While I was very interested to see all these things, and to be shown how to find my way to Cambridge from Boston, my concern about whether or not I could succeed in this famous place intensified. Chet sat me down on the steps of a building close by the Education School which I was to attend, and tried to allay my fears. I had absolutely nothing to worry about, he said, because I had all the skills required to undertake the work. He praised my writing, my insightful way of looking at things, my ability to express myself clearly. But, I thought, is that enough to get me through here? Or will I, as my mother had predicted, come a cropper?
Naomi was swinging herself over nearby fences, skipping, leaping and dashing here and there, while we talked, and Chet chided me for speaking of her as ‘hyperactive’. ‘She is not hyperactive,’ he said, shades of his psychiatric training, ‘she’s completely normal.’ I told him how, as a baby, Naomi had rocked herself every time she ate until she brought up her food, how doctors had advised me to keep her sedated, advice which I’d rejected. I also described how, later, I’d tried to stabilise her with the Feingold diet but found it impossible because she was too young to comply with its rigidity. Using a single coloured tissue or washing her hands with perfumed soap at school was enough to trigger her off. Chet continued to insist that she still fell well within the range of normal. While I felt reassured by his advice, I was almost despairing about how I would manage her and cope with my studies.
It was only in retrospect, when I began to get an inkling of the extent of Chef’s commitments, not just around the States but around the world, that I realised the precious gift of his time, support and encouragement, which he had given me. At the time I was too frightened, and perhaps too culture-shocked, to give these gifts the appreciation they deserved.
We were made very welcome at the house. Patsy, as well as taking care of their home, had graduated and been employed as a social worker. She was very friendly to me and the pair were extremely captivated by Naomi, who had a frankness about herself almost beyond belief, as well as an immense capacity to express her joy at life.
I got a lot out of speaking with Chet, and, from time to time, he let me know that he also appreciated talking to me. During one conversation I shared with him how disturbed I often was when, in Australia, white people came up to me in the most unlikely places, such as at cocktail parties, and made what sounded almost like confessions. They would tell me the most base and sickening things about themselves, sometimes about their depraved sexual predilections, at other times about crimes they had committed. I had reflected upon this and come to the conclusion that this was a manifestation of racism. These people rated me alongside perhaps the family dog, in whom they could safely confide because it could never bark back. Chet said immediately that he had exactly the same experiences, and his assessment was extremely close to my own. He felt that these people saw him as being outside their social circle and powerless to use the information against them. What a relief it was to realise these things did not happen to me alone!
On another occasion, when we were all taking a meal together at the end of the day, I asked his late-teenaged daughter Deirdre if she was looking forward to the forthcoming US election in which she would be able to vote. I was shocked to learn that she had no intention of enrolling or of voting, and I spoke to her sharply. ‘I have read so much about how many Blacks here have died so that you could vote, and you tell me you’re not going to bother?’
Afterwards, Chet thanked me for bringing up the subject, for speaking so to his child. He said that children reach an age when they don’t take too much notice of what their parents have to say. My outsider’s perspective was valuable for reminding Deirdre of her history in a way which he had been unable to do.
Notwithstanding these occasional exchanges, I began to be very troubled, and tried to immerse myself in the minute details of taking care of Naomi. Chet and Patsy, who both went off to work each day, urged us to get out, visit the art galleries, the children’s museum, and some of the many splendid things to be seen in Boston. Also, being guests, we had little else to do. But I was unable to rouse myself, to undertake these activities with any enthusiasm. Each morning I would lie sobbing in my bed in the basement, becoming cranky at Naomi when she bothered and cajoled me to take her somewhere, anywhere.
I must pull myself together, I kept saying again and again, worried about what had come over me. It was a long time before I could detach myself enough to analyse the situation. When I did, I concluded that I must have had a breakdown of some sort, occasioned by the stress I had been under in Australia. These early days in Boston represented my earliest opportunity to put down the emotional burdens I had been carrying. They were also the first time in my life when I had no crises calling on my time, no urgent business to take care of, no deadlines for work I was expected to do. I had had no experience with ‘leisure time’. I was unable to make decisions about what I might like to do, as separate from what I had to do. I couldn’t cope.
My way out of this depression was to narrow my focus to the task ahead. As soon as it was possible, with the summer break drawing to an end, I began to explore the school and its requirements. I located the housing office, chased up my accommodation application, and tried to badger people in the faculty to find out if there were reading lists for classes I could access so that I wouldn’t appear to be too far behind the other students. Other students, I felt sure, had probably already touched on everything we had to learn during their undergraduate study. With no undergraduate study behind me, I assumed that I must be behind. I did not want to appear to be ‘dumb’. I did not want the school to regret their decision to accept me.
I was appalled at the dismissive attitude I met at the housing office. They told me that they did not place much weight, and certainly no priority, on the applications from overseas students because many of them failed to turn up. Accommodation for families was in very short supply, there were hundreds of applicants, did I think my case was somehow special? But what of those international students with their children who, like me, did turn up? Had I travelled halfway around the world to discover I had nowhere to live?
