ 3 points, and ‘Strongly Agree’ 4 points. Add the scores for all ten items. Higher scores indicate higher self-esteem.

  PSST

  RATE THE BOARDERS – ST HILDA’S, SACRED HEART, CROWTHORNE GRAMMAR

  1. Angela Bannon – fucking hot. number one boarder id do

  2. Jinx Benedict – shit face but gives excellent head

  3. Carla Walsh – better from the back

  4. Josephine Parker – good tits, average arse, okay legs

  5. Grace Wang – get her drunk at parties thats all im saying

  6. Helena Parks – total dog but gr8t body

  7. Maddie Plom – puts out at every party

  8. Sarah Lim – excellent handjobs if yr desperate

  9. Bernadette Smith – shit handjobs but gr8t fuck

  10. Kate Turner – weird mute, but if yr desperate at least she won’t talk back. and it’s the quiet ones that really go off

  Bizjiz: feminazi jinx needs a good fuck.

  sufferingsuffragette: It’s absolutely outrageous that you think you can do this.

  Bizjiz: yr just mad yr not on the list

  Ericsonic: i would def do kate t.

  renterg: maybe if she wore the lab coat on her head.

  clydesc: id like to make her scream

  closetgman: shes so weird man and olivers on that anyway

  fridgeman: really? didn’t know he was so desperate

  homeboy: josephine parker did me in toilets at party

  nombomb: i want them all together all at once

  load 100 more comments

  Monday 1 August

  I get up as quietly as I can but Iris opens her eyes before I leave. I give her a hesitant smile, and she waves – a signal she really has forgiven me.

  At the pool I set up my computer in the deep end, tune my cello, close my eyes and put myself back into the darkness of the club. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I felt my future in that place.

  ‘Your future?’ Iris said Saturday at breakfast, carrying on the quiet fight we’d started the night before. ‘You want to be on stage, is that it? With everyone watching?’

  I stopped talking then, stopped trying to explain that it wasn’t about being on the stage or about impressing Oliver. It’s about playing old notes and making new sounds. Using the computer. Doing something I love.

  ‘You love science. You want to be a doctor,’ Iris said.

  That would be a perfectly fine future, a bearable one. But the other possible future is brilliantly lit.

  The girl on stage at the club – Juliette – played sounds that made every part of me want. She was confident enough to be playful. She’s studied for years, I’m sure of it.

  Late Sunday night, after a day of polite and angry quiet, Iris sat on my bed. ‘Okay,’ she said, her voice switched to practical mode. Motioning for my notebook, she turned to a blank page and wrote a list in her careful handwriting.

  Where will you get a music teacher?

  How will you afford a music teacher?

  Will you tell your parents? Or will you lie to them, and say you still want to be a doctor?

  Will they think extra experimental lessons are a waste of money that could go towards your expenses next year? Because you’re alread
y in the orchestra and they’re paying for that.

  I try to force all other thoughts out of my head and play, but thoughts are stubborn, so I give up and call Ben. I tell him I’m feeling stupid and defeated.

  ‘It’s Monday,’ he says. ‘People all across the country are feeling stupid and defeated.’

  ‘Usually I love Mondays.’

  ‘I do, too,’ he says. ‘All normal people across the country are feeling stupid and defeated.’

  ‘Still no luck making a friend?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ll assume that’s a rhetorical question. What’s the core of your defeat?’

  I tell him about the weekend, Oliver, the money problem, about needing a teacher I can’t afford. ‘You need a cello study partner,’ he says. ‘You can’t ask the Oliver guy?’

  ‘She’s too stubborn to ask the Oliver guy.’

  ‘Is that the Oliver guy?’ Ben asks.

  ‘It is the Oliver guy. Who are you?’ Oliver asks.

  ‘I’m Ben.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Ben. What’s your relationship to Kate?’

  ‘None of your business, actually,’ I tell him.

  ‘Best friend,’ Ben says. ‘And you? Why do you keep turning up?’

