God's Callgirl

by Carla Van Raay

  My classmates were not so devotional, especially Jill, my sister Liesbet’s best friend. She and my sister burst in one afternoon and caused mayhem by knocking over the box of white hosts kept for the communion rites. Once on the floor, the wafers could no longer be used and had to be disposed of, so Liesbet and Jill filled their mouths with them, laughing loudly and being very naughty. Then Jill decided to try the wine as well. She got hold of the wine bottle and a chalice, and declared the stuff very good indeed. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried some too. It was a special kind of port, truly delicious, and it made us feel very happy and bold. After lifting every cassock and examining every drawer, the irreverent whirlwind disappeared out the sacristy door.

  I was amused but also aghast; after all, I had participated and had got a surprising lift from sipping the port. After that, it was never quite the same for me in the sacristy: temptation was always with me, and from time to time I quietly indulged it. After all, there was confession to make it all right again—only this type of thing you confessed in another parish.

  Mother Mary Luke was a good sort, if a bit old for her job and a bit cranky because of her constant migraines. She appeared to have lost all her own teeth, but her thinnish smile was nevertheless genuine. Mother Mary Luke had a wisdom born of considerable teaching experience and dealing with parents and children. She was always in a hurry, never walking but always running, shoulders high and veil flapping as she covered the distance between the classroom and the staffroom several times a day. It was on one of those lightning runs that she flashed me a smile and said: ‘When are you going to wake up, Carla?’

  I was stunned. Something about the question stopped me in my mental tracks. She hadn’t said, ‘When are you going to grow up?’ but ‘When are you going to wake up?’ My English was good enough for me to notice the difference. The implication was that I was asleep; that there was something to be woken up to. What could it be? I didn’t know what the world looked like to people who were awake. Her words haunted me, but there wasn’t much time to indulge in pondering this conundrum, as the next two years of school were to be interrupted.

  WE CAME HOME from school one day to find my mother in bed. She was lying in a pool of blood, moaning and delirious. We knew what to do and ran to the convent for Sister Victoire, the infirmarian, a trained nurse. The title ‘Sister’ distinguished worker sisters from the ‘Mothers’, who were teachers. Sister Victoire dropped everything and hurried over. She wasted no time and called an ambulance, which arrived promptly and took Mother away to hospital. On her way out, she opened blurry eyes and told us not to cry. She was weak with loss of blood from a miscarriage at a late stage of pregnancy, but so concerned that we should not worry about her. It broke my heart to see her so weak, so vulnerable and so thoughtful.

  Sister Victoire didn’t seem to think the situation was all that serious. She was a thin able woman with a heart of absolute gold and a steady bright nature that was healing in itself. Her smile made us feel less tragic. Sister removed the bloodied sheets from the bed, as if she did this every day, and talked animatedly to us while she bundled them up and took them away with her. That evening, dinner arrived for the family, cooked by the considerate nuns.

  For several weeks I had to look after the family while my mother slowly recovered. She had been given a transfusion of the wrong kind of blood, which had nearly killed her. Being ‘mother’ at the age of thirteen for six children, and looking after our father as well, was no mean feat. My cooking skills were minimal, so I bought a cookbook and some new utensils and started to experiment on our Kookaburra gas stove. Someone could have warned me that it wouldn’t work as the door of the stove didn’t quite shut. There was no temperature gauge either, so I was up against it. But I was determined and didn’t give up for a very long time.

  My brothers didn’t seem to mind at all and ate whatever came out of the oven, no matter how burned it was. I loved them for that, but I still developed a complex about my cooking. I fell back on staples: pancakes with slices of apple and covered in treacle, soups, and boiled vegies from the garden.

  My father cooked all the meat, as I had no idea whatsoever and still don’t. I can make meatballs in celery soup, though, which was my mother’s speciality. She showed us girls how to make it with great pride, but somehow she always made that soup better than I, or anyone else, ever could. She just had a special knack for celery soup with meatballs.