I found myself galloping around the Cambridge campus, child in tow, backwards and forwards between offices, trying to sort out the truth from the rumours, of which there were many. I was told horror stories of people who, in desperation, had turned up at the housing office, suitcases in hand, and refused to budge. They even threatened to sleep there until they had been given a housing placement. With the dicey state of my visa, I felt far too insecure to risk arrest in this way. My visa became another priority I had to take care of. I went to the immigration office in Boston and completed an application to extend it.
I began to meet, and make friends with, staff arriving back from their summer holidays. I found the Education School mailroom and explained to the very friendly Black man who ran it that I had had no other address to give, and if mail arrived for me, would he please hold it? Over time, we grew quite chummy. Perhaps this was because he was something of a philatelist, admiring the foreign stamps on my letters and asking if he could have them. But it was also because it was in his nature to be kind to people who treated him respectfully. He had been in charge of the mailroom of the Education School for much longer than many of the academic staff had been in their offices. There was very little that he didn’t know about the running of the place and who was who and what they were up to. His status was such that he was a guest at all the cocktail parties held at the school, where he often shocked visiting professors who struck up conversations with him by telling them he was the mailman.
I continued to receive no joy at the housing office until the Director of Admissions, Mary Murphy, to whom I had gone running several times with my tale of woe, made a phone call on my behalf. The very next time I went to Housing to check availability, which we were obliged to do several times a day, I was informed that a two-bedroom apartment, suitable for myself and my child, in Peabody Terrace, would be
ready for me to occupy on the first day of school. Until then, it would have other occupants.
On checking out the complex to locate the apartment, I found it to be a short distance away from the Square, on the Charles River. Naomi was charmed to see squirrels running up and down the trees nearby, no doubt filling their hollows with the stores they require to get them through the long winter months. I asked around to find out the location of the nearest school for her, and was pleased to learn that Martin Luther King Junior School was almost directly across the road from where we were to live.
The first weeks of school consist of Orientation and Shopping, the former enabling new students to find their way around, meet faculty members informally, and take care of numerous tasks such as paying fees, being photographed for the student contact book, library tours, and enrolling in whatever student group one wishes to become a member of. The latter means attending any number of the short introductory presentations given by academic staff to enable prospective students to better make their choices. It was during these two busy weeks that I was also obliged to go dashing around, trying to set up house.
Money was my main concern. I had to be absolutely sure that our little store of funds lasted the full nine months, so everything had to be trimmed. There could be no splurges.
The apartment was unfurnished, so I had a double mattress delivered on which Naomi and I would both sleep until I could get organised. On our first day in the place we scoured and cleaned as best we could. Then I bought a few frozen food items which I could just place in the oven for our evening meals. As twilight came upon us and I was busy in the little kitchenette, I called to Naomi, ‘Turn on the lights.’ A few moments later, she appeared in the doorway. ‘Mummy, I can’t find the light-switches.’ I went to look in all the logical places, searched the walls, and discovered that the only overhead light was in the bathroom. All the other rooms were to be lit by lamps, for which there were ample electricity outlets in the walls, but we had no lamps.
Our first meal in our spanking new apartment was taken with us sitting on the bathroom floor, eating with our fingers.
Martha Ansara, a filmmaker who had worked with Essey Coffey on the production of her autobiographical film, My Life as An Aborigine, had given me the phone number for her mother, who lived in Boston. Mrs Ansara, looking frail and ill, turned up next day in her car and drove us around to a few opportunity shops where we purchased some plates, saucepans and other kitchen utensils, and an iron. We had tested the iron in the store and it had become warm. When we arrived home, though, we discovered that this was all it did, never becoming hot enough to iron any sort of fabric. So that was, worryingly, money wasted.
I had ordered a bunk for Naomi, but it would not be delivered until the end of the week so she had to continue sharing my mattress on the floor.
I was deep in an exhausted sleep one night when I bolted awake with a severe blow to the head. I saw stars, my brains reeling, and all this in the dark. Naomi, dreaming, sleepwalking, had imagined there to be a window in the wall behind us, above the mattress, and had leapt up to see out of it. She’d landed, both feet together on her way down, right on my head. My cry of sudden pain had woken her, so she stood, an amazed and startled expression on her face, looking down at me. Even awake, she could barely believe that there was no window in the wall, and she was a very shaken little girl.
I got her back to sleep, reassuring her that I wasn’t actually injured, just a headache and sore neck. Then I lay awake worrying that if this was an indication that she had begun sleep-walking again, I would have to sleep across the doorway to prevent her leaving the apartment in a dream.
We learned of the footpath sales—where people sell their unwanted clothes and furniture outside their own homes—which are a regular feature around Cambridge. On the weekend we visited as many of them in our area as we could. Using the little sets of wheels we had bought to carry our suitcases, we scurried home with a few lamps, chairs and a bookcase. There seemed not to be too much difference between us, racing around stocking up our necessities for the forthcoming year and the little squirrels racing backwards and forwards with things they would need for their looming hibernation.