  ‘Today, I brought Kate a CD that I thought might help.’

  ‘I don’t need help,’ I say.

  ‘You just said you did,’ both of them say.

  ‘Well, I’m taking it back.’ I don’t know why, but I find it impossible to accept help from Oliver. I can’t quite look at him now. I feel like he’s been wearing a mask since I met him, and now he’s taken it off I can see the guy in the t-shirt on stage, playing in a band.

  His hand is still out, and Ben is still listening, so I take the CD and turn it over. The back cover is blank. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Someone you need to hear,’ Oliver says.

  ‘Is it you?’

  ‘Let me know what you think after you’ve listened to it,’ he says, and walks off.

  ‘Is he gone?’ Ben asks.

  ‘You need to start living your life and stop living mine vicariously,’ I tell him, and hang up.

  I’m on my way out of the pool, the CD in my blazer pocket, when Joseph turns off his leaf blower and walks over. ‘Tell your friend he can’t come here anymore. I’ve ignored him so far, but I’m supposed to report it if I see a boy on the grounds.’

  ‘He’s here for orchestra,’ I say.

  ‘Not at seven-thirty he’s not. Lately he’s even earlier. Lately, he’s here from the second you start playing.’

  I drink my coffee, stare at the blank back of the CD, think of Oliver and feel strange. He’s been watching me from the second I started playing? Meaning, six am? What’s he doing on school grounds at six am?

  When I walk into orchestra, he’s already tuning. I’m about to tell him what the groundsman said, and accuse him of stalking me, but he looks up and gives me a small smile, which is unexpected and actually nice. I find myself giving a small smile back.

  ‘Thanks for the CD,’ I say.

  Iris walks in and ends the conversation before it starts. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she says in a breathy whisper that smells of cornflakes. ‘It’s about PSST.’

  ‘I’m tuning,’ I tell her, and point at Mrs Davies, who’s already here.

  She won’t give up, though. ‘Have you seen it this morning?’

  ‘No, because it’s misogynist crap. I’ve told you before, it has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You need to read it,’ she says, holding out her phone. I’m about to tell her it’s none of her or my or anyone’s business when Oliver says quietly and seriously, ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’

  Other people are walking in, setting up. They all glance at me as they sit down, which is new. I pull out my phone, ignoring Iris’s. If I’m about to read shit about myself, which is clearly what’s about to happen, then I’ll read it on my own device, thanks very much.

  As soon as I look, I wish I could un-look. The topic is ‘Rate the Boarders’, and there’s a list of ten names with descriptions. I’m number ten.

  Kate Turner – weird mute, but if yr desperate at least she won’t talk back. and it’s the quiet ones that really go off

  I read through the offensive comments (so unbelievably offensive) and stop when I get to a comment that mentions Oliver’s name.

  olivers on that anyway

  I look over at him. ‘What have you been saying?’

  ‘Nothing, I swear.’

  Mrs Davies taps her stand.

  I play with fury.

  ‘Kate!’ Oliver calls as I leave practice. I walk faster so he has to jog to keep up. I wish I could just start running, but I don’t want Oliver thinking I’m crying over this and it’s impossible to run with a cello.

  ‘KATE!’ Oliver yells again, and sprints towards me. For a studious guy, he’s amazingly athletic. He moves ahead of me, turns around and runs backward.

  ‘You’ll fall.’

  ‘I’m aware I’m taking a risk,’ he says.

  ‘I do not want to talk to you or any male at this point.’

  I actually don’t want to talk to anyone. I’ve gone from fury to rage to humiliation and back to rage. Who do those people think they are? Commenting on me, on Jinx, on all of those girls? Imagine them typing away, thinking they have the right. ‘Who the fuck do they think they are?’ I ask Oliver.

  He holds up his hands in surrender. ‘Whoever they are, they’re idiots. And I need you to know that I have never, at any stage, made any suggestion to anyone that we are together or having sex.’