  I wanted to educate my brothers—who slept in bunk beds in a lino-floored room—to make their beds in the morning and go to bed clean at night so that their sheets wouldn’t get dirty straight after being washed. But it was hopeless. They were used to doing the male chores, like getting the wood ready for the chip heater, and making beds wasn’t one. As for washing their feet before bed—well, they might have done that once, but with no shower in the house it was asking too much. All we had was a weekly bath and a daily wash by hand at the sink. There would be no unmade beds in ‘my’ house, however, so I kept up a rigorous routine. If my emotional self was in constant chaos, at least I could bring order into my immediate environment!

  At night, I put the little ones to bed. Often I would read stories to my two youngest sisters, who were nine and ten years my junior, or I would just make them up. I frightened them to death with stories of Bluebeard—the same stories that horrified me when I first read them—but when thunder shook the skies, I reassured my little sisters, telling them it was a display of the power of God and our angels were there to protect us.

  Eventually my mother returned, but I continued to stay home from school while she convalesced. School didn’t seem to matter an awful lot to me because I had already gone beyond the level we were being taught, and I continued to learn English from books and avid listening to the radio.

  LIVING IN A cottage in the convent grounds, we were fairly isolated from normal contact with the neighbours. The convent, set in one of Melbourne’s most exclusive suburbs, was flanked by large mansions mostly occupied by older people whose children had left home.

  Directly opposite our humble gate onto the side street was a modest house with only a few bedrooms but lots of stained glass and high ceilings. In it, there lived a very old lady and her comparatively younger daughter. They had no family whatsoever and were very lonely. Their husbands had died, there were no children from the younger woman’s marriage, and no family left in England, their country of origin. But Mrs Greig and Mrs Taylor had class and a little bit of money, and it was they who gave me my first taste of English elegance and sensibility. My sister and I were invited to go over for afternoon tea and hear the marvellous stories the two women delighted to tell. We were introduced to Winnie the Pooh, to Beatrix Potter, to Alice in Wonderland, and to cup cakes. We were even invited to stay over a few times, and slept in large comfortable beds, a radical change from having to share a bed with my sister, which I did until I left home.

  On Sundays we sometimes accompanied them on rides in their shiny old black Ford, chauffeured by the faithful Bertie. Upon the ladies’ return home Bertie had to inspect every room and look under all the beds to check for intruders before they would enter the house themselves. Then they would make him tea, pay him and let him go.

  Having no immediate family, the two old ladies confided in their accountant, and it was he who eventually inherited their fortune. The first thing this villain did after the younger woman died was to demolish the house against the express and earnest wishes of both women. Then he built a number of villas on the site.

  Mrs Greig crocheted a rug for me with many squares, edged in black. I treasured it, and luckily my mother kept it for me while I was ‘out of this world’ and later gave it back to me. I have it still, a reminder of the graciousness of two English ladies who made up for the absence of younger friends in my immediate neighbourhood.

  I went back to school, but only occasionally, as my mother had difficulty coping with the three children who were still at home. It was on my way to school that
I came across love-in-the-mist, a very delicate, blue, star-like flower surrounded by a mist of fine green tendrils accentuating the flower’s blue tenderness. My romantic heart melted when I saw this miracle. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes—if I’d first seen it in a drawing—I wouldn’t have believed it could be real. English cottage flowers, which grew so well in Melbourne, were new to me.

  The woman owner of the garden picked a sprig for me and told me its incredible name. I held the flower to my heart, and wished it could be right inside it. Then I thought of giving it to my overworked teacher, Mother Mary John, whom I hadn’t seen for a while.

  Mother Mary John was wearing her black-rimmed round glasses and her face was very pale when I caught her before assembly, in the middle of a run between the classroom and the lunchroom. I offered her the flower with the lovely name. She had the grace to slow down for a moment, then put the magnificent blue flower back in my hands. I could get a vase if I wanted and put it in front of the statue of Our Lady in the classroom.