School began in earnest. Students had been advised that they were required to take four courses each semester. I enrolled in five. This left me, I thought, with one to fail, if that turned out to be the case, without completely jeopardising my prospects for success. I thought myself very smart for doing this. Later I was to learn that such actions taken for just these reasons are considered part of having been programmed to expect failure. They demonstrate a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, which, of course, is correct. But how could I have been otherwise?
Walking in Harvard Square one day, just near the Coop, I heard someone call out my name. I was surprised, because I barely knew anyone. Certainly no one knew me well enough to hail me so in the street. I turned, but there was not even a remotely familiar face to be seen. Instead, a Black man, a complete stranger, stood smiling broadly at my confusion, waiting for me to realise that he was the caller.
‘I’m Tony Siaguru, from Papua New Guinea,’ he said, by way of introducing himself. ‘I saw your picture in our newspapers, saying that you were coming here, that’s how I knew it was you.’
Tony invited me to visit him and his wife, Mina, at Harvard’s Soldier’s Field housing complex where they were living with their young children. I was so pleased to meet someone from close to home, and to be able to share news with people who understood the politics and dynamics of what was happening in my part of the world and their own.
The International Students Association had suggested that foreign students should inform their embassies of their whereabouts. I was so angry about everything that had occurred prior to my departure, however, that I refused to do so. Instead, I contacted the PNG Mission to the United Nations, and let them know where I was. Tony, who was studying at the Kennedy School of Government, followed this through for me. Mina was also doing a degree at the Education School. Instead of arriving in September and studying through to June, like the rest of us, the pair had organised to start their work in January, at the beginning of the second semester, then finish in December at the end of first semester.
I was keen to find out how they, coming from an even warmer climate than my own, had fared during the previous winter. If they had already toughed it out without major mishap, I thought, surely I could do so, too.
No sooner had I taken Naomi in to her school to enrol, than she came home with a note from the teachers informing me she was to be amongst the Black students who were to be bussed to another school each day. This was part of the desegregation program. Schools with a high percentage of Black students bussed some of their students to white schools, while those with too high a percentage of white students bussed some of their students across town to majority Black schools.
I went back to the school and said that if they had an excess of Australian students, I would permit Naomi to participate in the program. Otherwise she had a right to attend their school, close by our home, after travelling from so far. Naomi was the only Australian, and fortunately they saw my point.
At the Education School, I was surprised and quite enchanted at the informality between staff and students. We were invited to address the professorial staff by their first names as though we were, in fact, their equals. ‘We’re all mature people here,’ I was told when I queried the practice. The range of people who were in attendance was enormously wide, drawn from almost all corners of the globe and involved in many specialist occupations. And I did not meet anyone who was not in some way a practitioner. While some were in the teaching professions, others like myself were interested in the wider aspects of adult learning.
I attended my classes and tackled the reading lists, spending almost all my time in the library. We had been lent a small television, which Naomi was permitted to watch only during the news and current affairs programs. The condition was that she
took notes for me on every news item. I had always been very strict with her access to television, and was not about to weaken our domestic rules and invite total anarchy. Naomi was quite pleased with this arrangement, and her experience in summarising and taking notes has stood her in good stead. I was happy because it allowed me to stay on at the library with my head in books until after seven each night before rushing home to prepare dinner.
Like many people, I suppose, when I arrived at Harvard I thought a library was a place to borrow books, no more, no less. Now I began to see their function much more broadly, as potential repositories of all the history and knowledge of the world. I felt sorry that I had not recognised this before.
While dining with Henry and Elaine Mayer at their house one night some years earlier, Henry, a historian, tried to impress upon me the need for me to start throwing bits and pieces into a box to give, at some later time, to a library.
‘What sort of “bits and pieces” do you mean, Henry?’ I had asked him.
‘Almost everything. Any time you’re invited to an official function and you’re given a program with your name in it, or a name tag, keep it. If you go to the opera, keep the ticket. You’ll be a famous Australian in your lifetime, and where you went and who invited you, how you spent your time, your likes and dislikes, these are the important details about you that modern historians will seek out. So make their job easier, and do your bit to ensure that contemporary Black Australians are not left out of Australia’s history as so many have been in the past.’
I had tried to keep copies of some of the articles I had written over the years, but my accommodations had not been conducive to the safe storage of such materials. I had never been to an opera, nor was I, despite Henry’s high estimation of me, invited to those sorts of places which had name-tag seating arrangements and so forth. However, my constant exposure to the libraries of Harvard made me think hard and long about how we, as Blacks, were almost invisible in the history of my country. I began to think about the ways I could help to rectify this omission. My squirrelling away of ‘bits and pieces’, as Henry had called it, started in earnest at Harvard.
Snake Circle Page 13