  ‘Is that why you were at the pool this morning? To tell me?’

  ‘I came to help –’

  ‘I don’t need your help. I don’t want you listening to me at the pool, invading my privacy. If Joseph sees you again, he will kick your arse onto the street.’

  ‘Who’s Joseph?’

  ‘Stop talking to me!’

  Like I said, it’s hard to run with a cello, but I get pretty close to it. Oliver gives up jogging in front of me. I keep walking and leave him behind. I feel ridiculous: a huge, stumbling turtle.

  ‘Kate goes wild,’ some girl yells on my way past, but I don’t see who. I keep moving till I get to the music room, where I roll my cello into a music locker and fight the urge to roll myself in with it.

  I think through the full version of my morning and everything has a humiliating tint to it. Oliver listening as I try to write music at the pool, giving me the CD out of pity because I’m a mute geek and I’m trying to be something else, which he thinks is impossible. Because the only time I could possibly be loud is when I have sex?!

  This is not true. One, I haven’t had sex. Two, I don’t think I’d be loud. But if I was loud, whose business would it be but mine and possibly the person I was being loud with?

  No one’s.

  In Wellness, the talk before Dr Malik arrives is about the PSST post and who’s doing it and if people agree with the ratings. Lola’s thinking aloud in a bored voice that it’s a good thing. ‘I mean, at least someone’s noticing the boarders.’

  Jinx puts her hand on my shoulder as she passes and says, ‘If I was having sex I’d be loud as hell,’ and Angela says she wishes she was, ‘But what’s there to yell about?’

  Whether people are being nice to me or not, it just makes me angrier. They’ve messed with the wrong tech-head. Because now it’s on my list to find the losers and expose them. Find the fuckers, I scribble in my journal, feeling guilty because I should have scribbled that the first time anything was posted.

  ‘Prepare to be well,’ Clem says, as Dr Malik walks in.

  He hands out a survey that’s designed to help us measure our self-esteem. I don’t need a survey to measure mine. It’s zero and plummeting.

  I don’t bother completing it.

  I spend the class thinking about the Haskins quote. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. What lies within me i
s rage at the moment. And humiliation. Everyone’s looking for the cracks in people to expose them. What’s the point?

  I stare out the window, pondering that question until the bell goes.

  On her way out, Ady walks past my desk. She drops her folded-up survey in front of me. I open it. Scrawled across the top is: Don’t let them inside your head.

  I fold it back up, so I can carry it with me all day.

  Monday 1 August

  What factors affect your self-esteem? Try getting slagged off by PSST. Try being Kate Turner or the other girls on that list. Try pulling yourself out of the slime pit where some anonymous piece of shit is imagining you having sex and posting their pathetic opinions about it online. Try turning your back on that and polishing up your self-esteem and having a great day. Wellness class is a good idea, no doubt, but it floats above the surface of what’s really happening.

  So, the survey? Phenomenally irrelevant and useless, Malik. No. Just, no.

  At times, I think I am no good at all. I certainly feel useless at times. I wish I could have more respect for myself. I feel that I have a number of good qualities . . . For each statement I tick all four responses: Strongly Agree. Agree. Disagree. Strongly Disagree.

  Ten statements. Forty ticks. I feel about each one of the statements the way people’s compasses acted when the Krakatoa volcano erupted. So much shit in the air that the compasses spun around in circles. When I say shit, I mean iron dust or something. But, whatever. Spinning. All options equally plausible. Okay, I realise I can do something useful with this survey, this piece of former forest: I write a note to Kate.

  In class we are finishing off bunting for the Winter Fair while Malik talks about self-esteem. There’s been a bit of talk about the PSST post, but my friends don’t even seem to care about it that much. It’s as though what happens online is ugly wallpaper that we can half ignore. Lola actually thinks it’s nice that someone’s including the boarders for a change. I’m going to give them a big feminist motivation talk one of these days.