  I was wounded by her matter-of-factness and tears came. I was a child-mother hoping for some mothering myself; I had hoped to trade my gift of a special flower for some special love from my teacher. I felt so tired. But, I realised I shouldn’t expect too much from people.

  And so I turned my thoughts to Jesus, who was present in the tabernacle of the church in his mystical way, locked up there in the round white communion wafers and the bigger wafer of the monstrance. Yes, I knew that love existed. The only trouble was that humans were short of it.

  I transferred my need for love to Jesus when I was thirteen, and entering puberty. I started to feel romantic love for him. I poured out my heart to him in the church at playtime and lunchtime. Jesus must love me, even if no one else did, and so my imaginary relationship flourished. It was my version of a relationship with the Divine: I loved Jesus even though I had never met him, couldn’t possibly know what he looked like, and had no idea of who he really was.

  This relationship saved my heart from closing up. It was the joy of all my romantic teenage years. It kept me alive. And when those sickly holy pictures were circulated with Jesus pointing straight at me with the words, ‘You, yes, you, I want you!’ my heart melted for being wanted and said, ‘Yes! Yes, Jesus! I will forsake my mother and my father and brothers and sisters and all the world and follow you!’ I pinned the picture up on the side of my wardrobe and prayed on my knees before it every day, my heart often leaping with the ever-growing certainty that I would become a nun one day, an ultimate lover of Jesus.

  IN ALL, I SPENT more time at home than at Our Lady of Good Counsel primary school. My presence at home was probably a safety net for my mother; it helped her avoid her husband’s sexual advances when he came home for lunch every day. She was too accessible, and so afraid of going through all that pain again. Nevertheless, he could not leave her alone and she became pregnant again and miscarried once more in the fifth month. After that, my mother underwent an operation to mend the parts that had stretched too wide. Oh, the bittersweetness of being relatively well again! There was no excuse now and she proceeded to have three more boy children; the last child was conceived after I left home.

  In spite of all the busy happenings at home, my sister Liesbet and I did the ironing for Sister Kevin on Saturday afternoons, to earn extra pocket money. To give Saturday afternoons away was a big sacrifice and, much to Sister Kevin’s annoyance, we didn’t always make it. Upstairs from the convent laundry, we ironed table and bed linen and the nuns’ strange-looking underwear, and put aside anything that needed mending. Sister Kevin caught us dressing up one afternoon. In a fit of giggles, we hadn’t heard her climb up the long set of stairs and she gave us a shock. The inevitable lecture followed. We blushed and promised never to do it again, but laughed all the harder after she left. Sister Kevin was good at heart and always treated us to tea and cake.

  Sister Kevin was well known to the boys because they gave her a hard time over her chook pen. The chicken run was next to our backyard, just behind the cyprus hedge, and its roof was too easy a target. Sticks, stones and rubbish were regularly thrown at it from the heights of the hedge, frightening any unlucky chook on her way to lay an egg. Really, it was all done to see Sister Kevin get into one of her prodigious tempers. The boys sniggered at the spectacle of this indignant nun ‘off her rocker’, as they would say.

  AND SO PASSED my first two years in Australia. Hormones had already started their work on my sister who, despite being younger, experienced her first period at least six months before me. She found blood on her knickers and went to my mother in alarm, to be told matter-of-factly that this was a sign that she would be able to have babies later on. She was introduced to wearing cotton rags—old, thin but absorbent nappy material—which she had to pin to the inside of her knickers. I felt inferior to my sister and often ducked into the thickness of the cyprus hedge near the house to check my own underpants. My sister was much more sexually aware than I and attracted plenty of attention as a stunningly beautiful teenager. I would never be like her. I suppressed my sexuality as hard as I could, feeling awkward in the presence of boys and men.

  It was during the summer after my thirteenth birthday that my periods started, in rather inauspicious circumstances. A large Dutch family well known to my parents lived on a farm not far from the sea, and they agreed to have me stay with them for a week or so. The woman of the house was a sturdy worker of few words, with a warm gruff sort of voice and a good heart. We went to the beach several times, and one day I decided to go there by bicycle, taking her youngest child, a boy of three, on the back. She packed us a lunch and off we went. We spent a couple of sunny hours at the beach and then it was time to go back. However, I was not quite sure which way to turn when I faced the highway. Both sides seemed familiar. I chose to turn right and set off with trepidation, knowing my propensity for getting things wrong. It wasn’t until I reached the very end of the peninsula, the end of the road, that I was sure I was on the wrong track. Now I knew the way back, but it was an appallingly long distance! The afternoon was hot, the traffic dangerous to ride in, and my legs were ready to give way under me. But I had to press on, heart beating overtime, legs on fire, and my eyes burning from exhaustion, heat and shame.

  Finally, there she was, the mother of my little charge—who had silently clung to the back of my bicycle all this time—ready to catch her boy in her arms and set him down. Then she noticed something else: the back of my dress was soaked in blood. She told me to take it off while she fetched me one of her daughter’s dresses. She didn’t scold me or tell me to go and clean myself up, but simply rinsed my dress, petticoat and pants in cold water and then plunged them into the soapy tub in her backyard, where she had been working when we arrived.

  Sensing her motherliness, I soon recovered. Although she said very little, it was her attitude and her actions that counted. I was horrified at the sight of my feminine blood, but her natural acceptance of the situation confirmed our femaleness as good. The only thing she did not guess was that this was my first time. She gave me a clean strip of folded rag and two safety pins to fix to a pair of bloomers, and I relaxed in my borrowed dress while my own dried on the line.

  My first menstrual bleeding could have been better, but it could also have been worse if it had occurred in my mother’s presence. My mother was apt to call her daughters ‘sluts’ when they bled, or, at any other time our womanhood was obvious. Perhaps our youthfulness reminded her of the ‘bad girl’ she had been herself. Even my leaning idly against a doorway to watch a plumber do some work in our house one day exasperated her sense of decency.

  ‘You filthy rag,’ she said with venom in her suddenly husky voice, ‘Stop standing like that, showing off to the plumber!’

  She had spoken in Dutch, her insult passing over the head of the plumber. I looked down at myself in surprise, became conscious of my stance, and caught the energy of her guilt. Tears welled up, and anger, but the damage was done. I needed a mot
her during adolescence, one I could run to for protection, but she was doing the attacking herself.

  KISSING MAKES YOU PREGNANT

  NEXT TO AN impressive church on the biggest hill in Richmond’s Church Street stood the gracious Vaucluse convent and its Ladies’ College. Also run by the FCJ nuns, Vaucluse catered for migrants and the less well off, offering them a rather lower standard of education than Genazzano.

  If Jesus, who was supposed to be poor, had ever had children they would not have been accepted into Genazzano. And it wouldn’t do for the gardener’s daughters to go there either. Nuns make a vow of poverty, while keeping strictly to the class system that helps to perpetuate it. However, this system did allow the nuns to cater for the poor, and we girls received our education free of charge, as the children of the caretaker of Genazzano. The six boys went to the Christian Brothers after primary school.

  That first morning at Vaucluse, the nuns didn’t know where to place the migrant girls, Carla and Liesbet. They put their heads together for a few minutes, then Mother Eleanor made an announcement in her best English accent. ‘You, Carla and Liesbet, will both go to Year 8 (the first year of secondary school) because we know that you must be behind, on account of your mother language not being English, and because you, Carla, have missed so much school over the past two years.’ The words were spoken as from a pulpit. ‘You will be able to give each other encouragement in a new and strange environment by being together in the same class,’ said the other nun.

  The well-intentioned nuns never thought of interviewing either of us to make a reasoned decision. The normal age for Year 8 was twelve. I was fourteen. My heart sank heavily, but I didn’t have it in me to say anything.